When I was 21, I directed my first feature film, To Freddy, as a film student—and I tried to do it on a $500 budget. In this video I break down the whole process: why I decided to go feature-length in the first place (I wasn’t satisfied with shorts), how I wrote the script during summer break, and how I kept it realistic by casting my fellow film students before writing. I also talk about writing to our limitations—like changing the main location from a cabin to a tent in the woods—because it was simply what we could access. I go through production from August to October 2019 with a tiny crew (sometimes literally just me on camera and one person on sound), and how that forced choices like limited coverage and occasional one-take scenes. We shot on a Sony F7 in HD, not log, because I didn’t really know what I was doing yet and I wanted the look baked into the image. I also share what worked (natural light in the forest, grounded performances) and what didn’t (weather delays, too many shooting days). Then I cover post-production with a hard deadline, the painful first screening where half the room left, and the festival journey: lots of rejections until we pivoted to genre festivals, got into Nightmares, and suddenly found an audience that was open to low-budget thrillers. The biggest regret: we didn’t understand sales agents or distribution, so the film basically ended up shelved.