My Experience with One Grand Film
I had ZERO film-making experience before I joined AJ Rome’s One Grand Film community. Over an 8 month period of attending weekly Zoom meetings, watching and re-watching all of the OGF videos, asking hundreds of questions, fine tuning a story idea simple enough to film in the OGF format, gathering up a few cast and crew and basically just doing what I had learned I managed to shoot a feature-length film in 5 days. I am currently in post-production and learning that side of the creative process. If I can do this then truly anyone can make a film with the right guidance and dedication. I took my first Improv class in early 2021 which then lead me to doing extra and stand-in work for film and television and then acting classes. I was ready to start auditioning for speaking roles but I did not have a reel to submit. I had heard suggestions to “make my own work” to submit. But, I had no idea what that really meant or how to do that. Fast forward to summer of 2023. The film and television communities were deep in the SAG/AFTRA Writer’s Strike. So, my work had slowed down. Mid-July 2023 I happened to catch an Instagram post from my very first acting coach, Dean West. He was promoting One Grand Film and it piqued my interest. I reached out to Dean and he immediately got me set up on a Zoom to talk to him and AJ about OGF. Even though the concept of making my own film felt very foreign to me it also felt very right and Dean and AJ really made it seem possible. I will admit - it was my severe ignorance as to what I was getting into that allowed me to sign up. If I really knew all of the work that lay ahead I may have rethought my decision! Haha. I actually thought - cool, this class is about 8 weeks so I will have a feature film all done by then. It’s actually embarrassing to type that but I am sharing because I want you to know how I absolutely had no clue what I was doing. I just said yes. I also trusted Dean so I assumed I could trust his best friend, AJ. I’m so glad I trusted both of them.