I started out producing videos by shooting on my over-the-shoulder VHS camcorder and editing by dubbing from one VCR to another. I suffered with that technology for quite a while, all along aspiring to use the local Public Access facility. Back before the internet democratized video production and distribution, Public Access was the way that amateurs could produce and broadcast their own content. Cable companies were typically required to provide equipment and studio facilities, make them available to members of the community, and broadcast their productions on a channel in the cable lineup. This was the basis for the Wayne's World concept, and how people like Tom Green got their start.

In order to use the facilities it was necessary to take formal training. This hurdle caused me to procrastinate for years, but I finally got over it and signed up. There was basic training to simply learn how to use the equipment, and advanced training for those who wanted to produce material to be broadcast on the Public Access channel. The latter involved the submission of a student film. This was what I came up with.

It was my intention from the start to push the limits of Public Access programming. There were no restrictions on language or even nudity, and I wanted to exploit that. I decided to come out swinging with this student project. It would be a tour de force of profanity. I also wanted it to be gay-themed. I came up with the simple premise of a persistent nelly fag who gave a foul-mouthed, butch homophobe opportunities to throw epithets.

The trick was coming up with all the verbiage. What originally inspired me was the term "bone smuggler." I wanted to employ similar derogatory slang, but I wasn't hip enough to really know any, and I preferred that it be mostly original anyway. I struggled with it for a while, but I finally had a breakthrough. What I did was write up a long list of body parts, bodily fluids, and perverse activities, flesh it out with as many synonyms as I could think of, and cross reference it thematically and alliteratively. Each theme was prompted by the respective request of the nelly fag, and from there the expletives were simply strung out into complete sentences.

With a script in hand I was then stymied by what would come to be the biggest, most pervasive obstacle for every production to come: assembling a cast. The piece only called for two actors, and I was going to be one. Full disclosure, my video productions were more than just a creative outlet for me. I wanted to get myself on screen as much as possible in hopes that I could eventually get discovered.

I only needed one more performer, and it was hard to come by. I had one guy in mind. It was a cute guy I knew nominally from the local gay bar. I didn't know if he could act, but I didn't care. I liked his look and his energy. I figured I could work with whatever talent he had. I approached him about it, and while he was surprised that I asked him, he agreed to do it. He then proceeded to stall, procrastinate, and avoid me. When I finally cornered him he admitted that he was way too shy to go through with it. That was fine, but I wished he'd said that from the start and saved me all the wasted time. In the end I did what I should have done from the start, and that was use a young art student I had been hanging out with.

The next task was to secure a location. I decided on the aforementioned gay bar. I approached the owner. He was a little hesitant, but ultimately said it would be fine as long as I didn't get in the way of his customers. We scheduled the shoot for immediately after opening time when the crowd was at its leanest. I came up with a couple costumes (thankfully I'm a total pack rat), reserved the equipment, loaded up my car, picked up my co-star, and headed up to the bar.

The next lesson that I learned was what a pain in the ass a video shoot could be. Setting up the camera was a hassle. Arranging the lighting was a pain. And reciting the lines was impossible. The original concept was for the whole thing to be done in one continuous take, but there was no way in hell we were going to be able to memorize all that verbiage and recite it without error. We wound up shooting it twice, once with the camera on me and once with the camera on him. Each of us would hold up a cue card off camera for the other. It wasn't what I originally intended, but it worked well enough.

Finally we were done and I struck the set. When I shut off the bright light, one of the barfly queens at the far end of the room exclaimed, "Finally!" making sure to say it loud enough that I could hear. It was a sting that would make me uneasy about every public shoot I would do for the rest of my days.

Next I brought the tapes into the studio for editing. I was immediately aghast to find that there was no audio. The technician at the studio recommended that I use a proximity zone microphone (PZM) because I could just lay it out next to us and it would pick up everything that was said. What he failed to point out was that unlike other microphones, it had to be switched on. After all that hassle, I had to re-shoot the entire thing.

At this point I was totally exasperated. I just wanted the project to be over with so I could get my accreditation and move on. I didn't want to deal with shooting it out at the bar again, so I decided to just do it in my house. It really didn't make any sense that this nelly fag would be following the butch guy around when the two of them were the only ones ambling around this house, but it would have to do.

It was still a hassle to set up all the equipment, but the privacy of my house allowed us to relax and take our time. We did the cue card thing again, and this time switched locations for each exchange. In a couple hours we were done.

Now I could really get to work in the editing booth. Right away I started learning lessons. One was to keep ever vigilant on continuity when shooting. In one sequence a beer bottle kept switching from one of my hands to the other, and in another one my leather jacket mysteriously disappeared only to reappear in the next shot.

Another lesson was how tricky it is to get good audio. Despite the promise of the PZM, the levels were way too low in almost every shot, and the damn thing picked up a lot of rustling and other background noise that I didn't want. Audio would prove to be a problem for me again and again and again as I continued producing videos.

Editing it was pretty easy. The biggest challenge was reviewing all the takes and deciding which ones to use. Stringing them together was no big whoop. But when it was all done and I could watch it as a whole I learned the lesson of pace. The opening exchange just moved way too slowly. It sounded great in my head, but totally dragged on screen. After that things moved okay, but I knew I risked losing the audience before it even got going.

I was still faced with the fact, though, that it made no sense for the two characters to be walking around the house by themselves. In a last ditch effort to cover that, I found some audio that might make it sound like they were at a party. It was actually background noise from video I had shot in the parking lot outside a Grateful Dead concert. It didn't really work, but it was the best I could do.

Ultimately I was not very happy with the piece. All the clever obscenities worked well and had the desired affect on the audience, but overall it was just too flawed in too many ways. But it was enough to get my accreditation. That Fall I attended my first film festival, and I submitted it to their Gong Show program which accepted tapes on the spot. To my surprise, it garnered its own little rooting section, and wound up getting third place.

I would have preferred that my first official production be of better quality, but I took all the lessons I learned to heart and applied them in the future. Despite all the flaws, it still made a strong statement about my artistic sensibilities.