Dinan Photography and Film
Cameron Dinan
How a Pandemic Sparked my Creativity and Helped Me make my First Film
I had been wanting to make my first film for some time now and needed that little push, when the idea suddenly became so clear. In the middle of the pandemic me and my two best friends joked about making a documentary about our group leaving school, this joke soon turned to reality after poor script was written on a very drunk night out. Although it had to be rewritten twice, we realized that this was an actual task we could tackle and got to work on getting our cast together. We had no crew, no money, no sets no professional equipment except a camera, but still after 1 month of filming and a painful 3 months of editing, the final product was done. I am beyond proud of the project and the satisfaction of having it done is always going to be there, however, the big issue that people never mention is how much missed opportunities there is when you look back over it. It’s still very good and I love it but I could have done so much more with what I had to work with.
From a young age I've always been a creative person, from writing very plagiarizing stories in primary to photographing anything in my past. However as much as I’ve been creative in every element, my heart was always with filmmaking. I was always using my phone camera making awful short movies of either Legos or just me and my friends at the park. It wasn’t until I got a little older and hit with a pandemic when I realized just how import it was to be creative when making this type of content. Originally, I took up a lot of photography as I felt this was the best was to slide into filmmaking, still to this day I look back on my work and feel very proud on how it’s come out. I practiced with photography for two years and learned to be creative with colours and experimenting with idea.
This is something that I’m going to keep in mind for my next project because why take the lazy route when you can make something incredible with just your idea and a camera. When I think about creativity, I think about being original and always sticking to your ideas, a big thing to remember is to put in 110%, because if you you’ll always be thinking about what you didn’t do once you’re finished. After making the documentary there was a large amount that worked, and a lot that didn’t, but at the end of the day I know that I can now adapt from this and learn to make my next film even better than the last. At the end of the day, I owe my creativity to everything I grew up with and all the ideas that my parents would push me towards following, without all of that I wouldn't be half the filmmaker I am today.