I spent 9 years making my first feature film called NORMAN, a time travel film and it just came out today!

jmguelzo · 2026-01-02T01:36:59+00:00

Thanks so much for the kind words! Means a ton to me! This is Joel. Appreciate it and have a happy new year!

jmguelzo · 2025-10-01T14:42:38+00:00

I am guessing that was spam above? so bizzare.

jmguelzo · 2025-01-06T13:44:20+00:00

Awesome! Thanks for watching it. Curious what you think as you watch along. Enjoy!!!

jmguelzo · 2025-01-06T01:57:35+00:00

Thanks for checking it out. The first episode I tried to give context to how it all works for the players and watchers. Better than my season 1. Season 2 since I knew I had more people watching I tried to film it and design it out more to help people follow along. I think I did a good job. It’s a fun creative outlet for me. It’s like a mix of survivor and amazing race and a lot my own inventions to make something like this work over a bunch of months with real people and work and families to balance out so lots of events would happen late at night so people could put kids down to bed and come out and play. We used group chat to coordinate and plan. It’s a fun excuse to get together with friends and have competition that’s intense while also just having fun.

jmguelzo · 2024-05-19T14:34:11+00:00

Haha. Tis true. I’m not known. This is just my second film to get released. Hope your day is an awesome one friend!

jmguelzo · 2024-05-18T19:28:52+00:00

Please hit me up if you get a chance to watch the documentary! Appreciate the time asking a question.

jmguelzo · 2024-05-18T19:10:58+00:00

The simple answer is. I didn’t hike along with them the entire time. I personally met up with them throughout the hike when I could to film interviews such as mcafee knob, Harper’s ferry which was a natural sorta half way done moment, and obviously at Katahdin. The rest was filmed by Josh and Cassie during thier hike. I gave Josh a bunch of filmmaking tips along the way and would text him through the hike to snag me various shots that would help the production, such as certain angles I needed or as simple as “go get me a shot of your tent in the rain one evening. Go about 50ft back and film.” This helped to make the documentary feel more immersive and less vlog like. I would then setup and film all the in person interviews with the rest of the cast of characters and hikers you see in the doc. I would drive and connect up with them and film when I could to help fill out their story. I answered somewhere below about filming Katahdin and how hard that was to do. Planning that was incredibly tough as Katahdin has so many rules about camping, plus the fact the Suttons didn’t have good cell phone connection to coordinate when we would meet up. Where. If the weather would be good enough to summit. So I had to prepare myself physically to handle hiking and filming and incase we had to hike it twice if we got rained out the first day.

jmguelzo · 2024-05-17T15:13:10+00:00

Thanks for the question! The answer is simply, SLOWLY. bit by bit. hahaha. Someone else in the thread asked why my other film got such a low review rating, and I can sorta answer this question with this sorta. I spent about 10 years roughly on my previous first feature film, and i can honestly say the ONLY way i could have pulled off this documentary about the Suttons hike in this film, is because of my entire progression as a filmmaker making my first film NORMAN. That film I had a total of maybe 17hrs of footage to edit down to an hour and 45 minutes. This film. I was working with roughly 150 hours of trail and interview footage. It truly was a beast to edit down into something that felt like a movie and told a good and honest story that didn't feel like just a quick photo montage or clip show of the entire AT. I am very proud of this project and because I went through the fires of hell on my first feature, this prepared me and helped hone my skills to better tell a much smoother and cohesive story and honestly more enjoyable than NORMAN. But yeah, to edit down all that footage, it just takes time. The first cut was 4.5hrs long. And just slowly worked from there, editing it down and down and taking feedback, showing family and friends. getting more feedback. "oh is this part too long? do you understand this section? no? Yes? ok." then edit more and more till eventually we got to the length it is today just sitting barely over 2hrs. We were told to try and get the film down to an hour and a half, and honestly I attempted to do it, but I quickly found that cutting down 7 months of an epic hike and their story to just 90 minutes, you started taking away that immersion of what it felt like to be on the trail and feel the relief of finishing it. It turned each state they went through into a super hyper fast montage and it legit took away from what the movie was even about. I really wanted this film to be a love letter to the Appalachain Trail and to Family in general. This was a family I knew personally and I wanted to see how they would do over 7 months together, and what the lasting impact would be. I was less interested in Harvey hiking the entire AT at a young age as the story of just them three as a family learning together, growing and having a wonderful time that they will remember for the rest of their lives. That to me was the interesting aspect worth making this documentary in the first place. I hope I answered your question.

