Phantasm: a trick of the mind
Scene: a setting in a story
Growing up I wanted to make movies. I did not want to be an actress or a director, I wanted to be the one that actually made the movies… no, not the producer. I wanted to be the cinematographer. I wanted to be behind the camera recording the film that people would watch. I wanted to show people the world I saw.
If I could not be behind the camera I wanted to create the scenes that were seen. Special effects, makup, building miniature sets. There were so many roles that were of so much more importance than being the director or an actress.
I used to imagine how I would create images of other worlds. I had schemes for how you could create an alien setting by taking the birch tree that grew out behind our house and hanging cantaloupe sized “fruits” that had been painted with pink fuzz from the tree. A Cantaloupe painted with pink fuzz would be set on a tray for the actors to slice open - the cantelope already having been opened carefully by the props department an the seedy core removed to be replaced by tiny grapes. It was only one of the many ideas I had when I was younger.
I grew up in the wrong place to be able to get involved in the movies, however, and was not surrounded by the kind of friends that had my same passion. I turned my desires to writing, as another way in which I could show others the world I saw, but my heart has always been in making movies.
This site is dedicated to that desire. Phantascene was the original name of my film company and when my brother got me a website for my birthday years ago that was the name he selected to get for me.
So, I am going to get back into making home movies and films and this site is my effort to help others that desire to create movies when they are working alone and without a budget.