First Video Footage Done!
Well, after a lot of planning, begging, and logistics… our trailer video is finally ready!
http://www.indiegogo.com/infertileground
As always, there are things that can have gone better and new ideas that crop up for improvement… but overall it has been fairly well received.
The week leading up to releasing it was fraught with panic. I have been involved in a lot of film and other projects, but this is the first time in a LONG time that it has been my own creative vision. I had forgotten how truly terrifying it is to put something you created out there for the world to see and judge. It is certain that not everyone will be happy, and that some people will be downright mean… you feel very exposed to the world, so you have to try to prepare yourself for those responses.
It is especially difficult in this case because it is a serious subject that I have a very personal and intimate attachment to. It feels like a part of my soul is out there, even if I am not onscreen like the brave folks who volunteered to help us out by telling their stories.
I wanted to share some of the background of filming this video, as we consider others in the infertility community as partners in this endeavour.
The baby shown in the video was born through IVF… actually we had two babies on set that day and they were both IVF babies.
All of the people onscreen and many of the crew have been touched personally by infertility. The medical staff at Genesis Fertility clinic (where we filmed part of the video) have made helping others create families into their life’s work. It was humbling to interview them (there are several more interviews that will be in the full feature), and seeing how dedicated they were to their profession and helping others.
We filmed another segment at our own house. While I was out organizing and filming for a day, my wife was at home decorating a room as a nursery to act as a “set” for the opening scene. When I got home, I walked into the room and immediately started crying uncontrollably. It looked so real and homey, and it was like I had walked into my dreams of how I wanted my life to be… like if I walked back out to the living room, my wife would be there playing with our baby. Still being unsuccessful after so many years of trying to start a family, and knowing that we may never get to have that nursery for real was simply too much for my exhausted state to handle.
I sat there in our pretend nursery for a long time, asking myself if I could really do this project. I have been reasonably resilient throughout our ordeal, but at that moment I felt brittle and fragile… like one little tap on my shoulder, or if I even breathed too deeply, I would shatter me into a million pieces that could never be put together. Our own pain is still so raw and open, in that moment, surrounding myself with “all things infertility” for the next two years seemed an impossible task.
The actual filming day at our house involved a lot of tears and I managed to largely escape into the work of filming. I am happy with the end result, but I know that moment in the ‘nursery’ is going to stay with me for a long time.
