A Day in the Life of a Jamaican Independent Filmmaker – Part 1 (The Journey to becoming a Filmmaker)
“I want a doctor’s kit for my birthday this year,” I told my grandmother, “I want to be a doctor.” It was a few months before my 6th birthday and that was the 1st time I remember planning a future for myself. I did not become a doctor and as I reminisce on my journey towards the actuality of my chosen career path, a few defining moments stand out.
Every few years until I was 15 years old, I had a different vision for the career path I would follow. At first I wanted to be a doctor, then a scientist, soon I moved on to architecture. By the time I was 15 years old, the latest decision was to become a veterinarian. My logic was that animals were too cute to suffer and I would be the one to stop that suffering.
That summer, I decided to volunteer at the Jamaica Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (JSPCA). I wanted to do something to occupy the long summer days that lay ahead.
On my 1st day as a volunteer, I awoke early and got ready so that my mother could drop me off at JSPCA before work. Before we left, our house phone rang. My mother answered. I heard her have a brief and pleasant sounding conversation with the person on the other end. It was my older cousin.
My cousin had spent several years in the USA studying filmmaking and screenwriting and had since retuned to Jamaica. She was a co-creator for a 6-week, mini-dv, introduction to filmmaking workshop, which was also starting that day. She had called to ask if I would want to join the workshop.
I weighed my options. I already knew what JSPCA was like, as I had volunteered there during the previous Christmas holiday. On the other hand, I had no idea what filmmakers did, plus 6-weeks seemed like a better bargain for my summer than the 2-weeks I had planned at JSPCA. It was decided. “Ok” I told my mother, “I’ll go to the workshop.”
I often credit that instant as the defining moment in my choice to become a filmmaker. However, the more I think about it, the more I realise that my appreciation for film probably began long before.
As a pre-schooler, I watched Disney’s Aladdin at the Harbour View drive-in theatre and sang along to A Whole New World, a song which will forever act as the sound track for that period of my life. As a primary school student, I watched VHS cassettes of The Lion King, Love Story, Annie and Thomasina until the tapes wore down. Later on we got cable, and as a teenager, I discovered the Independent Film Channel (IFC), 80s classics from Hollywood and Lars Von Trier.
It seemed to me throughout the years, that there was nothing that could evoke a stronger emotion in me than the movies. I could not figure out why a select set of films had such a profound impact on me. I watched them over and over again, crying uncontrollably or feeling a strange attachment to the characters without knowing why.
That summer that I attended the filmmaking workshop, I wrote my first screenplay, designed my first prop, learned to edit video and sound, formally studied films and worked on my first film set as the boom operator. Some of the workshop participants who I worked with, still continue to pursue film to this day. The boom and sound equipment were my little piece of the film set that I guarded and which I grew to love.
At the end of that summer, I matriculated to 6th form. Besides enjoying a more flexible timetable and getting closer with friends, I made my first short film in order to promote the film club that I started at my high school.
When the time came to send out applications to university, I was much more confused than my self-assured 15-year old self, who knew that she would become a vet. However, I had successfully managed to narrow down my decision to studying either architecture or sound design.
One day, around that time, my friend and I were hanging around the 6th form block, when a representative from the Caribbean Institute of Media and Communication (CARIMAC) came to give a recruitment talk. My 6th form supervisor rounded up a bunch of us who looked like we were not doing anything and ushered us into the talk. My friend and I got caught in the net.
I had never heard of CARIMAC before, but as I sat in that room and listened to the rep talk about the field assignments, internships and hands on work that students could do in broadcast media, I was sold.
Soon after that talk, I submitted applications to both the University of Technology, Jamaica (UTECH), School of Architecture and the University of the West Indies, Mona (UWI) and selected CARIMAC as my first choice. Then, I noted the date of the CARIMAC entrance exam on my calendar.
My family and teachers, in an attempt to protect me from disappointment, lovingly cautioned that I may not be accepted to CARIMAC because of the stiff competition to get in. They even asked what my back-up major would be if I were to get into UWI, but not accepted to the CARIMAC programme. I off-handedly told them philosophy. I had discovered philosophy at the time and probably thought it would be a cool thing to study. As far as I was concerned, I had made up my mind and that was the end of that.
The day of the CARIMAC exam came and I walked into the UWI auditorium amidst a throng of examinees. The examiner directed me to my seat and shortly after, the exam began. I have no idea what I wrote that day, as none of the questions made any sense to me. I remember thinking for the first time, “Maybe everyone was right, maybe I won’t get in.”
