How to Make a Movie

They say there are no original ideas anymore, so I’ve decided to own up to that. I try to make my influences very clear, and this film very clearly draws inspiration from Aneesh Chaganty’s technological thriller Searching. What seemed to be a gimmick was used as such a different way of telling a story that gave the viewer a unique insight into the character’s perspective. So much of our lives are conducted online now, so seeing this format be utilized in such an engaging way was inspiring for me, as it took a familiar genre and did something completely new with it. Now, Searching itself wasn’t completely original. You could draw a comparison to the horror film Unfriended, or just to Google commercials. But the inventive filmmaking of Searching proved that this unique medium could be pushed in new directions, so How to Make a Movie was my way of pushing it even further. Searching had a few jokes, but I was inspired to make a full comedic short, testing the limits of this medium. Telling jokes without a character in frame was difficult, but there’s so much potential for exploring the thoughts of the protagonist as they type then delete a sentence or hover their mouse that the potential outweighed the limitations. As for the story of the film, this was more straightforward. It’s easier than ever to make a film in this digital age, with all of the resources now available to aspiring filmmakers, but that doesn’t mean that it’s easy. This film doesn’t draw from any specific experiences of mine, but of the shared ambitions, obstacles, and frustrations that all filmmakers experience. Persevering through these setbacks can be difficult, and there’s no way my film could embody the inspiration that drives filmmakers to complete their art. So I imbued my film with the message that every filmmaker had to start somewhere and go through the same struggles to, and if they can make it, why can’t you?