Well, I didn’t really make it, but I was heavily involved in the post production of it.
Several years ago, a friend of mine, Rob, who was born with spina bifida which was slowly getting more problematic for him, was told he would never walk again, not even with the aid of crutches. This was not unexpected, but still hit him hard. He had hopes of making short films for a hobby, and thought being confined to a wheelchair would limit him too much to achieve that.
But Rob’s friends encouraged him, and so he leafed through some of his ideas to find a project that would be least impacted by his lack of mobility, and use that as an experiment; If he could make this film, then he could probably make almost anything he wanted.
So Rob co-wrote his script, and assembled his friends (we’ve all been helping on short films for many years), and filmed a short WWII film called Checkpoint. The shoot went fantastically well, we had a lot of fun and got some great footage, and Rob gained a lot of confidence that he could probably apply himself to any film he wanted to make, and with only a small amount of accommodation required for his disability.
My job on the film initially was to do the visual effects for just one shot, though it was an epic one of a CG train composited on footage of real railway tracks. That was a lot of work, and, as I was still new to the art, took me many months to complete, but it progressed pretty well.
Later that year Rob was struggling with editing the film and asked me to help him with it. As we were both only minimally experienced with editing drama, we each still needed another person to bounce decisions off, so this was an excellent way for us to combine our strengths as well as learn.
We were, and are, very happy with the final edit, but we felt that the beginning of the film was a little bare. The main character referred to a sequence of events that only happened off-screen, and now we decided we wanted to see those events after all. The problem was that would require additional shooting, a lot of greenscreen, and a ton of visual effects compositing, both of real photography and CG created elements. However, really, we couldn’t help ourselves. That just added to the fun of making a film.
We took over two years to put all the reshoots and effects together. Some of that time was both Rob and me learning new techniques, and some of it was the real world just getting in the way.
But a few weeks ago, after the final sound mix was complete, we screened the finished film, along with two others that had been made in the interim by others, to friends, cast, and crew, and it all went down really well. They loved the film, and it has gotten us excited to make more.
Now we’ve put the final film up on YouTube. It’s only 11 minutes long, and I would really love it if you watched it, and perhaps even gave some feedback. Now there are a lot of flaws, I can see almost all of them, but remember it’s a labour of experimentation and fun amongst mates, so I’d appreciate it if you’d be somewhat gentle.
Thanks!
