For most of my twenties, I actively pursued film directing as a vocation. I wrote full-length screenplays. And I wrote and directed a number of short films that debuted in festivals. One of those shorts was even promoted on an IFC program titled Media Lab Shorts Uploaded. But after one particularly disastrous shoot, in which the film I was working on wasn’t even finished, I began to think I’d left my true vocation behind. I wanted to be a novelist and that seemed to be showing in the stress I felt on set as well as an increasing lackluster when it came to corralling actors. Before that shoot, I bought a Krasnogorsk-3 so I could try shooting 16mm film. It was shipped in via eBay all the way from the Ukraine. And it’s the same camera I believed was used by undergraduates at USC film school. That camera is still sitting on my bookshelf. And I’ve kept it there over the past decade for good reason. My dream of becoming a filmmaker is bound...
