The Notes: Preproduction & My Story

In case you've missed it, everything you need to know about me & The Notes.

It has taken me the 17 years since I graduated high school to find myself. Like many, I travelled down many avenues and had many adventures to get where I am today. I'm plagued with the constant feeling of never being satisfied. I've always questioned everything I do, wondering if it's the right decision or if it's something that I really want. I created a career and have been really successful in it. I went to college. Several times. I followed my calling as an artist and abandoned it several times. A friend of mine left her $80K a year 9-5 job last year and told me she was going back to school and working part time. I thought she was crazy. But, she inspired me to go back and finish a degree I had started in 2010. I had been feeling stunted at work, feeling like I had reached a plateau. And worse, feeling like I didn't want to continue to grow farther in the company. I came back to Southern Maine Community College to finish my degree without a plan. Even in the art world, I never had a niche. I've always had a hand in everything, but never been an expert at anything. Shortly after starting back at school, I realized that I have always wanted to make films. I am ecstatic to say that after much hard work over the last year and a half, I am producing my first short film for the Maine Mayhem Film Festival. And with that, I have found myself.

The Notes.

Samantha, a teenage girl in high school, writes and collects notes with her best friend, Jessica, over the four years of high school.

Through this production process I have worn and will continue to wear many hats.

Producer

What does the producer do? Everything. After the script is written, the locations must be scouted and locked, actors found and hired, a film crew identified and hired, a schedule made, a budget created, and constant revisions to all of these parts. This is a sample sized part of the job I have as the producer on my film. If you want to sum up the role of the producer, you can call me the problem solver. By the time The Notes production wraps, 7 months will have passed since the planning started. Another two months will pass in post production, until my role as the producer comes to a close in May when the film premieres. But, wait. It doesn't end there if I decide to distribute my film after its initial screening.

Writer

The script is in a constant state of revision.

The process of writing the script begins with an idea. I sat down at my keyboard and asked myself, what the hell am I going to write about? I realized quickly that I had an idea, largely based on my own experiences in high school, that I had always wanted to write into a script. I wrote 23 pages in one sitting. It was a mess. The story was there, but the script was a complete wreck. Under the supervision of my professor, Corey Norman, and many revisions later, I had a script that I was proud to present. I knew the script was good when it was difficult for me to read through some of the parts because it was so real and others just said, "Damn."

Director

The role of director comes naturally to me. I was born a leader. My love for the camera makes it a little difficult to imagine stepping completely away from that role. The hardest part is trusting people with a piece of something so huge that you are trying to put together and hoping they see your creative vision and believe in it enough to bring it to life. A good director knows where they are headed and knows how to lead the team to victory.

"Don't need a map, I can't be directed. I've got a madness, don't need the method."- T. Hanson