There are many reasons why one decides to take a journey, be it out of desire, need, emotion, guilt, curiosity or simply to challenge oneself. Whatever the reason, it is often a very personal one. The journey of this short film “ninety-one” is certainly no exception.

Having spent a number of years as a script supervisor — working diligently on many television series and feature films — I decided it was high time that I get on with my own ability to tell a story. While I have enjoyed my work, feel like I have an amazing base from which I can draw. I needed to challenge myself; I wanted more. I knew I was hooked after making my first short film, “moment,” which has screened at numerous festivals around the world.

“Ninety-one” initially came about because my best friend, Suesan Danesh, who is my writing partner, had an idea about friends sharing childhood memories at a dinner party.

With 35 locations, 33 speaking roles and a shooting sched that included travel to five major cities, “Five Star Day’s” script was definitely ambitious. Its modest budget was an additional challenge.

Some would argue that the hardest aspects of filmmaking (especially a feature) are raising the money or attaching talented actors; finding the right locations; deciding between shooting with film vs. digital; having the proper permits, insurance, travel itineraries, etc. I believe, however, that one of the hardest aspects of making a good film is to always remember, once the camera starts rolling — despite the chaos and thousands of decisions being hurled your way — to always STOP thinking about anything else going on, DROP everything else from your mind and LISTEN to the actors. Focus 110 percent on the performance and capturing the moment. This was one of the most valuable lessons I learned on-set while making my first feature.

Movies like the live-action sci-fi adventure films that I grew up on are hard to find today unless you look at animation. “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial,” “Explorers,” “The Last Starfighter” — if these movies were made today, they would probably be done by Pixar. And, while animation has grown exponentially from the days of my youth, there is still a unique charm that films have when the characters are real. For me, “The Legacy” was a tribute to these movies — the movies that made me want to become a filmmaker.

In writing this film, I tried to channel my 10-year-old self as much as possible. I really wanted this film to be from a child’s perspective and show the amazing capacity that children have for believing in extraordinary things. So the question was, what was I thinking about when I was 10 years old? Three things came to mind: family, Superman and movies.

“When the World Breaks,” about the Great Depression, is my first project not purely about music or art. (I did, however, compose the score and interview a bunch of artists for it.) Still, for me, pretty much everything connects to music. I remember way back in music school, we got together to hear a resident composer play his new piece. After he'd finished, a professor said the whole concept felt like Adam Smith's "invisible hand." Now, I was just a young musician with no clue who Adam Smith was or how his hand could be invisible, so I tracked down and thumbed “Wealth of Nations” and was intrigued by it enough that economics eventually became one of my geekier hobbies. So when two producers offered me a gig helming a film about the 1930s, I didn't hesitate. I was happy to dig into such a formative period in American society, art and identity.

I didn’t know there was a real Gidget until I began researching a feature for Surfer Magazine about Hollywood’s long relationship with surfing. The thrust of the article was that many Hollywood figures, including Jackie Coogan, Peter Lawford and James Arness, were surfers. A footnote was that there was an actual Gidget — Kathy Kohner Zuckerman, daughter of Frederick Kohner who wrote the landmark novel “Gidget.”

The real and the unreal Gidget stories are essentially the same: A young girl goes to Malibu, befriends an all-male group of surfers, learns to surf, and falls in love with one of the young men. The novel surpassed Jack Kerouac's “On the Road” on the Los Angeles Times Top Ten Best Sellers list, and inspired a film and TV franchise that spanned almost three decades. In 1999, I began discussing with Kathy an authorized film about her life and the evolution of the Gidget icon.

We set out to tell the story of a dream from the point of view of the dreamer, an amnesiac young woman who wakes up on the footprints of the Chinese Theatre. Her yellow brick road would be Hollywood Boulevard. Her “guides” would be the denizens of the boulevard who exist so close, yet so far, from Oz. Her goal would be the truth to her identity, the reason for her return and the choice to begin again.

After broadly piecing it together, I set out to write, spending about six weeks to get to a first draft. But … I would make this film only if people responded to the script. Fortunately, they did. From there, the Cinematheque said yes to shooting at the Egyptian. Small-business owners like Shelly Café, Hollywood Book & Poster and Snow White Café also let us shoot at their establishments. The rest was shot on the street by a crew and camera so small that even tourists didn’t bother to gawk.

I signed on to Twitter in January of 2009 … and became, for want of a better word, addicted! The day my wife told me dinner was ready via tweet from the next room, I decided to stop. But there was something I liked about it, its conciseness, its expedience and the ability to communicate with a lot of people at once in short bursts. I started to wonder if I might be able to tap into its uses and do something more constructive and valuable.

So being a filmmaker, I naturally wondered how I might use it to make a film. I thought about it for a few days. Then one sleepless night an idea landed fully formed in my brain and propelled me out of bed to the nearest notepad, where I wrote down the idea that developed into “140.” One hundred forty people in 140 locations worldwide shooting 140 seconds of continuous footage. The theme: Connection.

Who hasn’t had a day where “everything breaks down in a bucket of hell”? We’ve all had such an experience. But what are the odds that two people move into a NYC apartment and the very next day have four uninvited guests ring the doorbell and be systematically annihilated in the dining area, right before the flabbergasted couple’s eyes? Well, you say, it is New York City after all. But still …

The magician behind this “bucket of hell” is Danish-born Joachim Back, the seriously hilarious director of the 2010 Academy Award-winning short “The New Tenants.” Back’s ability to find humor in adversity comes from overcoming personal tragedy. “When I recall the absurdity of my own existence, I understand life better. I lost my dad at an early age. In fact, death played a major role throughout my life. The way I look at it, everyone will end up in a box someday, so we need to find humor in this!”

Lovers Ray Yale (David Roberts) and Carla Smith (Claire van der Boom), both trapped in loveless marriages, plan to run away together. Ray insists they delay their plans until he acquires enough money to ensure financial security in their new life. As Carla grows impatient, the duo devises a strategy to steal money from Carla's husband (Anthony Hayes), a small-time gangster. After Ray hires Billy (Joel Edgerton) to burn down Carla's home to cover the theft, things go horribly awry.

Though littered with standard noir tropes, the Edgertons anchor their tale with an engaging parallel plot line involving two canines. According to director Nash: “Really, it's a dog love story with a bunch of humans added around it. I love dogs. Joel does, too. In the first draft he wrote, the dog love story was in the film. … I added more. … It's definitely satisfying to see how well it worked.”

Director James Ivory talks about “The City of Your Final Destination” and literary adaptations of great novels. “[This film] was born in a very simple way — someone put this book in my pocket, thinking that I would have liked it and that maybe I would possibly stretch a film of it. And he was right. Apart from the time beyond history, the characters and the scenes, … I was impressed by the South American setting. At that time, Ismail was still with us [Ismail Merchant, the Indian producer and Ivory’s lifelong assistant, who passed away on May 25, 2005] and we thought it would be easy to find important actors for this film — a necessary condition to sell it, as you know. I hadn't read anything by him, but since that day I have read all his works. Together with screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, we started to conceive the film.”