So on a rather uneventful night in November, I texted my friend on a crazy sort of whim. The idea came out of nowhere and was probably a result of a sugar high and lack of sleep, but nonetheless, I told her that I wanted to make a movie. A few years back I had considered becoming a film director for a career but the idea changed over the years, so it’s not like I decided to make one simply for practice, it was 100% fun.However, I did know that this friend of mine was into writing as much as I was, and she was as spontaneous as myself, so I knew it was the perfect person to ask. As expected, Emily was down for the idea and after a week of dumb ideas, we had a slight story concept. Now of course, it didn’t stick to that. We jumped for Pride and Prejudice remakes to Romcoms, and even some rather progressive chick flicks. Though in the end, the story line is far from what we originally created.

Without a solid plot for the first few weeks of production, we didn’t have anything to call the project. All we knew of was the slight relevance to the solar system and so that laid a nice little concrete path for title ideas. The name Neil Armstrong stuck almost immediately, and from there until much later in the process, the movie was come to be known as that. So from November until about February, we probably annoyed everyone by mentioning our super secret Neil Armstrong thing. But nonetheless, we were about forty pages into this random screenplay when we decided we needed a little help. And so and behold we went to a mutual friend who we knew was interested in movie production, whose lifelong dream is to literally be a director. She was as ecstatic as Emily, and just like that we had our crew. Original crew, that is.

The actual script writing process was awful, absolutely awful. Since November, it has been six months and we still haven’t finalized it. The whole format for writing a screenplay differs than anything we had ever attempted before. Not only do we have to be cautious when creating dialogue, but we also had to consider every action that each character makes while speaking. Which way they are facing, their facial expression, and the exact mood of each scene. But after a few weeks and about twenty or so pages we did eventually get the hang of it. And then a few months after the creation of the concept, we had about one hundred and six pages of random ideas. The original draft of the script consisted of all of our different suggestions in one long google document. The plan was to get all of our ideas down into one place and then later edit and combine everything together. And so it was just that. A collection of scenes that didn’t quite add up, in the least chronological order possible. It was a hot mess.

But we fixed it! After like two months of working on it, we fixed it. Emily and I had two work nights where we went to each other’s houses to edit and arrange the second copy of the script, which was us organizing the scenes we had written into a more readable manner. Though most of the sleepovers were just us messing around and getting a little bit of work done. If we were diligent, I bet we would be done with the movie by now. And then it became us deleting irrelevant scenes and the ones that we both copied into different places of the script. This process took a while, and then we had a new screenplay that made a little more sense, and had dropped about ten pages. During this project, Jasmine did about nothing other than occasionally give her input. She apparently can’t write.

So script version two was done, but of course, being the perfectionist I was, I debated that we edit the whole thing yet again. Though Emily and Jasmine were both eager to begin filming and auditions, I won the argument. Because I birthed this film project. So round three began! Which was so very necessary. Though Emily did edit a lot, and Jasmine gave us feedback, the third edit was mostly me correcting the continuity. Scenes were lengthened, filler scenes were added in between, the order was changed again, and I even had a breakdown when I realized that a lot was messed up. Like a lot a lot. We had decided to change a small aspect and it eventually led to a domino effect within about forty scenes, but no worries! I did fix it eventually. And that wasn’t the only time I’ve cried while writing. During the first time I wrote the first scene, and then the eventually the last scenes, I was sobbing while writing, which I think is an accomplishment for myself.

That’s a little off topic though, so let me get back to the main idea. After we finished the second edit, we decided to tell people about the film. We held an interest meeting to explain the concept in a handy dandy little powerpoint presentation, and we got a turnout far bigger than we imagined. Which is probably because we hung up fliers around campus and told literally everyone we knew. But it worked, and we had a contact list of over fifty people interested in being a part of the film. So we sent out information to the group and the list continued to grow. About a month after the interest meeting, still editing the whole time, we held two separate rounds of auditions for the cast. Much like the original meeting, the result was exceptional. We had around thirty people audition, and the list was nearly complete just a week or two afterwards. Which brings us to now, March 26, five days before we send the cast list to the group.

The movie is nowhere near being done, the script alone isn’t finalized, and we have tons of things to resolve before we can press record on any camera, but we are definitely making progress. When I had first suggested making a movie, the idea seemed insane, as I usually have crazy ideas that I never go through with. But for once, it seems thing are looking bright. We actually completed the entire screenplay, over one hundred pages of it. We’ve talked to tons of people about the film, and we’ve managed to get a whole community of enthusiastic people willing to work with us on completing it. And it continuously baffles me that people listen to us seriously, even though we’re just a bunch of fifteen year old kids who have literally no clue as to what we’re doing. But we’re trying, and we must be doing something right to have gotten this far.