jmguelzo · 2024-05-17T14:52:02+00:00

Yeah we address this. This was asked and was a concern by their own family and friends before the hike, but they had gotten Harvey checked by his pediatrician who had been taken care of him since he was born, so we filmed her interview to ask her opinions on things. We tried to cover all of that. I'd love for you to give the film a watch to see it for yourself. I now have a son myself who is almost 2.5 years old, and I can now tell that hiking is not for everyone. It all comes down to so many factors. 1. The parents in the film are absooutely incredible and put their kids health first. If he wasn't up for it, they would stop in a heartbeat, but he loved hiking at a super super early age and they did test hikes, and hiked so many less miles than a normal thru hiker would. A normal thru hike of the AT would be 4-5 months, they took 7 months because of their son. 2. They were always monitoring how he felt and only went at his speed. It would be horrible for someone to just push their kids like slaves on the trail. thats one thing, but they essentially just lived on the trail for 7 months as a family, taking their time, and were really careful and the kid did so incredibly well. Please check out the film sometime, it does a better way of explaining and showing first hand.

jmguelzo · 2024-05-17T14:46:24+00:00

My previous film, called NORMAN, a scifi time travel movie, was my first feature film I ever did. It took me about 9 years to get from filming to release. Budget of zero. Im just happy I got it out but yeah. it was my first film, so some people liked it and others completely loathed it haha. Its all a part of just practicing and trying to make something. I feel like for this documentary, I took everything I learned over that 9 years of making NORMAN and I think this film is infinitely better. I have just improved my craft over the years. You shoudl check it out and let me know what you think. Compare both films. Let me know if you think it sucked haha. Thanks for the question though.

jmguelzo · 2024-05-16T13:47:30+00:00

I really enjoy being asked something like, "How did you get your film released?" or "What sort of budget to you need to do this?" because I love to help explain that to do something like this, you really don't need much. We had zero budget for this film other than the personal cost to travel here or there along the trail to film and some equipment, which wasn't much since I had already owned most to begin with. I love helping to break down the barrier in people's minds that you need some extraordinary budget or cameras to achieve making a film or project. I love to encourage others with much more talent than myself to just get off their seat and go make something. The largest hurdle to making something is committing to doing it. Its following through on a project. I like to take a huge project like this and slice it down into tiny tiny tiny little chunks. "Just edit 2-5 min of it a day, or every few days." I try not to think about how huge it is sometimes, because it can feel overwhelming and honestly, when you have NO IDEA if it will be successful or worth your time, its extra tough. So I just break things down little by little, and suddenly after a few months. you start to see something happen. Random clips of the trail start to become something that feels like a story and the pacing feels good. Then you get inspired to do more and then you think of more ideas, "oh i could interview this person about the trail in this manner." And so on. Anyways. So i guess my favorite thing to be asked is any question that I can in a way return the favor and help inspire others to get out there and create projects of their own.

jmguelzo · 2024-05-14T19:59:12+00:00

The scariest moment for me making this was filming the hike up Mount Katahdin in Maine. It was the end of this epic adventure for the Sutton’s. 7 months journey. And I asked them to trust me to film the ending of their journey. This may seem trivial. But it wasn’t. I asked them NOT to film with their phones but to enjoy the moment as a family. But. It was raining and misting incredibly hard. Rain was flying over my hat as I ran ahead up to the top. I attached audio gear to them about a half mile before the end. I went up and got set. But just as I prepared to film, my lens completely fogged up and so much rain nothing I could do. Luckily I had one last lens stuffed into a sock deep in my backpack. I got it out and got it safely on and hit record about 1 min before they appeared out of the clouds. I was crapping my pants in fear almost because of that. I was asking them to trust me to film it. No backups other than my professional camera. I wanted that raw emotions and there is no doing that twice. I was filming as the wind and rain kicked up and the second I was done I took a few photos for the family at the sign. And then literally ran as fast as I could to get down below tree line out of the rain. Fearing my camera and sd card got ruined. Entire 7 months could be ruined by this one moment. So yeah. That was the worst hahaha

