Sometimes the best ideas for a film are right under your nose.
I've been wanting to do a story on my daughter's rescue of a horse two years ago. Initially it just started out as a keepsake for her to have to remember the whole experience by. Recently, we've been talking about expanding the scope and trying to show it as a success story of a rescued animal.
One aspect of it that made it interesting initially was that getting this horse via rescue was a bit like finding a valuable painting amongst a bunch of items in a garage sale. She turned out to be the foal of a 3 time world champion jumper. We found out after checking around that she was worth at least 6-8 times the $800 we paid for her at auction.
That's where the joy stopped however. While Belle is a lovely animal, her behavior for the first year and a half was wildly unpredictable. We've since sorted it out and the journey has been a very interesting and instructive example of what it takes to own a horse and why people should give abandoned animals a chance.
Over the past weekend, I told the story to a representative for the American Quarter Horse Association (AQHA) and they were impressed and said that any film that builds awareness of resuced horses would get their full support.
So now it's become a full blown project for me and my daughter Hope, and I've started writing a script that helps frame the story and provides a blueprint for shooting it. It will likely be short form, 20 minutes or less, and if it comes out good enough I may consider entering it in the short form documentary category for some festivals.