I keep thinking back to when I was a kid, right when the whole film craze got into my head. I'd be running around trying to get hold of a small camera or a handycam, anything really, just so we could shoot some videos. Films, I used to call them. Big word for what they actually were. 

Back then the megapixel camera thing was still pretty new. Phones barely had cameras, and even the ones that did were like 0-point-something megapixels, barely clear enough to make out a face. So whenever we found someone who owned a camera phone and was willing to lend it to us, it was a whole event. 

For me that person was Sunilettan. 

He later bought his own camera phone, and after that we were basically always out shooting something together. We'd grab our friends to act, go to whatever location seemed decent enough, and just get going. Lip sync videos mostly, some short films too, with whoever was around, friends, classmates, didn't matter. I remember people lip syncing to Justin Bieber's Baby, or Akon, Enrique, Backstreet Boys, one phone playing the song out loud while I filmed with the other. Sunilettan just handed me his phone and let me be the one holding the camera, which honestly, thinking about it now, was a pretty big thing for him to do. It felt like we were actually making something. That support meant a lot, still does. 

But honestly the fascination started way before Sunilettan came into the picture. 

I was around 6, and I was so into how things looked through a frame that I'd carry this old dummy Nestle camera around, completely non working, just plastic, and stand on my balcony watching the sunrise through it. Just watching. Framing it in my head. My parents never said anything, they'd just quietly let me be. That 2.35:1 ratio in films we see, I obviously didn't know the name for it back then, but something about that shape got me. Still does honestly. 

My brother Canvas was on the flip side of it. He liked being in front of that same dummy camera. We'd take our cycles out, do some stunts, and he'd act like the camera was actually rolling. Nothing was being recorded, obviously, there was nothing to record with. No footage, no proof it ever happened. Just two kids fully committed to something completely made up, putting in real effort for literally nothing at the end of it. We were making these imaginary films in our heads and somehow that was enough. 

I liked looking through the viewfinder, he liked being in front of it. Between the two of us we basically had our own little film set going, years before we had any clue what filmmaking actually was. 

Looking back now, these are some of the memories I hold onto the most. At the time it probably looked like nothing, just two kids messing around with a broken toy camera and a borrowed phone. But I think we got lucky in a weird way, getting a small taste of something as huge as filmmaking without any of the pressure that usually comes with it later. No stress, no overthinking, just excitement for the sake of it. And getting that at such a young age, when your mind isn't weighed down by much, honestly feels like the best part of the whole thing. 

This is just one of many memories from my past I want to keep writing about here. There's a lot more where this came from.