EP. 1 Filmmaker by Accident

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Welcome to the very first episode of The Filmmakers Blog podcast. My name is Kevin Waczek. I am a filmmaker with a passion for directing and cinematography. So, in this episode I want to talk about my unorthodox journey to becoming a filmmaker and then we are also going to hit what you can expect from me and this podcast.

Who am I, and what am I doing? I am a freelance editor and a freelance cinematographer. Right now I am working on some promotional videos for some business. I have a shoot in a couple of weeks. I edit for a couple production companies in San Diego. I am a part of a web-series called Theatre Corner, excuse me, it is now an Award Winning web-series called Theatre Corner. Just won a Telly Award and you can see it right behind me if you are watching on Youtube. It’s the silver angel looking thing. But if you are listening remotely you’ll just have to take my word for it. Ok, moving on, I also run a blog called “The Filmmakers Blog.'‘ Easy enough. That’s just a passion project that I do just for me. It’s my kind of outlet and hobby. I wouldn’t really consider that work it’s just kind of fun to make videos for you guys. As well, I am starting this podcast as a branch of that blog.

And then lastly, I am a filmmaker. So, I am happy to announce that I will be working on an independent film next month all the way in Oklahoma. If you live in Oklahoma that doesn’t seem very far away. But I live in San Diego so that will be a beautiful 19-20 hour drive to the heat of Oklahoma. We are going to be in a small town called Norman. Shoutout to anyone who is in Norman. I don’t think anyone is though. So that’s what I do right now. I’m very much in the freelance industry in terms of picking up gigs as they come as well as being my own mini production company in a way. It’s not really official in any business terms. I don’t have an LLC or anything. But right now my production company is called “Kevin makes videos for people” and that’s exactly what I do. So like I said, I want to share how I got into filmmaking. And if you relate or you feel moved or inclined. I’d love to know how you fell into filmmaking. During this episode, if you feel inclined just email me at kevin@thefilmmakersblog.com and let me know your story.

Growing up I never thought I would be a filmmaker, which I thought was odd because usually when it comes to the arts you get a passion for the art at a young age. I feel like, a lot of people I talked too knew they loved video and made videos growing up. But some are like me and they didn’t really know what they wanted to do and stumbled on video as an art-form and used it as a way to express themselves. So, for me I never really wanted to touch a camera growing up. But I did make some home videos. They were some extremely, extremely cringy home videos. If you have been around since the beginning of The Filmmakers Blog Youtube channel. Whoo. This doesn’t even compare to the cringiness that was those videos. This is far, far worse. And this all started when my cousin Julianna got a digital camcorder. Way, way back when digital camcorders were the absolute bomb. We didn’t have any editing software so if we made a video all of the edits were done in camera. By hitting record and stopping it. And I really remember this one video we did. We did a full reenactment of the movie “Ghost” that had Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore in it. A full, almost a full reenactment. Obviously, the movie has a runtime of an hour and a half too two hours. I’m not sure what it is. And our rendition was about 20 minutes. It was extremely condensed. But, I remember doing that when I was around five or six, I’d say. Man I was a god-awful actor. I was supposed to be the bad guy and I was so bad that you can hear my cousin whisper the lines to me as I am speaking. Cause she’s holding the camera and you can hear it in the internal microphone. And I would say the line right after. And she would also give me stage directions and I remember this one time I was supposed to leave the room. So she was like “now leave” and I said now leave and everyone just busted up laughing. And I didn’t know what was going on at first but then I finally, I finally got it that I’m not supposed to say that. I’m supposed to actually physically leave the room. But even though I had a lot of fun doing those videos and they are always a good laugh and they still are a good laugh and should probably never be seen again by anybody else but family. I never really thought that it would be a career path. And I never thought of video other than making fun videos with my family every summer when they would come into town. I spent most of my time playing baseball.

I have an extreme love for the sport, still do. And I played all the time summer, spring, fall baseball was life at that point in my life. It was life at that point in my life, great description Kevin. Anyway, during my high school years, baseball started to fall off for me. I got an injury, my numbers weren’t as good as they used to be, and the sport continued without me and I started to realize that I probably would not be able to make it at the next level of play. And at that point in my life, college applications were happening. So I was coming into Senior year of high school and I had to fill out applications and I had no idea, no idea what I wanted to do. I knew I didn’t want to do math. I knew I didn’t want to do science. But throughout my entire life all I wanted to do was play baseball. So making that leap from kind of ignoring future careers to having to pick one was really tough and I didn’t know what to do. But, while I was looking on the majors list for these college applications I saw film. And I was like, oh, “I’ve had a lot of fun making video.” I don’t really know what I want to do and I’m not even sure what it takes to actually make a film and all the roles and what you need to understand and what you need to know but “hey it seems like a good time” and thats how I went into it.I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into. But I only applied to two schools for film school. I applied to San Diego State and I applied to San Marcos. As I was waiting for those, I was still picking my classes for my senior year of high school and I saw a film appreciation class on there. I thought “hey this would be a good fit.” I mean, I am going to be a film major you know, I wrote down I was going to be a film major. And this is a good way to maybe put some knowledge together before I went to college by taking this film application class in high school. Well, that was one of the best decisions of my life because that class is what really inspired me to become a filmmaker and that class made me confident that I picked the right major.

That class was a ball of fun. Really most of the time we saw movies and that’s why I really wanted to be in there but more then that we broke down movies and why they worked and the art behind the picture that we saw on screen. And after that class, I was so excited to go be a film major. I was excited to make my first film.

So, that was a really quick synopsis on how I fell into filmmaking almost by accident at first. But after learning about the art and seeing how I could express myself on film and then actually start to do it in college I just fell in love with it. I fell in love with being on set, I fell in love with telling stories, writing, directing, editing, I learned it all. I wanted to know everything and i think it’s really important that everyone knows a little bit of everything to become a well rounded filmmaker. Cause whether you are directing, whether you are shooting, or even if you are more on the logistical side, whether you are a producer, it’s great to know how things work. One example is editing. As a director you kind of need to edit the scene in your mind because you are providing coverage of the scene and if you don’t now or don’t have an idea on how you are going to put it all together, or how someone could put it all together. How are you expected to know how to shoot it? And that goes for cinematographers cause sometimes directors stay with the actors and their performance and leave all the shooting and all of that decision making to the cinematographer and it’s good to know how something would edit when you’re shooting. And that’s just one example of being a well rounded filmmaker. So there it is, now I’m a filmmaker and I kind of skipped over my entire college career and all of that good stuff but that is going to be the rest of the series. This is just the intro video just to get you familiar with me, just to get you familiar with the podcast, but there’s going to be a lot of episodes moving forward about actually filmmaking, about actually what happens on set. The good the bad and the ugly. So let’s talk about the podcast! What can you expect in future episodes? Well, like I said you can expect the film school experience and most importantly was it worth it? I feel like a lot of people on Youtube and just in general argue if film school is still relevant with directors like Christopher Nolan who has made it to the highest of peaks in the film industry and never went to film school. Is film school still relevant and can you get the same education on youtube or even through online courses from masters? Masterclass has really been delivering all kinds of online courses. So is that route better than film school? It’s no doubt that some of those routes are insanely cheaper but is it better? Also, in later episodes we are going to get to how to create films, how I created my films. Some tips and techniques and some technical talk on filmmaking. And obviously we are going to hit all of those hilarious and unbelievable stories from wilderness all-nighters in freezing temperatures, lead actors quitting before their call time, and accidentally casting a schizophrenic. All that and more!