The Ancient Ones - A Retrospective Look Back

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          In May 2011, I made my first short film, titled The Ancient Ones. Running almost six and a half minutes long, the film is about three prehistoric men who hunt woolly mammoths in Europe during the ice age. I wrote, produced, directed, edited, and starred in the film, with two of my friends, Matt and Dakota, acting alongside me. The Ancient Ones was made for a freshman high school history class project – part of it was for my final grade, and part of it was for a “history fair.” And now, in 2021, a decade later, I decided to look back on it. How does my first ever film project hold up? There is much to cover here, from pre-production, production, post-production, and the release.​

          Before I really get into the making of The Ancient Ones, I feel that I must go over my passion for and history with movies and filmmaking. I have loved movies for as long as I can remember. And some of movies that I watched, whether these were on VHS or DVD, contained behind-the-scenes documentaries that detail how they were made and what went into the development. Watching these making-of films fascinated me. Then, when I was ten or eleven years old, my brother and two of his friends came across my parents’ video camera and had fun with it by making a short slapstick comedy. I participated in it, and I believe that’s what planted the seed for my dream to be a filmmaker.​

          After trying to come up with film ideas over the years, my first chance came in May 2011, near the end of my freshman year at Grants High School in Grants, New Mexico. For part of our final exam in history class, we had to make a project for the history fair, in which students would do projects pertaining to either the history of New Mexico, or history in general. When I saw that one of the projects could be a movie, I immediately jumped at the opportunity, and decided to make a movie about prehistoric people. My parents kindly purchased a digital camcorder and a tripod for me to use on the project, and I asked some of my classmates to star in it. Although I was beyond excited to be making my first movie, I had no idea what I had undertaken.​

          Let’s start with pre-production. First of all, when I wrote the script, it did not adhere to the screenplay format. It was more like a script for a stage play rather than a film. In addition, the script had bad exposition, or how information is relayed to the audience, such as the opening line of, “This marks the twentieth unsuccessful hunt.” I wouldn’t learn about exposition or the proper screenplay format until I attended college. But from what I wrote, I at least had a story and plot down. The original plot had four characters, whereas the final film has three. I had asked three friends to be in it, but they kept changing their availability, didn’t show up, or simply said that they couldn’t participate at the last minute. Though I was disappointed, I was very glad that Matt and Dakota were able to help.​

          Now, onto production. We shot The Ancient Ones over two days – one day was simply shooting the scene where Dakota’s character, Buushi, wakes up my character, Ka-mu, in a tent, and everything else was filmed the second day. We filmed in my backyard and the surrounding area behind my house. Although the film is supposed to be set in Europe 20,000 years ago, the filming locations didn’t match the geography and settings of ancient Europe at all. Grants has high desert terrain, so you see a brown clay ground and desert foliage. In addition, houses and other modern-day structures can be seen in several shots. The tent in which Ka-mu sleeps is merely a camping tent with cardboard mammoth tusks surrounding it and a brown bed sheet on top of it. And another thing to mention to that there are several shots in the film where I am wearing my glasses. My vision is blurry without them, so it was simply a matter of forgetting to take them off before the camera rolled. So, all in all, it doesn’t look very convincing that this film is set during the ice age.​

          In addition to the setting, I think the characters could definitely be improved in terms of portrayal, both in acting and outward appearances. None of us were actors. Many of the lines had a weak delivery (especially from me), and we rarely shot more than one take. A lot of this is because we were on very limited time, so we had to keep going with filming at a fast pace. As to outward appearances, it’s obvious that Buushi’s beard is made of paper, and it looks odd since Ka-mu and Adjuk (Matt’s character) lack facial hair all together. Plus, the costumes mostly consisted of large brown bath towels, wrapped around us like tunics to represent fur clothing. We wore these towels, whatever shorts we were wearing the days we filmed. and our footwear ranged from brown slippers to sandals. None of these are like the clothing worn by ice age humans at all. And, the spears the Adjuk and Buushi use are mere wooden garden tools with their heads replaced with paper spearheads. If I had more time, I would have tried to make or get more elaborate costumes and props.​

          As mentioned above, the only pieces of equipment I used for the actual filming of The Ancient Ones were a digital camcorder and a tripod – a very cheap one at that. The tripod, with the camera on it, fell over at least twice during filming. And since Matt, Dakota, and I were the only ones on the set, we took turns being the camera man (though my brother was the cameraman for the day we shot the tent scene). Whenever one of us was off screen, we would work the camera. In shots where we were all in frame, we had to position the camera carefully. One shot and scene that had to be removed was when the three hunters discuss how they have enough food from killing a mammoth and a cave bear. It was removed because the camera only recorded our bodies from the chest down. Of course, there was the above issue of seeing modern day buildings in the background, and that since it was all shot on a camcorder, the picture quality wasn’t the greatest. And since we didn’t have any sound recording gear, we had to rely on the camera’s built-in microphone to capture the sound. It didn’t help that we shot The Ancient Ones in May, when New Mexico gets really windy, and the wind is extremely apparent whenever you hear the naturally recorded sound.

