This film has gone much further than I ever expected it to. It was created specifically for the Sol Peska Film Festival, a small local festival. It was our first entry to a festival ever. I had been learning all of this editing, special effects, and writing on my off time, and filmmaking had been completely ingrained in me for a while. However, I was very frightened about entering this film. I had originally planned to make a film called "The Sailor" (hopefully you'll be seeing this in the future), and enter that into the festival. However, plans fell through at the last minute. A week away from deadline, I decided that I would enter something into the festival if it killed me.

I hastily brainstormed, and wrote the script on a Saturday in about an hour. The film was due that next Friday, AND I had exams all that week. I edited a little bit, then sent it off to my great friend in Quebec, Sam Saulnier (of YossamFilms.com). He gave the script the OK. I talked it over with Chris Cronin (who would be playing the main character in the film), and we decided to film it that Tuesday. We filmed on Tuesday, I didn't get to touch it until Thursday.

I suppose I should mention the kink that threw much of it off here. About two weeks before the festival, I realized that the music from a different composer I had would not be able to work for some exceptionally strange reasons. So, I hunted for another composer for a while, and also looked around for some royalty-free music or precomposed tracks I could use. I found some tracks from a composer in Europe, and I plugged them into some of the footage that I had. They worked. I fired off an e-mail to him, and prayed he would respond, giving me permission to use them. The next day, Wednesday, nothing. Panicked, I looked for some other royalty-free music, and found it at freeplaymusic.com. I found two tracks that worked pretty well, but I decided it would probably be a good idea to call them in case there's a licensing problem. It turns out there was, and I would have had to pay a lot of money if this were to win the festival. So, I searched out another method. In a last-minute move of desperation, I put out a call for help on an internet forum. In a few minutes, Mark Scales had responded. I talked to him on an instant messaging program, and this man, this hero, composed beautiful music for "Mirror, Mirror." right on the spot! So, I owe a very large amount of the successes of this film to Mark Scales. Back to the story.

I edited hastily all night Thursday, while Mark was composing music for me and I was plugging it in. I handed it in with 4 minutes to spare on Friday.

It won Best Drama and Best of Show at that festival. I was extremely pleased to have won the first filmmaking festival I'd ever entered. It later branched out, as people began to hear about it, and I submitted to other festivals I was invited to, and it continually won! As of the time of this writing, the only festival I have submitted to that it did not take the top possible prize (for its category or otherwise) is the Directing the Future Film Festival. The reason for that is because another film of ours, "For the Motherland," took the grand prize.

Thanks to all of those involved. This film has gotten me places I never thought it would.