The Extraordinary Secret of Jamie Klotz's Diary II [1:09:36] [Adventure/Comedy] - Just premiered my second feature last weekend to good success locally. Lots of upgrades on the back end compared to my first, would be happy to get some constructive feedback.

If there's a harsh criticism you could make, I can guarantee I already thought of it. I'm not oblivious to the shortcomings but also not ignorant of the successes.

I'm unfortunate to live in a state where the film "industry," if you can really even call it that here, is barely existent. Finding good, hard-working, talented & capable crew, even ones that would volunteer, is damn near impossible. So I make do with what I have, experiment and learn, buy new equipment and test it out on each new project, learning how to better utilize it. We didn't even have sound on the first movie - it was just the onboard mic. Much of this is worlds above what went before, and a consideration should also be made that on the shots that I'm aware have the shittiest audio - my cast members were volatile and stubborn teenagers who couldn't be bothered to even respond to my telephone calls or messages after filming was through... so much for ADR. Those are the challenges of projects like these.

That aside, I will continue to learn and develop. I know it's not perfect, but I think it's a "good enough" little movie, not great, but better than some of the shit I've seen. It is, technically, a better movie than the first one, which is enough of a success for me learning-wise, and story-wise I attempted to experiment instead of strictly resorting to cheap laughs.

The most common advice for indie filmmakers today seems to be "if you want to make a movie, go make a movie." No one else is going to hold my hand through it, and I don't expect them so. So I am damn well doing just that. They're not perfect - and the overly cynical people on Reddit/the internet probably don't even think it's good or will criticize it harshly; but the reality I didn't make this for you, I made it for myself to learn & grow as a filmmaker and see a story on screen I wanted to see. If someone likes it, great, if someone doesn't, that's great, too - thanks for watching.

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