I was at a Kinko's tonight printing out a DVD submission cover to send CAROLINA PARAKEET to a film festival and I had a pretty vivid memory of having been here before... though not exactly this Kinko's, and not exactly under the same circumstances.
Back in the early 2000's I created a company that only did wedding videos. I did it with the intention of getting used to shooting a video camera, composing shots, editing them together, telling stories. I did it with the dream of ultimately making a movie. If you break the actual labor costs down, we lost a ton of money on that business. We did some crazy shit man: 4 camera shoots with 3 shooters, fully edited films with a soundtrack and credit roll, I created custom animated interactive DVD menus and I designed custom covers to look just like movie DVDs. Looking back, I'm proud of the work we did. We turned a major moment in people's lives into movies.
But at the end of the day, they weren't my movies, they were other people's movies.
Fast-forward a few years and I got to work on a couple of real movies, some pretty humongous ones too, and I got to work with and learn from some of the most gifted directors and artists in the business. I still do that every day and I think about how lucky I am to do what I love for a living.
All that said, it's still someone else's movie.
So tonight was pretty damn special, chilling at a Kinko's, printing out a DVD cover like I did so many times before, carefully inspecting the printout for defects, cutting it so it fits perfectly in the DVD case.
But this time, it's different. This time, this is my movie.