A few weeks later, after checking the mailbox daily, my letter of acceptance to UWI finally came. I had gotten into CARIMAC. I was also accepted to the School of Architecture. In the end, I chose to do a B.A. in Media and Communication, specialising in radio journalism at CARIMAC, because of the memory I had of being the boom operator on my first film set.
During the 3 years at CARIMAC, I forgot about film and threw myself into radio journalism and my extra curricular activities. The world of media was thrilling, especially my 2nd year internship at i95.5FM in Trinidad. The act of going on assignments, meeting and interviewing people from all walks of life, recording sound bites and putting the interview clips together to create a story to which audiences would listen, gave me a rush like no other.
A few months after graduating from CARIMAC, I landed my first job in media, as a TV producer at a popular TV station. During the year that I worked there, my desire to further my studies in sound became stronger. I also got bitten by the travel bug.
A few years prior, my sister had received a scholarship to pursue doctoral studies in Japan, so I knew that scholarships were a possibility. In order to cure my desires to study and travel, I decided to apply for a scholarship to study sound design overseas.
The search began. I chose to apply for scholarships to Japan, the USA and China. I was shortlisted for both the USA Fulbright Scholarship and the Chinese Government Scholarship. My selected major in the USA was Sound & Acoustic Studies, while my selected major in China was Film Production. It was difficult to find enough detailed information about Sound Design in English, in order to fill out my application form for the Chinese Government Scholarship, so I chose a major that I thought was closest to sound design. A few months later, I was offered a 4 year scholarship to pursue an M.F.A in Film & TV Production at the Communication University of China in Beijing.
I spent the first 2 years in China studying Chinese Language, in preparation for my programme which was to be taught in Chinese. I did not do many film or radio related things during that period, but I did maintain a blog and spent most of my time learning Mandarin and figuring out my life in a new place. Life in China was fascinating and I made some of the strongest connections there, although it was lonely at times. It felt as though nothing outside of China existed and I was in a whole different world.
Halfway through the 2nd year of studying Chinese, my school introduced a Film & TV major, taught in English. They gave me the option of either choosing the course taught in Chinese or the one taught in English. I chose the latter.
On the 1st day of film school, I walked into my first directing class along with my 4 other classmates. My teacher, George, took us through the mechanics of the long take. We analysed various examples of the long take, including the date scene in Good Fellas.
I walked out of that class with my 1st directing assignment, to shoot a long take. “This is it,” I thought, “This is what I want to do for the rest of my life.” At that moment, I knew that one day, someone, somewhere in the world, would watch one of my films, and form a lasting connection that would linger in their memories for years to come.
For the 1st year of film school, that is how classes went. We would attend a Directing seminar, then go off for a few weeks to create our own version of what we learned. There were other classes in between, like Audio-Visual Language, Asian Cinema and Sino-Foreign Documentary Studies. All my teachers were Chinese nationals who had specialised in various fields in film.
In that 1st year, I realised just how much I did not know. So, I spent my downtime watching as many movies as I could, visiting the library, working on my classmates’ films and exploring the wider Chinese film industry. Although many of the library books were written in Chinese characters, I read what I could, along with the English titles that my teachers provided.
In the 2nd year of film school, we took courses like Movie Music, Film & TV Production Management and Film & TV Editing. The difference was, this was the year that we were expected to produce our thesis films. We had the choice of either doing a fiction film, or a documentary. I had already done several fiction films, so I chose to do a documentary.
My documentary, which eventually came to be titled The Bakers of Oriental Gardens, is about 4 women who live and work in Hebei, China at The Bread of Life Bakery. It chronicles the highs and lows of their friendship, as they spend Thanksgiving, Christmas and the Chinese New Year together.
This was the period in which I noticed the most growth in my camera work, as I spent 3 months at the Bread of Life Bakery, with the sole aim of recording enough footage for my documentary. Every week, I would travel 3 hours by bus from my university in Beijing, to the bakery in Hebei, the province surrounding Beijing. I would spend about 4 – 5 days getting to know the women and filming. Then, I would travel 3 hours back to my university to deal with any business I had in the city.
At the end of the 3 months, it was just in time for the Chinese New Year. I stayed in my dorm room for about 3 more months, spending entire days watching and logging footage, transcribing interviews and editing.
At the end of the 4 years, I graduated and it was time to go home to Jamaica. The morning that I departed China, I soaked in the view from my dorm room window one last time, and walked out of my bubble and into the real world.
