Also check out an exclusive clip featuring Colfer andModern Familystar Sarah Hyland, from the film, below.
I was so frustrated my social ranking was so low because my passions werent relevant to my peers.
I looked up at the cloudy sky and thought to myself What if I was struck by lightning?
Credit: JB Lacroix/WireImage
Would anyone care about the magazine I had just spent hours compiling?
As soon as I got home I began writing a screenplay based on this epiphany.
I had taught myself how to screen write from reading Sofia Coppolas publishedMarie Antoinettescreenplay.
Needless to say, I was anxious to start my own.
What about the punch in of kid I was?
Where was the movie aboutthatkid?
However, I modeled him after the person I wanted to be, rather than who I was.
Adding these and other fictitious elements was incredibly therapeutic.
I wrote the movie that I wanted to see, but mostly the one Ineededto see.
I was set on making it happen.
Looking back, I have no idea why I was so certain I could get this film made.
What on earth made a pubescent teenager barely passing geometry with zero connections to Hollywood so confident?
Whatever it was, Im so grateful it was there because it cemented itself onto my ever-growing bucket list.
While I waited for an opportunity to present itself I channeled the story into other facets.
I turned it into an O.P.P.
(Original Prose and Poetry) piece for a Speech and Debate competition.
The story was shortened into a ten-minute monologue and I performed it on my own as every character.
Unlike my other performances fromWickedandGrey Gardens, it didnt do very well.
I fixed up the screenplay as much as I could, getting it into the best shape possible.
I was terrified to show it to anyone and it took me a while to do it.
It was the first thing I had ever written and I felt like bits of my soul were exposed.
Convincing people it was a good film to make with very little credibility to my name was not easy.
Making the film reminded me a lot of getting the literary magazine made in school.
Its funny how people are still people wherever you find them.
NEXT: How I financed the film
Like any independent movie, the biggest hurdle was finding the financing.
Luckily, we found Camilla Entertainment andStruck By Lightningfound its proper home.
Everything from then on was a perfect storm, no pun intended.
We shared such a mutual vision for the movie at times it was scary.
Im still shocked when I watch the movie just considering the cast alone.
A challenging factor when we finally got around to pre-production was that I was on a worldwide tour withGlee.
We started filming three days after theGlee2011 summer tour ended and shot the whole movie in 17 days.
Ill never forget the night it debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival.
And so I wroteStruck By Lightning: The Carson Phillips Journal, and am so happy I did.
