I’ve always been interested in movies, but when I was a freshmen in high school I made up my mind and decided what I wanted to do with the rest of my life and that was to become a director. I was so excited that I finally found something that was so passionate about that for an entire year I carried around a notebook that you would expect to see a detective toting around. What I wrote in this notebook was ideas that would pop in to my mind that would help me pursue my new passion.

So, a couple of days ago while cleaning out my closet I found the notebook which has rested dormant for 5 years. I was eager to read what useful tips I left myself in this unintended time capsule… I was not let down.

What I’m going to do is share a handful of these notes, I’m going to leave them as written and I’m not going to fix any spelling errors,  either I was really bad at spelling or just assumed no one else would read them so I didn’t have to try. Anyway here we go.

“The best and least exspected way to get emoutional reaction is through sound” - Looking at this now I would have to completely disagree. Sure sound can evoke some very powerful emotions, but it’s hardly the least expected way to. Sound is the most common way to evoke a reaction. For instance the horror genre abuses sound as a cheap and easy way to set a suspenseful tone. 

“Use focus” - I think I literally wrote this in my notebook because the concept of using a manual focus was so foreign to me at the time. This one really makes me laugh just because of how odd it is that I thought it was necessary to write this in the notebook.

“Movie Idea: Homeless man in the post apocalyse” - This is an idea for a script I wrote down. This is such a dumb idea because reading it now it doesn’t mean anything besides “Movie Idea: Post apocalypse”, if you think about it for more than 3 seconds you would realize that every character in a post apocalyptic world is basically homeless. Sure they might have place where they live, but they mostly are always savaging or making a trek to somewhere.

“The best way for something to work is barely” - Either the smartest thing ever thought or the dumbest thing ever thought. Really ponder it… yeah it’s dumb.

I also found a bunch of notes that are decent and few that a Earth shakingly awesome. I’ve come a long way since then, but I still have the same goal and who knows I may end up drinking rain water off the streets or making the film of my dreams, but all that really matters is that I still have the passion of that 14 year old auteur.

-Cody Brown