The idea of a debut feature, or project, is always a little tricky. For every technical 'first film' there are a few 'pre-first films' especially for recent generations of filmmakers who have had access to the tools to create stories since... birth. 

How many of us struggled to cobble together a piece of crap in high school or even sooner, just to try and put some ideas on film/vhs/miniDV.... etc?


Well as it turns out, Quentin Tarantino is no different. Back in the 1980s, a young QT was famously working at a video store, but he was also cutting his teeth the way so many of us have. Trying to put together an indie project with some buddies. 

He always had some great dialogue... 

"Ok... I'll watch 'The Partridge Family'... THEN I'll kill myself."

Far Out Magazine wrote up the story recently and included a link to some of the footage from Tarantino's REAL debut... 

The footage was thought to be lost in a fire... but then some of it was recovered and put on YouTube for the world to enjoy. It's possible you've seen it already, it's not NEW. 

I tried to watch it and was struck by how familiar it felt to my own early efforts. When you start out you don't always know how to string together scenes or even dialogue on screen to create a compelling narrative. It takes time. 

It's nice to see the human side of someone who'd find his groove and launch to such later success. You can tell that back in these days QT was still so much of a performer, and his ear for dialogue seemed to be his driving inspiration. 

The first scene is actually... kinda funny. 

Nobody should be judged by their first efforts. It's film #0 that will get you to film #0.1, then 0.2.... then one day you will finally make your first feature film. So hang in there and remember even QT started pretty raw. 

Source: Far Out Magazine