I, along with pretty much everyone else who worked on the film, have a day job. For me personally I run a big machine at a factory. Now my assumption is that all of the folks who aided in the production would like to be working professionally in film, but none of us are getting paid to skip from one film set to the next just at the moment. My point here is to say that if you’re gearing up to shoot your first feature (Demon’s Vale was nearly everyone’s first feature) make sure and remember the movie is a thing your doing out of love and enjoyment and not to get a paycheck, so have fun.

Now then hopefully the schedule allows for you to have fun and also your fellow crew and cast are down for some shenanigans. Because if you are in a position to create or partake in on set fun you really ought to take advantage. There are odd dichotomies that come with making a movie. First you’re all there to create bullshit, to play out a bunch of make believe for an audience, but all that pretend is done in sometimes very tedious ways. The people in front of the camera have to take their minds to self constructed fantasy land to either inhabit a character or imagine some monster that’ll be added to the scene later. While the folks behind the camera are dealing with very grounded ideas of light values, camera angles and rigid (theoretically) schedules. These many polar forces that a set embodies means that stress can get to be a killer; and fun can be an equalizing force. A thing that greases the wheels as the train barrels, sometimes shakily, down the tracks.

I myself didn’t have near as much fun as I should have had. I let a lot of the stress of the process drag me down far too often. And as the director I’m sure that had an effect on general morale. I didn’t try and hamper other’s fun or intend not to take part, I simply wasn’t on the lookout for it and probably let a bunch pass me by without noticing it was there. There were a few moments that I joined in or was able to savor the experience, though I ought to have attempted to relax a fair bit more.

I suppose one should endeavor to imbue any job or endeavor, even a factory or boring desk job, with fun, but with a film your product is aiming to entertain. And if you and your team are having fun and being entertained during production one has to assume that will come across on the screen. Fun leads to joy and happiness, and joy is a pretty damn good replacement for money when your working your asses off on a thing that ain’t exactly your job… yet.

Next time I’ll mention a couple joyful moments I did have on set.