You and I are on this journey to become directors, and for the past seven months I’ve shared my thoughts and ideas about directing here in the newsletter. But I haven’t shared why I’m here, how this all started. Today I want to take you back to the beginning.

It’s origin story time.

We’re going way back, to a small island off the Western coast of Norway. I’ll introduce you to a little kid who loves stories, makes up fantastical worlds, and gets his mind blown when watching Star Wars.

Let’s rewind that VHS.

When you can’t help but tell stories

This year marks the 25th anniversary of me deciding I was going to make movies. 25 years! But the seeds were planted even before that.

Three important things happened that set me up to fall in love with filmmaking.

As soon as I learned to write, I started telling stories. I started with comic books, starring my stuffed animals. Sometime in elementary school me and my best friend, Daniel, started writing together. We’d write one chapter each, swapping floppy disks to share a Word document.

We were always heavily inspired by whatever we’d been watching lately. The first story was pretty much Space Jam. The next one a space adventure with planets named after our favorite frozen pizzas. The finished books became Christmas gifts for friends and family.

The second thing we had was access to a video camera. Daniel’s dad had a home video camera we’d take out and shoot with. We’d typically film ourselves playing soccer, or doing some kind of prank.

Then we’d go home and watch it on TV.

The third thing that happened was Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace. You’ve probably heard stories of filmmakers who saw the original Star Wars in theaters when it first came out in 1977, and their lives changed.

That was me in 1999.

This might be strange, especially if you’re American. Everyone would have heard of Star Wars here. Not so for a kid who grew up with 4 TV channels, and no cable on the other side of the world. How we went about getting VHS copies of the original trilogy is a different story. The point is, an obsession was born.

Everything in our lives became about Star Wars. Including the stories we told.

Get out of the house! Or how I fell in love with filmmaking

The real reason I became a filmmaker? My friend’s grandma, who was watching him and his siblings over Fall break, got tired of having us in the house playing computer games all day. She suggested we go outside and play. Why didn’t we go make a movie?

The rest is history.

Obviously we modeled our story after Star Wars and called it… Wood Wars. We wrote the script in Word, using Comic Sans as the font (just to make it fun, you know.) We rounded up all the kids in the neighborhood and got them to be our actors. My friend’s grandma made costumes out of old curtains and wigs of yarn, and a bunch of kids turned into two opposing armies.

Armed with the previously mentioned handycam, we set out into the bushes behind my house to make a film. We had no idea what it took to make a film.

• No knowledge
• No gear
• No fancy software
• No budget
• And most importantly, we had no idea we needed those things

So we made a movie anyway. And had the time of our lives.

Working for my 12 year old self

The feeling of endless possibilities and bringing a group together to make something special was pure magic. I’ve been hooked ever since.

12 year old me decided to become a director, and I’m still trying to live up to that. At every crossroad in my career, the voice of that little boy’s dream has been my guiding light. Between you and me, sometimes I’m resentful of that little kid. He doesn’t know how hard it is. Sometimes I feel like I’ve let him down.

Mostly I question my own sanity.

But no matter how strong the doubt, fear and frustration with our industry gets I always return to the fact that I want to direct movies.

Most people go through life and have no idea what they’re passionate about. They spend their time doing something that just keeps them going. I’ll be the first to admit that having found what I love is a rare gift. I’m still not convinced our industry needs to be as hard as it is, but when it gets tough, I treasure my passion.

I’m here because I love making movies.

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