Check Out Joshua Bennett’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Joshua Bennett.

Hi Joshua, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I began studying writing when I was in college, where I earned a bachelor’s degree in English. During that time, I gained a love for many types of storytelling, and that only continued to grow over the years. Since then, I’ve made a conscious choice to focus on traditional storytelling forms such as filmmaking and books, rather than becoming a social media content creator.

As of now, I’m finishing a feature-length movie that I wrote, directed, produced, and starred in. It’s a monumental task to perform as an independent filmmaker, but thankfully it’s progressing well.

I already published a book, which is a multi-media book filled with short stories, poetry, essays, mini-films, and illustrations, and they are each custom created by me. All of the art forms tell a singular story in a way that is, to my knowledge, brand new and never been done before to that extent.

Everything I work on is my attempt to push storytelling forward as much as possible. Amidst a time of AI replacing a lot of storytelling and art, I want to push the envelope on human storytelling. AI is being used to copy and iterate on what’s already done, which I believe makes it even more important to do what’s never been done before.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It has not been a smooth road. When I was in college I had the time, friends, and resources to make 13 short films in 1.5 years and perform four live interviews, but after college, my attempt to make a feature length movie has been a long journey.

After college, it took me five years to write a screenplay, find actors, find a crew, and save up enough money to film a rough cut of my feature-length movie. That actually seemed quite smooth, but post-production is when the road became much less smooth.

The first obstacle happened because I filmed my movie in 4K quality many years ago, which at that time was nearly impossible for me to edit with the price of a computer I could afford. While I thought a top of the line computer at that time would be powerful enough to edit 4K footage, it was not. It took me nearly 3 years after filming my movie to get a decent enough computer and software to edit my film and get special effects that seemed usable. Except, usable wasn’t enough for my standard of filmmaking.

I was not pleased with the story and decided to go even more in depth with some of the scenes, characters, and story threads. Except, to do this I needed better software to perform special effects and an even more powerful computer, all of which costed more money that I had to save up for. As an indie filmmaker, it’s a rough road having to handle so much of the filmmaking process on my own to stay within budget.

So, what started out smooth turned into a much more difficult and unexpected journey, which combined with the more unstable state of society, made the big leap in my journey much more difficult. The good news is that the process and patience have made my movie immensely bigger in scope and better in quality.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I specialize in trying to do highly unique and new things in a genre. Presently, I’m working in sci-fi and fantasy genres in a book and movie. The thing that sets me apart as a storyteller is my willingness to do brand-new and risky things, and also to push the bounds of questions about life.

If you experience one of my stories, you can be sure there is great thought and depth behind every word and visual. All of it is designed and labored over with great love for storytelling that provides you with a window into places of pure imagination. I’m most proud of my stories not being afraid to ask the biggest and toughest questions, and inviting others to feel free to do the same in fun, entertaining, and artistic ways.

Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
Self-financing and starring in my own feature film has been a massive risk for me. It requires tons and tons of time and money to decide to become professional quality at filmmaking. Movies are one of the most expensive and technology-intensive styles of storytelling there is.

While I do not diminish how tough it is to write a book or make a music album, there is a reason that they have much smaller crews/creators compared to most movies that have a minimum of 100 cast and crew members who are the best of the best specialists in their craft, and some even have 1,000s of them. Making movies simply requires tons of specialists compared to most other artforms. I decided to take on nearly all of those tasks by myself—writing, directing, producing, wardrobe, set design, props, video editing, acting, finance, legal, sound effects, visual effects, and the list goes on. I’ve studied and practiced to get as good as I possibly can at each thing that usually takes 100s or 1,000s of people to perform.

Truly, though, none of that matters and would be vain without a knock-out screenplay, which requires having an extraordinary story that is affordable enough to film. All of it has been a huge risk for me to take because there was never a guarantee I would come up with a story for a screenplay that would be extremely high quality and affordable enough to finance by myself.

Pricing:

• $14.99 eBook (Full Color)
• $24.99 Print Book (Full Color)

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.JoshBArtistry.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/officialjbart/