Tonight, we make a movie

As excited as I am, I’m also terrified

dan zelikman
Moostache Films
Published in
2 min readNov 13, 2013

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…continued from Let’s make a movie this weekend San Diego

…continues to We made a movie San Diego

Tonight, we make a movie.

It’s for an international film festival competition that asks filmmakers to make a film in less than 77 hours. From writing, to shooting, to editing, to submission—everything has to begin and end in less than 77 hours.

The festival insures that these rules are followed by sending out a film genre to every team at the same time, along with three unique requirements that have to be in every film submitted. Everyone who works on the films are volunteers, and in our case—almost everyone has never met.

Clearly, there is an element of excitement to all of this—but I’m also terrified of failure. The latter, is a complete waste of my time, as it does nothing productive for me or the team. Then again, perhaps it’s the very motivation I need.

It’s not fear of losing the competition by the way, that’s just the reality of competition. It’s the fear of failing my team—a group of creative and ambitious people that are willing to dedicate their free time to a project that has no definition of any kind at this point. I just want to make something that we’re all proud of—a story that’s worth telling and watching.

I’ll tell you one thing, failure won’t come on the account of the people involved. Since I posted our request for volunteers, I’ve been surprised at the volume of people who were interested, and the caliber of their previous work. I haven’t even met most of them—and I already love them for taking a leap of faith.

Tonight we begin writing a story, and tomorrow we’ll film it. What comes after is a complete mystery—and that’s probably exactly why I’m so happy to be a part of it.

Stay tuned.

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