Mark Grimes and Perry Gruber organized the first-ever Documentary Weekend in Portland, OR on September 26 and 27. I didn’t know anything about filmmaking, so I signed up to meet some new creative people and to learn something about making a documentary. I had an amazing weekend! We filmed two documentaries, a two-minute film on Friday night and a five-minute film on Saturday. So, I guess, now I’m a filmmaker. We were a small group of fifteen participants. We came with different levels of expertise, positive attitudes, iPhone/iPad/professional grade cameras, sound equipment (if we had it), laptops and zero prior planning. No pre-organized teams. No one even knew the topics. Before we were given our first assignment, Matt Monroe (freelance photographer, soundman and founder of Nasty Clamps) gave us a hands-on lesson about what it’s like to be a soundman and techniques to reduce background noise. Then, we paired into teams of two. Our first assignment was to pick a quote and create a documentary around it. Quotes are interesting. Everybody knows them, but not everyone feels strongly enough about them to be inspired with great ideas for a film. After discussing multiple ideas, my partner, Joe Aleman, and I decided to go with: “A way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.” It was Friday night and we were across the street from one of the biggest collection of food carts in Portland; the perfect setting to film a documentary about food. So, Joe pulled out his iPad and I set out to interview different sets of people on the topic. We talked to an older couple, a young couple, a gay couple, a man from Morocco and a single woman. The results were quite comical. My first filmmaking lessons learned: 1)...