Making Movies

Summer vacation means making movies around my house. My fourteen-year-old son Chan has wanted to be a film director since—well—forever! From his early forays into acting out Spider-Man to making every stick in the backyard into a light saber, Chan has been working on the choreography of his dream. His movies and ideas are much more sophisticated now than they were back then, and he is making progress that could someday make him a star.

Chan watches movies over and over, not just for a story, but to see how lighting, camera angles, and action sequences blend together with soundtracks, visual nuance, and subplots to build a mood. He is a connoisseur of film who loves not only contemporary film, but classics as well.

His favorite genres are Westerns, Action/Adventure, and movies that feature Super-Heroes, like Superman, Spider-Man, Batman, Fantastic Four, and X-Men. John Wayne, Harrison Ford, Clint Eastwood, Viggo Mortensen, Ewan McGregor, Orlando Bloom, and Johnny Depp are regularly heard coming from our big screen TV. Late-night film festival feature the entire series of Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Pirates of the Carribean, Back to the Future, and The Lord of the Rings.

For his own filming, Chan is currently directing and starring in three major film projects—two action/adventure and one a sci-fi..Kids I’ve never seen before flock into our home to work on sets that have grown in our garage, backyard, or the neighbor’s unfinished basement. Every day Chan comes to me to talk over a new script idea.

In today’s world of technology, all it takes is a digital camera, a computer, and a hosting server, and within no time, a movie is born. This simple set-up is a start for kids like Chan, who could someday take over the theaters of the world.