In Jamaica, I grappled with reverse culture shock, as well as figuring out what being a filmmaker meant to me. I will pause at this point and say that filmmaking can be an incredibly fulfilling career, however as I have learned, there is no set road map for becoming a filmmaker. Stories about how film professionals came to filmmaking are as many and varied as the people who tell the stories. I understood that unless I knew exactly what I wanted out of filmmaking, I could get lost working in one of the many positions in the film industry and still be unfulfilled because of an incompatibility between the role and my interests.
After a few weeks at home figuring out my next steps, I began job hunting. My scholarship bonded me to Jamaica for 5 years, so I figured that it would be best to start the bond as soon as possible. I applied to production companies, government agencies and language schools. For various reasons, the jobs that worked out were Chinese language teaching jobs.
With no idea how to break into the industry, I grew more and more despondent. Seeing my frustration, my cousin who first introduced me to filmmaking, connected me with a friend who was filmmaker. My sister also encouraged me to reach out to a local filmmaker that she knew and ask for advice. I met up with both of them and it was from that point onward that things began looking up. They both introduced me to the Jamaica Film and TV Association (JAFTA) as a way to network and meet people in the film industry. At the time, JAFTA was still a very new organisation.
After speaking with them, I attended the very next JAFTA meeting. Although I was still confused about what kind of filmmaker I wanted to be, I spent the next year meeting people and experimenting with various types of filmmaking. In the years that followed, I made a few short films, one of which was awarded a production grant in 2017 from the Ministry of Culture’s C.H.A.S.E fund, through the JAFTA Propella Programme. I also began lecturing in Storytelling and Scriptwriting at the University of Technology, Jamaica. This was a great leap forward for me, as both subjects were related to my field. I also started reading film books again, as I now had more access to books written in English. Additionally, I applied to the development programmes that were being offered to Jamaican filmmakers. At times, I was unsure whether or not I would be accepted to the programmes, but I always remembered the famous quote that says, “If you don’t go after what you want, you’ll never have it.”
Some days I wonder what would have happened if I had gotten that doctor’s kit, volunteered at JSPCA that day or chosen to study architecture. “If I had chosen any other career,” I tell myself, “I would be left wondering, what would have happened if had chosen filmmaking.”
Other days, I think about the diverse and encapsulating nature of filmmaking. Becoming a filmmaker is not a rejection of other areas, but rather an opportunity to utilise all my interests and skills to connect with others through the medium of film.
If I am still bogged down with “what-ifs”, I take a step back and have an objective look at the pros and cons of being an independent filmmaker:
MY FAVOURITE THINGS ABOUT BEING AN INDEPENDENT FILMMAKER:
Everyone’s Path Is Different. Do what works for you and trust the process!
You Set Your Own Hours. There is no need to have a strict 9 – 5 schedule, unless that is what you want.
Travel. It allows you to travel all over the world.
Education. You get to learn about many different topics through the research that is required to write good and interesting stories.
Impact & Reach. Your film has the ability to create change in people and societies.
Project Completion. The feeling of accomplishment you feel at the end of a film project.
Friendships. You constantly meet new people from all over the world.
Watching Movies. Watching movies is necessary to keep up-to-date and who would not want to watch movies?
MY LEAST FAVOURITE THINGS ABOUT BEING AN INDEPENDENT FILMMAKER:
Everyone’s Path Is Different. There is no pre-determined pathway, so determining the steps to take for a successful career can be confusing.
Production Hours. Shoots can go on for very long periods, 12 – 18 hours at times.
Funding. Seeking funding for a film can be a taxing process which may require months or years, thereby increasing the time needed to complete one (1) project.
Uncertainty of income. Depending on how you decide to earn from filmmaking, income can be uncertain. However, having multiple sources of income helps to alleviate this issue.
After all is said and done, I continue to choose filmmaking because of my belief in the power of films to create change in people and societies. Film also allows people to dream, empathise, learn and connect. It is this belief that drives my daily practice of producing films, meeting other filmmakers, forming collaborations, joining industry associations, applying to opportunities, attending markets and all the additional activities that come with being a practicing filmmaker.
In the decades since my 6th birthday, I no longer ask myself “What I want to be when I grow up.” Now I ask myself, “How do I want my chosen career path to fit into my life?” This is the question that I am now working on answering and which will push me into the next phase of my life, as I explore the depths and test the limits of what it means to be an independent filmmaker.
Author’s Bio
Danielle Russell is Jamaican filmmaker. She has written, directed and produced several short films and documentaries that have been screened locally, regionally and internationally. Danielle holds an M.F.A in Film & TV Production from the Communication University of China in Beijing and is currently developing her first feature length screenplay.
Danielle Russell
