The $50 Camcorder and the Art of Just Doing

In 1986, I sat at our family’s Apple IIe, the glow of the monitor flickering as I typed a screenplay for a monster epic called The Zombie in Black, copies printed dot-matrix printer paper. My cast? My siblings and our neighbor Chris. My budget? Time.

My dad, an independent consultant working from home, knew spring break meant a week of noisy kids. After my pitch, he rented a VHS camcorder from the local video store for $50—with one condition: we stayed outside all day. The camera was a shoulder-mounted tank balanced on my sixth-grade frame. With no way to edit, every scene had to be captured in a single take.

My sister—the best actor in the family—played the zombie, a role with no lines. She shuffled in our mom’s old clothes and jewelry, 70s boots, topped with a pirate hat turned inside out.

I had no formal training in screenwriting, pre-production, or directing (and there was certainly no post-production). No film books. No internet tutorials. Just a kid absorbing what I loved from 1980s movies and making my own version.  

Ironically, I wasn’t even a horror fan—scary scenes stuck in my head too long—but somehow, a misunderstood monster in ragged black clothes was exactly what I had to make. I’ve always been drawn to monsters—misunderstood or not—whether it was the Creature from the Black Lagoon, Godzilla, or the Kraken from Clash of the Titans. Maybe that’s why my first movie had one lumbering through the backyard in my mom’s old clothes.

We even hosted a neighborhood premiere. The living room smelled like popcorn, the VCR hummed. My brother had the foresight to save the tape and later transfer it to a digital version.

That spark—raw, unpolished, and purely for fun—has followed me into my career in game design and creative projects, though with fewer zombies.

When we’re kids, we just do. We don’t overthink. We don’t chase perfection or “market fit.” We create because it’s fun, because it feels possible, because why not? Somewhere along the way, adulthood teaches us to hesitate.

Maybe it’s time to unlearn that—and pick up the metaphorical camcorder to make something bold, messy, and entirely ours. One take. No editing.