Or How God Gave me the Gift of a Story that I Would Actually Want to Tell
The story of my film The Super Rocket begins as a simple idea in my head to write a story about two brothers who would reflect my own relationship with my younger brother. I remember sitting down one day with the intent to dream big and brainstorming some different ideas that would work as a short film I could shoot on a small budget.
When I sat down, literally the first idea in my head was the idea for The Super Rocket was this story of two brothers, which may seem amazing, but I believe was an idea from The Holy Spirit himself. I’ll get into why I believe that later. But I didn’t like this idea very much at the time despite it’s authentic appeal and simple premise: Two brothers have a relationship fallout over a rocket.
But I thought the idea was too simple and not grand enough for my taste, so I moved on to another idea which I called “Panspermia on the Starways” and was going to be a Sci-fi Western set in space and the tarmac and buildings of Area 51. Don’t ask me how I was going to film it. I was mainly focused on my screenwriting career at that point I think, because I think my ambition to shoot this film slowly died as I kept working on writing that script.
I say “kept working” on writing, because it was hard to make myself actually come up with description and dialogue to write. I could make myself actually sit down, but the description and dialogue came slowly. I think mainly this was a case of writing a genre I didn’t understand and trying to flesh out a world that I had no experience with (spaceships and military bases).
But I did learn from that project, and learned specifically that I was not prepared for this script in a way I didn’t fully understand. And I learned how to write dialogue and how to write description, and how to format a screenplay.
Eventually I gave up on the project and one day as I was walking through the living room of my parent’s house thinking about this, I heard a small voice in my mind say: “Why don’t you try The Super Rocket?” It took me about a minute to realize the Holy Spirit had just spoken to me. Don’t ask me how I knew it was Him. Maybe it was the wisdom in his words.
And so I began to write The Super Rocket again, page by page, and one line of dialogue at a time. I think the large amount of time I spent writing the project was part of why the story and dialogue works. I was a bit underdeveloped socially speaking at the time. Not that I was totally incapable, but I didn’t have many friends, and I wasn’t very talkative as a person.
But by writing dialogue I learned how it worked – What worked well and what sounded totally fake. I distinctly remember coming to the final confrontation scene and having massive doubts as to my ability to write it, and simply choosing to believe that God had created me to be able to write – and therefore I wrote. I really surprised myself there, writing that scene, and because of my ability to believe in myself and who God had created me to be, I was able to overcome. I even had new ideas for the scene that really helped the story progress and develop.
And that’s how we overcome folks, by believing what God says about us and by acting according to our true nature in Christ. The Bible says it this way: “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free”.
And so the Super Rocket became a script and then became a movie. But the route to reach that end was not necessarily a direct route. I can’t tell the whole story here as there’s a lot of details, but I’ll tell part at least.
My journey to find my actors was pretty short to say the least. I had the intention to find someone at my church but had no idea who that would be. But I went to church one day with the intention to search, and somehow I just saw the two Blanchet brothers interacting with each other and decided they had the perfect brotherly harmony I was looking for. It was like the Holy Spirit just pointed them out to me.
I approached both of them individually and asked “Would you be interested in acting in my movie?” (I’m not sure of the exact words). Both immediately said yes, and I promised to send working scripts to their emails.
My Mom was my producer on the film and somehow we were able to work out schedules and transportation for everything to work. And they were the perfect actors for the roles. Exactly what I had envisioned somehow, right down to the blonde hair on the younger one, dark hair on the older one. But the important part was the personalities of the two brothers.
I also had help from the president of the local rocket club, Bernard Cawley, who helped us with lots of rocket related stuff including locations and launching the rockets. Without him, this film would not have been possible.
One thing I have found when creating this film was that I made some rookie mistakes, such as using the first or second take because it seemed “good enough” but might have really been the result of low expectations for a first film. But a first film doesn’t have to be garbage, and I have seen some pretty good first films.
Looking at the film today, I suddenly had the insight that if I had just waited for a few more takes the film would have been so much better. But we all learn at some point and that was a point in my life where I still had a few lessons to learn I hadn’t learned yet.
But the Lord blessed this film in many ways, and though maybe my directing wasn’t the best on this film at all times, I think it’s still a gem of a film the Holy Spirit helped me in many ways to make. You can watch the nine-minute YouTube release of the film (2019) below:
Timothy Grindall is a technology writer and self-taught computer programmer, photographer, filmmaker, thinker, and writer who wants to see the world change for the better.
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