Thanks to Scott Myers’ Go Into The Story blog I learned about Emily Hagins, who at the age of 12 decided to make a feature-length zombie movie. The video above is actually a trailer for a documentary that was made of Emily and her movie making efforts.
As it happens I too made some movies in my youth, but in terms of professionalism, Emily has me beat by a mile. With the help of my sister and, if they happened to be in town, my cousins, I made short little mostly plotless movies with some shaky camera work thanks to our clunky old camcorder.
My cousin jokes that she can’t believe our classic Adventure in the Wilderness which begins with an unscripted as the “credits are rolling” (technically the credits were written in chalk on our driveway) fight between my cousins that involves spitting never won an Oscar. It is one wild ride of a movie, but that’s mostly because we filmed it outside and whoever happened to be holding the camera (we took turns so we could all be in the movie) had to do a lot of running around, and our yard was amazingly bumpy. Dramamine is advised before a screening of Adventure in the Wilderness.
For her picture Emily actually hired actors (who for the most part weren’t even related to her) and she actually bought props instead of using sticks that she found in her front yard. I think she even had a script, another thing that was completely lacking from my early cinematic efforts. Still, in our defense our films were made in an era before Craigslist and YouTube. Surely, if I had grown up in another era someone would be making a documentary about Adventure in the Wilderness . . . or not.
My Books
Whether or not you have an IMDB listing, it’s awesome that you made a movie — especially before the age of YouTube. While I’m impressed with Emily’s dedication, I think the Internet has blurred the line between consumers and producers so that it’s not as big a leap for a kid to think, “Hey, I could do that.” Either way, I love it when people take production into their own hands. All those dire warnings of TV and video games turning us all into passive couch potatoes (or perhaps zombies? ;-D) underestimated the creative urge in people (and especially in kids).
Someday, I will have to figure out how to turn our old videos into digital files and upload some to show just how sad and pathetic our movie-making efforts were. It is cool to see how kids are making using of the technology that’s now available to them.