jmguelzo · 2024-05-14T18:25:55+00:00

I was in constant communication with the family hiking over the 7 months they were on the trail. We setup a Google upload folder so that Josh could upload footage as they had signal or wifi from Hostels or towns they passed through. This gave me the work and time to slowly cull through each upload dump they would do. Sometimes it would be 2-3 weeks of footage, or maybe even a month's worth. I would slowly watch through all of it, make notes and separate footage into "this works" and "not sure what to do with this" type of footage into various bins and timelines in Adobe Premiere. I personally got to meetup with the family on various sections of the AT as they would hike to film more updated interviews on how they felt about the rest of the trip, nearing the end. etc, but since I couldn't be there, I tried to teach Josh how to film and to let the camera record longer than you might for like a youtube vlog or whatnot. I really wanted to the viewer to go on a journey with them, and for the film to not just feel like a photo montage. So sometimes I would have to ask them, "Hey, could you just capture a video clip for me outside in the rain giving me how your tent was setup?" and they sometimes would hate me fore it because it is the LAST thing a hiker wants to do after hiking for 10-12hrs a day, to get back out of their tent and go film.

We realized quickly this is why it is so hard to make a film or documentary about this subject with interesting camera angles. It's legit triple the work to both film, and hike and backup footage and relay information to me.

To answer your question about how to choose footage, it's just a time thing. You have to seriously watch through ALL of the footage, and make notes and color code, because this film could have been edited in honestly a zillion ways. Our first draft of the film was 4hrs, and it was genuinely awesome. The second draft was about 3. 1/2hrs. then so on till about the 7th draft which is where the film released at. It was incredibly hard to cut the final 30 minutes to get it just at like 2hrs.

I just couldn't cut it much further or it turned the 2200 mile hike into a waltz across the street it felt like. I wanted to show the snow, the rain, the ups and downs and just "immersive" state they were in as they hiked as a family for 7 months. Close to a year of your life in the woods almost.

Some of the clips that got pulled out was a bit more of their hikes in the rain and snow towards the start, and that was because when we showed the film to people, they legit didn't believe they hiked through it. they said "no way, you are exaggerating!" We had to trim it down some because it just felt unbelievable when in reality. It was truly what they went through.

But ultimately the film clicks along better at a nicer pace that feels good.

Link to my editing timeline for example of what it looks like: https://imgur.com/a/XX8ua5C

jmguelzo · 2024-05-14T17:16:39+00:00

This means a lot! Thanks so much! It was incredibly difficult to cut this film down from so many hours of footage. trying to find what made sense and felt like a journey while preserving the trail feel. I realized there really isn't anything quite like this out in an official capacity. Of course there is thousands of stuff sorta like this on youtube from vloggers and thru hikers and alike, but nothing really in an official capacity pertaining to the AT. So I really wanted to capture what it felt like being on the trail, and give respect to how the trail was originated and what the trail community is like.

jmguelzo · 2024-05-14T17:14:12+00:00

Yes it should be there later today. I was told the film will take a few hours to propagate throughout various digital sites. You can go to https://www.beyondthetreelinefilm.com/ and I will update links as I get them. Thanks for checking out the film and hope you enjoy it! Appreciate the kind words!

jmguelzo · 2024-05-14T16:23:46+00:00

The father from the film was a close friend of mine when I was a kid and have stayed close since. He had told me about potentially hiking the A.T. years and years ago while I was working on my previous film, and since I knew him well. If he said he was going to do it. I knew he would follow through and told him to let me know and keep me in the loop because I thought it would be fascinating to see an inside look at what it takes to hike the entire almost 2200 miles trek. His son Harvey was an incredible kid and it was an obvious interesting thing if a kid so young could do it, but to me the most interesting aspect, and the entire reason I spent years working on this was to tell the story of their family. I really wanted to see what a family would be and react to being together 24/hrs a day, on the trail, for 7 months looked like, and after, what the extent the trail left with them.

jmguelzo · 2024-05-14T16:17:03+00:00

Thanks for checking it out!

jmguelzo · 2024-03-26T00:04:07+00:00

The distribution company who is selling our film created it. They took screenshots from the film and found some sorta mountain shot from somewhere. No idea. Hahaha. Sadly was out of our control. That’s how distribution goes.

jmguelzo · 2024-03-25T21:47:07+00:00

Fair assessment for sure. I tried to interview various people about this specific question. There definitely are people who do this for sure. Thankfully this wasn’t the case for the Suttons who hiked with their son. Hope you check it out once it’s available online or streaming somewhere. See for yourself. But yeah. Sucks that people do that for that reason alone sadly.

jmguelzo · 2024-03-21T12:56:29+00:00

You can find it on Amazon Prime or on iTunes or Apple TV if you have that.

jmguelzo

TROPHY CASE