I made my first feature film!
Last year for my 29th birthday, I take the monumental step of incorporating my startup, Soupp, as an LLC. Unfortunately, the pandemic has forced me to put a lot of my plans for the startup on indefinite hold. However, I still wanted to continue working on it and making content. So over the past few months, I decided to do a fun project and I’m excited to release it today — my 30th birthday.
Inspired by the guerilla filmmaking employed by Jean Luc-Godard for his watershed first film, Breathless, I grabbed my camera, went outside and started making my very first feature film. It’s a no-budget film that was shot and edited solely by me without any cast and crew. Entitled “feature I: conflicting waters,” it is a 93-minute experimental film featuring footage of the Cleveland area.
The film’s title is derived from the fact that many of its shots contain some form of water in them — be it rain, a river, or a lake — and some of them are juxtaposed with each other. I wanted to leave this ambiguous enough for you to make up your own themes and conclusions about everything.
Admittedly, I regret the poor quality of the footage. All of it was shot on my phone and I thought the picture quality would turn out a bit better than it did. But I think trial-and-error is an important part of the filmmaking process and I’m glad I was able to learn from this experience and reach this huge filmmaking milestone, regardless of the aforementioned shortcomings. Feel free to check it out and let me know what you think!
