Living in LA has a lot of downsides: Traffic, state income tax, Instagram influencers.

It also has a lot of upsides: the weather, seeing movies before the rest of the nation, making fun of Instagram influencers.

Breaking the bubble and “getting out of your comfort zone” can be sexy on a blog post, but it also really really really really REALLY really sucks. Kasey (my HOT girlfriend, I added the ‘hot’ because I’m insecure with my identity so I want everyone to know I date a fire DIME certified hottie, and because she is) has cried a lot since we’ve moved.

I’ve cried much more. I counted. I’m lonely. Hold me.

It does suck. And there’s not a lot you can do in the moment except wait it out. Learn to not just start sobbing uncontrollably when you’re cut off in traffic, remind yourself that you moved here for a reason, and take deep breaths (even if it’s of polluted smog-filled air).

I’ve also learned to remind myself to go back to the basics, do what I love, challenge myself and aim for new things creatively. One of the cooler things in LA is my proximity to filmmaking resources. It’s one of the big reasons why I moved here in the first place. When you don’t have friends, you have film.

Cue Super 8: It’s definitely not new. And I’m definitely not breaking any filmmaking barriers by using it. It’s a simple home video camera and film from the 60s, that was experimented with by many child-filmmakers back in the day: J.J. Abrams, Spielberg, etc. And now it’s used by hipsters and film nerds everywhere (like me).

I, however, have had a lot of fun shooting on it. In a world where we can film for hours on our phones at an unnecessarily high quality, it’s a fun challenge to have only 50ft of frames (about 3.5 minutes) that is far too expensive for a poor filmmaker like me. And it’s exciting waiting for the film to develop and bring it home to watch. It’s weird how we’ve worked so hard to make things faster and easier for ourselves, but we’re actually more attracted and excited to the less ubiquitous delayed gratification of things, but what do I know?

So with that, I give you my Super 8 Italia series. Highlighting 3 cities we visited in Italy Rome, Capri, and Florence.

Ciao.

I’m excited to make more of these.