Cameron is a teacher of mine (since the teachers we have stay with us our entire lives). I studied acting with him for 8 years on a weekly basis. I even worked for him enabeling me to watch most of the classes that he taught throughout the week. In that entire time not a week went by that I didn't hear him ask that question of someone or everyone. Not everytime he asked that question did I have an answer. That bothered me. I was 35 with a theatre degree.

In January of 2004 a group of fellow students from the "Carter - Thor Studio" organized a 36 hour film festival. From conception to completion in 36 hours. 8 short films came out of that weekend and all of them had some merit. I would say that was the spark.

I left the "CTS" in October of 2003. By March of the following year I was painfully restless. I needed an outlet. The thought came to me that if a short digital film could be done in 36 hours then certainly 1 month was an overly adequate amount of time to complete one. I called the idea the "8 1/2 films" project.

I called a bunch of people I knew trying to organize something until reality struck. On a project like this the schedule is king. Pick a date for shooting and everything else needs to fit to it. I didn't think this was impossible. Besides being in a few short films (which means nothing of consequence) I had previously Line Produced 2 digital shorts and was 1st AD on another shot on 35mm. I even had taken a producing course through UCLA Extention.

Dreaming this up was the easiest part. The execution is where most dreams fail. I owned a Canon XL1, had Adobe Premiere 6.5 on my computer, and a small bit of knowlege of story and lighting. From there it was just pushing forward, learning from books on every aspect of filmmaking and absorbing leasons from mistakes made along the way.

Cameron Thor