The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, while the single documentary idea often leads to an edit of a thousand hours.

Today is the first day of REAL pre-production on "Them That Work," my documentary about the film "Matewan" and more importantly its impact on West Virginia and the filmmakers there. I have pages filled with names of people I'm going to be interviewing and places I'll be shooting. It's very exciting.

And incredibly daunting. Having never really worked in documentary film, I remember asking Morgan Spurlock how long it took to produce "Super Size Me." Before he could even answer I suddenly realized how quickly it happened. Thanksgiving of one year to submitting to Sundance in September of the next year.

While that should be a managable timeframe, I am reminded of the other great phrase from my childhood - haste makes waste. So, instead of pushing to get into Sundance or Full Frame or anything else, I am going to shoot everything I can this summer and start the edit in August and finish when it's done.

Thank you in advance to everyone who will be helping and supporting me on this journey. I appreciate it now and I will love you for it later.

j.brown