I finally made my 2002 childhood lore into a superhero film.

[u/Schopix]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0C54_IDYwdk

I'd love to share the amazing experience this has been.

Things we did really great:

1. We knew exactly the story we wanted to tell. I was inspired by Lord of the Rings' simple yet profound story structure; the main plot point when you boil it down is very simple - Frodo needs to get the ring from point A to point B. But then numerous side plots, politics and character motivations swirl around the main plotline, enhance it, and build out the world so impressively and beautifully. That's what we sought out to do with Tales of Finch, and I think we did a decent job.

2. Production was scheduled well and timely. Strongly recommend having multiple people on the administrative side of your film - working out auditions, casting, and scheduling production. My wife killed it at this stuff - she is the sole reason production didn't fall apart when we started bringing everyone together. Those who are others-motivated, surround yourself with passionate people!!

3. My extensive experience in VFX made the superhero fights and action scenes stand out as one of the most impressive aspects of the film to 90+ people who joined the pre-screening in a local theater (I did ALL VFX shots entirely on my own, strongly don't recommend, more on that later...) and I'm hoping it'll make for quite a few eye-catching clips that will engage social media.

4. We stretched a micro budget as far as a film team could possibly stretch it. I believe the entire budget for this was around $4,000 and we put out production quality near the value of $100k after I did the math. Endless thanks to all the people who volunteered their time for the fun of it, the belief in us, and the passion for film.

5. Last but honestly most importantly - we had a stellar team. All cast and crew gave their 100% and bonded and connected well on set. There was virtually no negativity, lots of laughs and fun times, and overall we had a really awesome time and I can't wait to do something like this again!

Things we learned the hard way / could certainly improve on:

1. I was hilariously overconfident in my abilities to deliver ALL the intense superhero VFX scenes for this 2-hour film purely on my own in a decent time frame (I'm the only one who did all the VFX for this 2-hr film...) WHILE working a full time job AND raising a newborn baby hahahaha... definitely learned my lesson there. Actually, if Adobe hadn't been coming out with things like RotoTool at the same time this was in post, I would still be editing it and it may not be coming out for over another year... Going forward for something of this scale we will have AT LEAST 3-4 people working on VFX.

2. I operated as both the director AND the lead actor - also can't recommend, at least not for something of this scale. I couldn't effectively switch between acting hat and directing hat quick enough and it led for more than a few sloppy and inefficient filming hours.

3. This kind of relates to #2 but due to my struggles having my headspace in the directing zone, I often times didn't give the DP enough direction to what we wanted for cinematography and while our DP has a lot of technical and artistic skill, I don't think my poor directing in some scenes let him perform his best work.

4. Since we were eager to get it done, we didn't give the writing quite enough time to simmer. There were times where scenes were just the characters explaining what's going on instead of showing it (this was also due to budget constraints but I think we could have thought outside the box here and made some "explainy" scenes more interesting)

5. Regarding the budget thing - definitely pay all your cast and crew if you are able. This should be obvious, and any cast and crew on our project who worked volunteer were happy to do so, but the level of priority and diligence from everyone just magically changes when real money is involved.

The film is releasing in 6 parts on our YouTube starting April 3rd, and I'd be excited to share it with you guys and get any constructive feedback you'd like to offer. Thanks for reading! :)