"We few, who make brave little sparks that blow away on the night wind, should feel lucky"

Passionate Filmaking and Spiritual Fantasy...


Dream Sequence 1


By Dean Mermell, Equip
03/23/2000

The Digital Documentarian:
The making of The Eye of Rudra

I wasn't always a filmmaker. I never went to film school. Only five years ago, I was a glass artist, and I thought that was all I would ever do. I would work alone in my studio, creating expensive gallery pieces that would occasionally sell and keep me alive long enough to do another sculpture. The work was satisfying, but something was missing.

After several years, and a moderate degree of success, the day-to-day survival in the art world got old. I had very little contact with other humans, and I would work long, hard hours on sculptures that very few people ever got to see.

So I started gravitating toward the idea of working in a more dynamic medium. I had some friends who were shooting video and editing it on their computer. I didn't know anything about either of these things, but I liked what they were doing. I got sucked in. I took some classes, bought some equipment. Before I knew what was happening, I was caught up in a new momentum in my life. I started working for other people doing small promotional and creative pieces. It all seemed to come very naturally. Within six months I gave up my glass studio and began working with digital video full time.

Over the last few years, I've reinvented myself as a digital-video professional. I bought a high-end editing system. I began to write reviews and features about digital-video products and projects for half a dozen industry magazines. And I've made a couple of movies. Here's the story of a year or two in the life of a "typical" digital filmmaker: me.

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