This Little Life Of Mine - Chapter 47 - My Career As a Director Thomas M Parsons

47. My Career As a Director

Film had always held a fascination for me, even though Christians, particularly Baptist Christians, had rejected films because of their often anti-Christian bias. But it was not the content of the films the fascinated me. It was the way a film could tell a story that gripped my attention.

No, this is not deja vu! Nor is it a senior moment. I repeated the opening paragraph from the last chapter for a reason. Not only did I enjoy showing films at Family Film Nite, I had always, ever since I can remember, wanted to actually make a film of my own. I wanted to do what I knew a film could do like no other media could. It was the way a film could tell a story that gripped my attention.

When our daughter, Mandy, was born in November of 1976, Linda and I purchased an 8mm sound movie camera. Actually, it was something called Super 8 that we bought. Regular 8mm movie film for home use had been around for many years. In fact, I purchased an 8mm camera and projector when I still lived at home in Lincoln Park, five years before I met Linda. Regular 8 was shot on 16mm film then split down the middle at the processing lab to make two strips of film each 8mm wide. The resulting frames were quite small, but adequate for home viewing.

But now there was Super 8. It was still 16mm film, but now the film was split before it was shot and placed in a cassette that eliminated much of the fumbling during film loading that regular 8 was subject to. Also, the sprocket holes were made smaller and the frame area larger, producing much better picture quality. Add a magnetic stripe down the side of the film opposite the sprocket holes for recording sound, and anyone could make a movie. Well, maybe not anyone. Making a film is a long and challenging process, whether you are making the film for Twentieth Century Fox or just for your own amusement.

I found a story in the Sunday School take home papers we used at church. These were published by Regular Baptist Press of Schaumburg, Illinois. I wrote the editor of the papers, a man who had purchased articles and stories written by me on several occasions, and had even published some of them. But the story I found was not one of mine. I asked for permission to adapt the story into a movie script that I could then have the young people of my church turn into a movie.

The kids loved the idea. I cast my movie, using the talents of the kids in my high school and junior high youth groups. The lead was to be played by Mike, a talented and bright young man.

The story was about a group of kids who find a treasure box of gold coins buried in the ground. But the man it belongs to is not pleased when the kids find his treasure. During the course of the story, one of the kids gets saved, led to the Lord by one of the others in the group.

I called my movie That We Are Dust, taken from Psalm 103:14. Shooting the film was quite a challenge. We had the cooperation of some of the parents so we could film in their homes, but the main sequences had to be shot outdoors. I found the perfect spot at Starved Rock State Park which was just a couple of miles away from our church.

The area I selected for location shooting was a dead end canyon called St. Louis Canyon. We had to hike quite a ways into the canyon from the parking area, but it was worth the hike. At least Super 8 equipment is not as heavy as professional cameras would be, and I had several willing helpers to carry equipment.

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At the far end, the canyon opened into a circular area with high cliffs on three sides, a waterfall spilling over at one side, and deep holes carved by nature into the sides of one of the canyon walls. Sand covered the floor which was strewn with rocks ranging from huge to pebbles. It was a perfect setting. We shot in the summertime, of course, because the kids were out of school. But we still had to shoot around their schedules and the vacations scheduled by their parents. Like any true director I sometimes wondered if we would ever finish shooting.

Sometimes the kids would get tired of doing the same scene over and over. And sometimes I got tired of wasting the film that was running through my camera at very expensive speeds. Editing is a tedious process, especially in Super 8. The film is small and sometimes difficult to work with. And sometimes I would make a mistake and cut a little too short so that when I projected the clip some of the sound was missing. I had to remember that on Super 8 film, the sound was approximately one second ahead of the picture. Sound and picture projected at the same instant so people’s mouths moved in sink with their voices. But when cutting the film I had to keep in mind that the place of the cut, chosen because of the frame of the picture, might cut off one second of important sound.

Then I had to add music. My projector had a feature that allowed me to add a music track to the film. Super 8 film actually had a magnetic stripe on both edges of the film. This enabled the film to spool evenly on the reels. My projector took advantage of the second stripe, which the camera ignored, to add the music track. I just had to be careful to get the balance between music and dialogue correct. If I didn’t, the music would overpower the dialogue and no one could hear what my actors were saying.

I had a concern about the music. I had to use music from phonograph records in my own collection. This music was, of course, copyrighted, and I did not have the right to use it. However, I wrote to one of the record companies whose music I planned to use, and they said they had no objection to my using their music in what they called “an in-house production,” meaning I could use the music provided I did not show the film anywhere but in my home and in my church.

By the time we were ready for our next Family Film Nite presentation, That We Are Dust was ready to show to the audience assembled at church. They thought it was great. Was it my brilliance as a director? Or the fact that it was their kids who were projected on the screen as the film played?

Who cares! I had made my first movie. And, my first movie was not to be my last.