Interview: Jordan Smith

 Welcome to Homeschool Filmmakers, Jordan!

 What inspired you and your team to write the Month Of The Novel?

We loved the idea of NaNoWriMo and the challenge to write 50,000 words in a month, and making a short film about it was a fun idea. But it didn’t really take off until we started thinking about what happened inside the novel. Once we had that in place, we knew this thing had to be done.

What was your biggest challenge to making this series?

It’s difficult to pick just one challenge! We had a couple things that gave us trouble over the course of both seasons. One was keeping up with the deadline and getting the episodes out and online in time for the scheduled air dates. For the first season, we were editing down to the wire every week, getting each episode ready to go. Season 2 was supposedly going to have a little more wiggle room, since we shot it in the spring and gave ourselves almost the whole year, but it got bigger and bigger, and we ended up bumping on our deadline once again. But we made it in both cases, so all’s well that ends well.

Our second big issue was in the writing of the series. We had to decide early on if we were going to keep the novel story going between episodes. In Season 1, we said no to that and wrote each episode to stand alone. But then we got comments asking how the story threads tied up, so we revisited that decision for Season 2 and wrote a story that worked across all ten episodes. That was really challenging with eight different writers in six different houses working on ten different episodes, but ultimately we were able to pull it off, and I’m quite pleased with how it turned out.

What did you enjoy most about making this series?

The best part for me was getting to work with so many talented people. When I was first starting out, I kind of put myself in a “my friends and me only” box, not wanting to bring in other people. For Month of the Novel, we threw open the doors and tried to involve as many people as we could. I made friends with a number of great filmmakers in the process.

        When you're not making movies, what do you enjoy doing?

I like to actually watch movies as opposed to always making them, of course. But then I also enjoy reading and tasting hot sauce, not simultaneously. I like to write as well, and I’m constantly scribbling down ideas for new books on storytelling.

                                     

Do you have any plans for future projects?

Well, right now I’m settling into a whole new way of life after getting married in February, so things are very up in the air for my filmmaking future. I’m still surrounded by intensely creative people and I’m still a filmmaker, but I’m letting things drift for the time being while I find my groove. There are some seriously cool ideas that I’m kicking around with my story crew, though, and I hope I can be rolling camera on them someday.

Meanwhile, I continue to produce videos for Simply Charlotte Mason, a small homeschool publisher. I’m plugging away at a sizable DVD set right now, so that’ll keep my filmmaking side happy for a little while.

What is your favorite part of the filmmaking process?

It’s a toss-up between the story process and the editing. I love plotting a story, although writing screenplays is often difficult for me. But then editing is so much fun and so satisfying. Seeing the movie come together is incredible.

What advice would you give to other homeschool filmmakers?  

A couple things. First of all, get out there and make movies! You don’t know what you’re capable of until you try, and then you’ll discover that you can do so much. My two films iSundae and iSundae II were made when my crew didn’t know what we couldn’t do. The result is that we got super creative and put out something that even now I look back at and wonder how we even made it happen. I learned a lot from those two films, and I credit simply getting out there and making movies with the result.

And then second, focus on your story. Spend extra time on it. Get feedback from a lot of people before you shoot your script, write more drafts, hone it to the best you can make it. Great film is remembered because of great story. It’s worth obsessing over.

You can connect with him through Facebook or www.monthofthenovel.com