The Road to Double Wide Part 1: Blame it on Spielberg

I may have skimmed through the history of Double Wide Productions earlier. But I want to bring a little more detailed history and share my story about what got me thinking about Films, Making Films, and the Education that shaped me to the filmmaker I (Andrew Gomez) am today.  

I remember playing in my Grandma Rose's backyard recreating the T-Rex scene from Jurassic Park (I had the specific car too, though I only got the one, so I was limited in recreating the whole scene) and it was that moment is when I knew I wanted to do something relating the movies.  Not necessarily directing, producing, all I knew was I wanted to make movies, some how.  Though that dream became docile for many years after that, until junior high when I heard about "The Mummy Returns" was being made. 

It was circa 2000 and I was riding the bus home from school, and it dawned on me... what hadn't there been a Creature from the Black Lagoon movie as of late?  Our of the all Universal Monster Movies, they had never remade that movie.  I wanted to make THAT movie.  I just didn't know where to start.  It was then I began reading, researching, and dreaming about movies. 

My Curiousity grew into an obsession..  I knew before graduating high school what the responsibilities of the director was, what the producer was meant to do, and how much crap the real writer takes during production.  

The New York Film Academy is where I received my formal training and discipline.  It was an intense program. For our first projects, we were forced to shoot on 16mm Black and White reversal.  That is where I learned about planning and rehearsing a shot before even rolling.  We had a buy a 200ft. roll of film for each project.  200 feet of film is roughly 2 minutes at 24 Frames Per Second.  And it was rather expensive for a film student, about 50 bucks a roll, including the cost of development and digital transferring.

I was the youngest person in the class at the time, most of the students there were early to mid twenties, and I was eighteen at the time.  During my time there, we all got close together and became a family.  Even when we were separated into groups, those groups in of themselves became a family.  I went to interesting locations all through out New York City and even into West Chester where I met Cher's body double (seriously).  Hell I was on the set of Meet Dave when they were shooting a scene in Times Square.  

At the last day when were all having a Last Supper at this really ritzy Latin (Mexican and Stuff) resturant  and someone asked me, "What are you going to do after this?"

"Well I think I might try and get a job doing commercials or something." 

Saying that reminded me many years ago, when I wanted to be a comic book artist, my Dad telling me, "When you go to college, you can learn to make advertisements for companies while you make comic books and stuff" (and stuff is a common saying in the Gomez/Akley family).  For some reason, I disregarded that, I never thought I'd be wasting my time with advertising.  

The last day in New York is a gloomy day, though I was given a choice to stay in New York if I got a job, though I never had a chance to look because of classes, I came back to San Juan County, NM, when a new chapter would start.  

Below is the Final Film at New York Film Academy.