I have always been a fan of movies. When I was a kid, I thought there wasn’t a movie in the world I wouldn’t like. I was 9 years old when my friend secretly took her dad’s VHS with The Exorcist on it and showed it to me. To say I was terrified would be an understatement. I couldn’t sleep. I thought about that little girl all the time. It was the first movie to actually hinder my life and it didn’t take long before I got fed up. I didn’t want to stop watching movies, but I didn’t ever want to feel held captive by one either. So I started my training. Every scary movie I could get my hands on I would watch, only this time, I would be prepared. I watched horror film after horror film until I was properly desensitized. I was never able to sit and watch The Exorcist again, even after reading the book, however; horror became my favorite genre and it still is to this day. Of course when you watch so many movies in one genre, it becomes a bit redundant. So I also became a fan of all sorts of movies. There was very little established online for movie fans when I was in college but I found a small group that veered me in directions I wouldn’t have known about. Now, I am actively on Discord and take part in discussions and events in a few different movie servers. We link up our Letterboxd accounts and rate and review movies. We use those accounts to determine good movies to recommend to one another. It’s a lot of fun. I wish I had groups like this when I was younger. Instead I made my friends unwillingly watch a plethora of strange movies and forced them to analyze them afterwards no matter how traumatized they were from the content I exposed them to. A month ago, on my 44th birthday, I finally decided that I would watch The Exorcist once and for all. I couldn’t believe how nervous I was. It holds up incredibly well and is one of my favorite horror films of all time.
I was a stay at home mom for many years. When my daughter was born, my first child of two, I found myself feeling restless. I was writing all of the time but I wanted to do more with my stories. That’s when I decided I would try out writing a screenplay. I bought a book called How to Write a Screenplay (I wish I remembered the author) and I used that as a guide. I wrote a full length script called Impressions and sent it to the American Screenwriting Association Competition. It became a finalist out of thousands of entries and it was at that point I decided I wanted to learn more about making films. So I went online and found ads in the gigs section for all kinds of movie crew. I asked if I could hop on set and watch and that was where I began networking with students at Temple University and The Philadelphia Art Institute and started making movies. At this time my brother was acting in LA and I began learning how to edit and would edit his actor reels. I loved the idea of being a writer and editor, it felt like bookends in the entire process. But in general, I was a producer. I found location spots and held casting calls. I was on set always and acted as a script supervisor and assistant director. I found my circle of like-minded filmmakers but I also met tons of people who would end up helping me out on a project later down the road. It was an amazing time that gave me a whole new perspective when watching movies.
Now I just write reviews and participate in the Discord servers’ events. I will start posting my reviews here to discuss as well as the Letterboxd page. Anybody interested in discussing these films please comment on the reviews. I will also have links to some of the videos I helped create in the videos section. I hope you all enjoy and thank you for visiting my site! Shanna
WORDS OF EXPRESSION 