          Despite all this, possibly the easiest sequences to film were the ones involving the animals.

The animals featured in the film are supposed to be animals that ancient Europeans encountered during the ice age – mammoths, a bison, and a cave bear. These were brought to life via stop motion shot in my backyard and inside my house. The animals used were non-articulated toys from my collection. If I had more time and money, I would have hoped to have more articulate models – at least ones where the legs move. In addition, the mammoth toys ranged from detailed plastic models to small stuffed animals. Looking back, I wish I just stuck to the more detailed toys. I would also take more pictures to help give the illusion of movement and lock my camera down for the stop motion sequences.​

          And now, we get to post-production. I edited The Ancient Ones on Windows Movie Maker, the program I was most comfortable with using at the time. However, there’s only so much you can do on that program. For instance, I couldn’t have more than one separate audio track, so during the scene where the mammoths first show up, I had to mix the music and audio in a different program, export it, and then add it to the Windows Movie Maker project. And speaking of music and sounds, I used copyrighted music tracks. Back then, I didn’t have much familiarity with copyright laws. It doesn’t help either, that I had intended to put the film on YouTube, where many user-made videos that I saw at the time used copyrighted music. Looking back, I would have used different music – either public domain, royalty free tracks, or ask someone to compose an original soundtrack. In addition, several sound effects were of rather poor quality. And so, I wish I had done a better job at mixing the audio, since there are parts where the music and sound effects drown out some of the natural sound and dialogue.​

          Some clips of The Ancient Ones were specifically shot to incorporate a blend of stop-motion and live action. However, this was another example of not knowing what I was doing. I tried to blend both with a green screen computer program that I downloaded, but the video files I used from my camera were not compatible with said program, so I had to abandon the mixture of animation and live action. Since the green screen program wouldn’t work the way I wanted it to, I had to take a still image of the setting, and then put in the animal(s) I needed for the scene, without the live-action cast in the shot at all. These include the bison chase, mammoth hunt, and cave bear attack. And in many of these instances, you can see that the original backgrounds from these photos weren’t completely removed.​

          These issues, mostly the attempt of blending stop-motion and live-action, led to staying up until four o’clock in the morning, on the due date, to finish the movie. And then, I had to spend a few extra minutes to put the finished product on a flash drive and DVD. I was able to turn it in on time, and The Ancient Ones was submitted to the history fair and part of my final grade. Thankfully, my film was well-received by my friends, my teacher, and the history fair judges. It won first place in the movies section of the history fair (I still have the certificate), and I got an “A” grade for the project. And thus, the film wasn’t a total failure.​

          All in all, I was proud with how the film turned out. But I still wish I could go back and make the changes listed above. However, there is no way that I can do that now, unless I were to completely transform it by redubbing the dialogue, remixing the sound, and (in some way) improving the picture quality. The computer that I used to edit The Ancient Ones crashed just a couple of months after finishing the project, and I didn’t save the video files to another spot. The only things that survive are the photographs of the stop-motion mammoth sequences. But thankfully, I burned several DVDs of The Ancient Ones (mostly to share with my family) and uploaded the film to my personal Facebook account, so I was able to save the final product in those ways.​

          In conclusion, even though I have some regrets and wishes of doing things differently, I don’t hate The Ancient Ones at all. As my first film project, it is special to me, but there are several ways that it could be improved. And now, after making more films since then, and after studying film at Santa Fe University of Art and Design, I feel that I have definitely improved as a filmmaker. I can better apply my skills and knowledge in any project I do now. I have a better grasp on screenwriting, operation and treatment of film equipment, and editing. So, for a first film project, especially one made as a teenager, I would consider not consider The Ancient Ones a masterpiece, but a good piece of work to kickstart actual filmmaking. In fact, it might be fun to do a remake of this film in the future, using my current knowledge and skills as a filmmaker.​

         The Ancient Ones can be viewed on my Facebook account, my Vimeo account, and my official website.