Hey everyone, welcome to my blog!

My involvement with the National Screen Institute goes back to 2003 when my team and I took our film The Leftover Bandit (cough, plug www.theleftoverbandit.com cough) through the NSI Features First program.

But wait… backstory.

Jaws – I saw this movie when I was young. At that point I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up – a cop - you know, so that I could hunt sharks and save the day. 

Imagine my shock when I found out that nope police officers don’t do that. 

From there the logical step to what I want to be when I grow-up would obviously be a marine biologist so I can save sharks. However, this profession, I was told, required a good head for mathematic. Hmmm math… not so good with the numbers. Next.

Around the time of Back to the Future and The Goonies I really started to understand what I wanted to be; a film director. Besides the question "what does a director do,"  I had it - blam! A film director - I’m going to make movies!

One, two, skip a few… I graduated as an award-winning film student from Ryerson in Toronto. Now, I have a production company called Shoes Full of Feet, seven short films under my belt, and four feature films in development, including ...Bandit.

Enter the theme of my blog.

Okay… if you’re still following me you’ll see that The Leftover Bandit was developed through NSI Features First in 2003 and now it’s 2008. Yup – welcome to filmmaking! It’s hard to make a movie period. Canada, USA, Timbuktu – hard!

The Catch-22 I have found is that ‘the money people’ need you - the filmmaker - to have already made a feature film in order to make a feature film.

Uh, okay.

So you can’t make a feature film unless you've already made a feature film? But I can’t make a feature film because you have the money, right? It’s all very confusing to me. 

The Leftover Bandit has been worked on. It’s really well written, conceptual art has been made, the team is all on the same page, and we're good to G-O! However, our budget is just a bit on the high side for first time feature filmmakers (let me tell you, you couldn’t even hire Brad Pitt’s small left toe for our budget).

So the question is: how can I make a feature film and prove to ‘the money people’ that I can make feature films?

I'll share my answer to that question (for good or for bad) with you next blog but you can get a sneak preview at www.pocketchangefilm.com.

See you next time.

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