I’ve set up my own PeerTube instance and now I know the true meaning of ‘broadcast yourself’. I’ve been on PeerTube for about two years, after discovering the fediverse, and I joined an instance that appeared to be well managed. I liked it enough that I used it professionally, instead of vimeo or filmfreeway. That is, whenever an industry person like a festival programmer requests for a screener link (and most will ask for vimeo links), I send the peertube link and I’ve never received a complaint. If you send a YouTube link, however, even if it is unlisted or private, this industry person might very likely send you a word of advise, if they care about you enough, or they might simply ghost you, for festivals will not show films that are already on YouTube. Secondly, I stopped making films for YouTube and released all my recent films that I wanted to be freely available online via PeerTube. Why? Well, though the views seem low, they, like everything in the fediverse, are high quality views in the sense that people actually watch the film from start to finish. Or a large portion of the film. This is because an algorithm has not shoved it in their face. They found the link somewhere and were curious enough to check it out.
Then, without any warning, the instance went offline and has been unresponsive for over two weeks now. That’s the thing about the fediverse. When you join a server/instance it is most likely run by an individual, or a group of them, or small firms, and the good ones will give you a heads-up if they are closing. This is the greatest strength of decentralized social media! I’m not sure why my instance went offline, but once it happened I asked myself, why not set up my own instance? I put the question out and got tips from other people, and I chose managed hosting with Fedihost. The process of setting it up was as cheap, and as easy, as that of a website, and I’m really angry with myself for not doing it earlier.
Now, I have to re-upload all my films (Ah, there’s the option of uploading via a link that teleports videos from YouTube to the fediverse! No need to physically re-upload everything!) Yet it’s still a pain having to rebuild all my channels from scratch. That’s another thing I like about PeerTube, the ability to set up different channels, and each caters for a different type of media. So you can subscribe to all my channels, or if you like short films then you click here, and I have a channel dedicated to only trailers. I’m still setting up things, but there will be one specific for documentaries, another for podcasts, another for folk tales, another for me reading my stories, like audio-books, you get the idea? So you follow what you like. That’s pretty neat!
As I set up the instance, I looked through my archives and came upon the first film I ever made. It brought a smile to my face. This was so long ago that there’s a link in the video to my geocities sites! Aha, well, back then I thought that by this time I’d be a world famous filmmaker rubbing shoulders with Spielberg and Hitchcock, but I’m happy with my achievements. I live entirely on film and writing, since 2011, and I make the kind of art I love, science fiction, fantasy, horrors, and comedy. I rarely do corporate works, which was the only way to earn from film back then. Above that, people think I’m worth it, so they pledge to support me via Patreon, and others respond to my crowdfund campaigns. Thank you so much! I depend on your love so consider keeping the wind in my wings with a small token, even $1 helps!
I’m not sure if I’ve written about this first experience before, but well, in 2006 I thought I was going to be a writer. I was shy, very reclusive, and writing seemed to be the best thing I could do. Then I went to the Maisha Film Lab that year (I had applied the year before, but did not go through) and they were sort of impressed with my script (which went on to become my first feature film, The Felistas Fable) and so Musarait, who ran things at Maisha, whispered to me, “Apply again next year as a director.”
I had not thought of it before, but I jumped at the challenge. I researched how to make films from whatever I could find online, by asking questions on Yahoo Groups and MySpace, where I met friends who sent me valuable books on filmmaking that were not available in Uganda. And from one of these many places I picked up advice that, as a first step, I had to make a one minute film, and from another place I got another that said filmmakers should learn to make films without any dialogue. So I put my head to it and came up with a story, Under Sarah’s Bed. I don’t remember how long I spent writing it, but I tried to keep it under one minute, and it was all about the things I loved at that time. Horror. Oh, you can read here about another early adventure of mine, when I wrote a horror script, with blood and gore, but one of my mentors told me, “Dilman, this is not horror. This is a romantic comedy!” Hmmmm. You can read about that here.
Anyway, I had met some few people through film workshops and festivals that happened in Uganda, at Amakula, and one of them was Jamir Musanze. I talked to him about shooting Under Sarah’s Bed, and he agreed to help. I lived up country at that time, in a town called Kamuli, about three hours away from the capital city. There were no filmmakers in Kamuli, everything happened in Kampala. So I jumped on a taxi (the things Kenyans call matutu. In uganda, the ‘taxi’ is called ‘special hire’ instead, and nowdays, Uber, sadly) and endured a long trip to Kampala. It is supposed to be three hours, but it went on for four or five, since the taxi had to keep stopping to pick-up and drop off passengers. I met with Jamir around Old Kampala and showed him the script. He was with a friend of his. They were both impressed. We talked about trying to make films but not having content to shoot, and so this script was my attempt. Write something, shoot it, and see what comes out. And he was like, wow, this is the kind of content that we need to practice on. Jamir’s friend never showed up, though.
