Fast forward a few months to August 2020. The lockdown is over (well, kind of.) and I’m about to start my next semester at DeSales. Knowing that I’ll have the opportunity to actually create Intrusion this time, I planned a weekend getaway to plan the shoot and rewrite the script. I went by myself and brought only my laptop, a Stouffer’s lasagna, and one goal in mind: to make the best damn script I could. I scrapped most of the dialogue from the original draft and came up with something different. The only problem is that I’m honestly terrible at writing dialogue. After slapping together the first draft of Intrusion (v2), I sent it to my girlfriend, Skye. Ultimately, she ended up writing most of the dialogue and helped me alter the story to make it actually make sense. Without her help, Intrusion would not nearly be as good as it is today and I cannot thank her enough for that. After coming back from the cabin with a script I was happy with, I immediately got to work cleaning the set: my garage! I cleaned it all up, repainted it, rearranged the entire layout, and even installed a door (which was essentially a giant prop, considering it is non functional). After taking the rest of August to ready the garage, it was finally time to start filming. 

I assembled my cast and crew and we set out to start filming the second weekend of September. We had planned on filming Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from 6pm-12am. Although the weekend seemed grueling and intense, I wanted to get this done as soon as possible to have as much time as I could in post production. On Friday night after filming for a few hours, one member of the crew received a phone call informing them that someone they had been in contact with was exposed to someone who had just tested positive for COVID-19. Upon hearing this, I immediately wrapped the shoot and made sure everyone was tested before filming could resume. Was this devastating to the plans? Yes. Was shutting down the shoot a difficult call to make? Absolutely not. The safety of my crew is far more important to me than anything else. Intrusion was once again canceled. In such an unprecedented time, I wanted to make sure we did everything the right way and in a healthy way.

After we all tested negative we were pretty much back to square one. I took a week to lay out the rest of my semester and really think this shoot through. What had seemed like the biggest setback in the history of setbacks turned out to be a blessing in disguise. You see, when I get started on a film, I tend to get very excited. This is my passion and I absolutely love it, so I typically rush into it. Once I looked back at it, cramming the entire shoot into one weekend was an incredibly stupid idea. Not only would we have rushed through everything and cut corners, but it would have burnt everyone out and left them miserable and with a sour taste. It was at this point where I came up with the idea of having more shoots spread out over a longer period of time, but those individual shoots would be shorter and more focused. To explain it easier, I essentially cut the script into 5 scenes, and we picked 5 days we could film those specific sections. I thought this plan would ultimately lead to a better end result, as focusing on one specific scene per shoot, we could perfect those scenes. To my surprise, I feel like this plan actually worked.

The filming process that followed was a lot to handle if I’m being honest, but I think it was the best way to go about it. We filmed A LOT. We shot for a total of 8 nights, and then came back after for 3 reshoot/make up nights. Spreading these shoots out over such a long period of time was exhausting. I had so much going on with my personal life and with school that I now even further complicated by throwing a bunch of these intense shoots in the mix. It was exhausting, tiring, draining, but once we got through it, it was fulfilling and rewarding. Thankfully we didn’t have any other COVID related issues and I made sure we were always following the proper guidelines. Filming had some technical hiccups, as this was the first time I had ever used proper lighting and audio equipment, but we all came together to quickly get over them. 

Once filming was officially wrapped and the real editing had started, it was all down to me. This was the moment I was waiting for. Being able to sit with all of the pieces and finally get to work assembling the puzzle. I started off organizing the clips, something I also had never done before. Because of the fact we had filmed so much and used external audio for every take, I was dealing with over 300 files. A legitimate form of organization was absolutely necessary if I were to get this done. The way I went about this was simple. First, I would go through every single video and audio clip and label them as their scene, shot, and take numbers. Then, once every file was appropriately labeled, I sorted them all into the 5 scene folders. Once that was completed, I would watch every single take and carefully pick out the best one and put it in its own folder in its specific shot folder. Finally, after every single “best” take was picked I imported all of them into premiere and got to work. Whew Just thinking of that again is giving me a headache.

The biggest problem Intrusion helped me overcome was a more personal one. I have never felt proud of my films, after finishing them I’ve always picked them apart and told myself that they were garbage. Why? I don't know, honestly. Everyone always says “you’re your own worst critic” and while this is true, I genuinely was a very, very harsh critic of myself. At one point in the editing process, I honestly considered scrapping the entire thing. I didn't think it was even worthy of release. I, for some reason that I can’t remember for the life of me, hated it. So I worked on it, and worked on it, and if something seemed off I did everything in my power to fix it. For hours I would edit, fiddle with sound effects, mess with the grading, doing anything that I possibly could to satisfy myself. I was driving myself crazy, until one early morning I snapped out of it. I woke up and I actually looked at what I had done. In the middle of a global pandemic, one of the hardest semesters of my academic career, struggling with other personal issues of my own, in a time where literally every single thing seemed to be going against me: I created a film. One that is competently put together and thought out. One that looks and sounds better than anything I had ever done before. At that moment it all hit me at once. I had something that was “worthy” all along.

I had finally created something I was proud of, and once I realized that it was like a massive weight was taken off my shoulders. I started to feel more creative in the edit, I allowed my imagination to help me create a soundscape for the world outside and design the “being” outside of the window to actually sound like a logical thing. I broke the chains off and started to really make this my own thing. Intrusion helped me realize that I have so much to be proud of when it comes to my filmmaking and that is why it will always mean so much to me.

-Nick