Just Say No was an action thriller movie my friends and I made in middle school. It turned into an never-ending project, and ultimately convinced me that I was happier working on prose fiction, where you don’t have to worry about crap like actors forgetting their lines, actors constantly glancing at the cameraman, actors being unavailable because their parents have taken them to Cape Cod for the weekend, and, most annoying of all, the family who owns the camera moving repeatedly in the course of making the movie.
If anyone cares, here’s the climactic finale, in which a pair of psychopathic drug dealers perform a home invasion and murder the only witness to their crimes, only to get caught up in a violent shootout with police.
You forgot “how difficult it was to fill female roles” with only one sister among the lot of us and “the lack of editing equipment” meaning scenes in one take or else.
Despite all the issues, I thought it was a rather fun experience.
Also I recall the previews ended up being better than the actual movie…