Film developer

A lot has changed in my life and plans in the past 3 months. I've already wrote 2 posts about it, in portuguese. And, then again, my plans keep on changing...

I started the year thinking it would be yet another year at the office. I had worked for 2 years in the same company. I thought I was stabilized there, I would grow up there. I'd think "Finally a nice company with nice people who appreciate my work". January 4th. Fired. No reason given, no questions asked. I just walked away, in shock. Shocked big time.

Now I want to leave my country. I really do. For at least 10 years I've been trying.

I never liked borders or flags. But if I were to choose one to be patriot about, I'd choose the olympics flag. I think it's the closest we got to a "flag of human being". When you're in a bad neighborhood, which means one you don't fit in, you just move out. We can't change people's mind, we can't make people around us to act as we wish. We can only keep moving in hope to find a place we fit in.

There might be somewhere in my country where I do fit in. It is a big place, after all. But I've been around the world. I know what I want. And I know there are better places to seek for somewhere I can call home before Brazil. For too many reasons I won't dig in here anymore.

So I tried making plans. Straight moving out is a far fetch dream. Most countries won't take me. I'm no big shot. Got no money to invest. I hardly could afford a few months of studying and living in most places, which still is the best chance I have to get a long enough stay visa. I got no family financial support, we're all poor. I do have a family living in the US, but it can still take another 10 years for my green card to come out. Until then, I can't even get a tourist visa to visit my mother. It's ludicrous.

I had to shoot lower. I thought trying to use my experience and looking for freelancing. If I could make a living online, I could move out at least from my home city, thus making a smaller step towards moving out of the country. Well, that plan is also going bad. Competition is too fierce online. I've managed to make 8 bucks so far. But maybe there's an extra reason I couldn't make this work yet... I got a dream, which may be bigger than my will to find a home...

Intermission

Just a regular Damme day

I want to make a film! Even more, I will make a film.

Not just produce, and I'm no actor, director or writer. But I want to develop it. Participate in all those aspects, and a few more. With no budget in sight, of course. This plan has everything to fail so far. Then I've also got no experience with any of this at all!

Except I just did get some expertise culminating in this short so far: Just a regular Damme day. Which won nothing, had very little views and no comments. But it was a good experience for 1 week. My first experience with video cameras since I was a little kid.

Then, to try and have a better chance of actually making the filme, I paused both my other plans (freelancing / building a software company) which I can fall back to later on, if needed.

While I was writing this text I began working in a new project to another contest, which again had everything to "fail", and may even not come out of paper. But at least it will help me learn a bit more and eventually enable me to fulfill my dream.

Now my next step is writing a freakingly awesome screenplay. For that I found many great writings:

1. Are you sure you want to be a screenwriter?
2. Here's a general process from a novel writer trying to make his first film.
3. And here's a very short and nice general process from wikihow.
4. Then take some great advice comparing writing film and novel from a experient filmmaker.
5. If that wasn't enough, here's much more advice from even more filmmakers.
6. Also, be sure to keep it human, maybe reading some books about our behaviour.
7. After everything else is done, be sure to format the screenplay properly. There are many rules.

I guess I could condensate (unlike this "book" I'm yet to read) all I learned from those in 1 line:

Keep trying. Again and again. Read. Write. Again and again.

In other words, work non-stop with what all you've got. No stop.

Then I don't plan to submit it to a studio. No. I want to find at least 1 famous person willing to support the cause, then make a small video to begin harvesting the internet. Crowdfunding! Yeah! After all, I'm sick and tired of bosses, remember?

I hear lots of people say making the screenplay is the easy part. I beg the differ. To make a freakingly awesome one is the hardest part. And I will begin by doing just that! Scary stuff.