Also read The First Day Shooting
Jamir took me to his muzigo (a low cost single-roomed apartment, which you can see in the film), and he called up one of his friends, who went by the names of Jean C. She refused to tell me any other names, just her artist name. I had bought a miniDV camera earlier, which turned out to be my worst investment until I bought a Rokoko suit in 2021 (oh, more on that shortly!), for I never got to use it in any project. I haven’t used the Rokoko suit either, and it seems to have died on me. At least the miniDV camera did not cost as much! Anyway, Jamir had a camera too, and we bought one tape, and we shot.
We didn’t have any lights, other than the bulb in the ceiling, and we didn’t have any other equipment, not even a tripod. (Did we have a tripod? I can’t remember!). I must say I jumped into making this film with a lot of ideas but no knowledge how to do it. Okay, just a basic idea from things I had read here and there, but I had never been on a film set before. I didn’t know about saying “action” and “cut”, or what shots even meant. I could tell the actress do this, and do that, and I could tell Jamir where to point his camera. Somehow, this is how I’ve made all my other films. I think of something, I jump into it without knowing exactly how I’m going to make it, and along the way I figure it out. A painful way to learn, but well, it’s become my working method. (Like the most recent film, The Night Dancer, eh, you, it has tortured me! But I’m almost finishing it.)
A few creative problems came up as we shot Under Sarah’s Bed. The first was, how does the monster pull the actress under the bed? It was very easy to imagine it, but now it had to be done and I couldn’t just say a magic word. I had to make the magic happen. She lay on the floor, and I grabbed her legs and pulled her, while Jamir filmed only her head, and she had to pretend to be scratching the floor. But then, she had to go all the way under the bed and there was no way I could be under there (I was too big!) and pull her.
Jean C came up with an idea. She’s an actress, she said, so she can pretend that the monster is dragging her under the bed. I said, okay. Let’s do it. Jamir pressed the record button and Jean C pushed herself under the bed….. oh, the bed was too low for her to fit properly, so it couldn’t be a smooth ‘pull’ all the way in. Her bum got stuck. So we paused the camera, lifted the bed, she pushed her bum through, and then we resumed filming the bit where the rest of the body and the head goes under the bed. It looked okay while we were on set, and it was not until many years later that someone told me, “oh, she’s helping the monster by pushing herself inside.”
Next problem was the blood. I needed it to squirt, after the monster takes a bite off the woman. How could I pull it off? Jamir suggested tomato sauce. Jean C filled her mouth with a diluted version of it and just spat it out, and then she did the dying part.
I had to give the audience the monster’s point of view, when she peeps under the bed to see what’s there, and I think the camera had a night vision mode that made everything look green, so we turned that on and shot something. Easy.
I made the monster much later, when I was back home in Kamuli and editing the film. (I used Windows MovieMaker to cut the film! I don’t remember learning to edit, or even to make the shots, I sort of used my knowledge of what I had seen in film to put them together, and of course, the things I learned from other people and books) As I edited I realised the audience needed to see the monster at some point, and so I cut shapes in a piece of cardboard to imitate eyes and teeth. Then I put pieces of a green polythene bag where the eyes should be, and a transparent bag where the teeth should be, and I shone a light from behind the cardboard. The effect seemed okay to me. I still like it. I think if this was a much longer film, the #monsterdon crowd would have enjoyed watching it.
And that was my first film. I put it on YouTube (before google bought it) and it got itself about four thousand five hundred views, which was a big deal back then, and I was very happy with myself.
Looking at it now, this film kind of defined my style, if at all I have a style. I’ve consistently made films with very little dialogue. I’ve written feature films that don’t have dialogue as yet, but never got the chance to make them. Hopefully, after I finish Big Tree sometime next year, all the feature films I make will be without dialogue. By the way, I’ll be crowdfunding for Big Tree next year, so you can follow me on mastodon, or subscribe to this blog by email, and you’ll know when that comes starts happening.
Support Me
Now that you are here, I have a small favor to ask. I regularly make science fiction short films and I’m looking for your support. It’s very difficult to make it as a filmmaker in Africa, where there is virtually no market to encourage big film investments, and so any dollar you can spare will go a long way into changing things. Please pledge on patreon.com/dilstories You only pay after I make the film, and you can stop payments at anytime. For other options, like donating via mobile money or PayPal, please go here dilmandila.com/donate