Classical Animation grad Jacob Medjuck is either completely mad or a genius. With a devoted crew that included talented VFS alumni from Film Production, Sound Design, Foundation, and Digital Design, he wrote, directed, and co-starred in his first feature film Summerhood.

Jacob recently gave a special screening of the film and shared some war stories with current VFS students from Film Production, Digital Character Animation, Classical Animation, Acting, and Entertainment Business Management.

Everyone who attended would likely agree that the shooting of Summerhood was not without its drama.

After only two weeks of pre-production, Jacob’s team began to shoot a 140-page script with a large cast of child actors, all of whom had very limited work schedules and “hands-on” entourages. The impending winter weather threatened their filmic illusion of summertime. They were missing a lead actor, which meant Jacob had to step in and direct from in front of the camera. And then, to top it all off, their budget fell apart — coming out of pre-production, they only had a few grand with which to pay everyone.

“Every Monday we had $0, and every Friday we paid our cast,” Jacob explained. While shooting, he spent many lunch hours dialing for dollars, raising money to keep moving forward on his dream project.

In the end, he had a four-hour film that made no sense. It took another couple of years’ worth of re-editing footage before they finally had a film ready for audiences. Then came the challenge of finding distribution — the field to which Jacob now devotes much of his energy.

Not surprisingly, he’s got some interesting plans for the future…

You can read our recent VFS Blog interview with Jacob here or see more images from his talk on VFS’s flickr page here.