Everyone knows of the glamorous life of making movies in Hollywood - the big stars, millions of dollars to film each movie, and then making even more money when the film is released in a flurry of commercials and advertisements.

However, this is the life of only a few lucky filmmakers. Most people making movies see a very different world. These people work extremely hard every day just to make barely enough money to budget their films, and then these films are shown in only a few places.

Children's Express went to the Heartland Film Festival and spoke with three of these people whose films were being shown there.

Michael Sporn is an animator who does a lot of half-hour shows for HBO. His seven-minute film Monty tells the story of an alligator who gets no respect from the children he takes to school.

Ron Pereira is a director who also gears his films to a young audience. His short film Kid is about how a 6-year-old boy, unhappy about being sent to live with his grandparents, makes fast friends with an uncle.

Lastly, we interviewed Lawrence Johnston, an Australian writer/director who made the film Eternity, about a loner who writes "Eternity" in beautiful script on city streets for everyone to ponder.

Unfortunately, these movies probably won't be coming to a theater near you. But you can learn here what it is like to be a struggling filmmaker.

HOW THEY GOT STARTED

MICHAEL SPORN: I've been doing (animation) since I have a memory, I guess. When I was 12 I worked for a summer in a job delivering groceries, and (I) saved up enough money to buy a $10 movie camera and started filming the animation that I had been doing before then.

LAWRENCE JOHNSTON: I left school when I was 15 and I worked for Twentieth Century Fox preparing films. . . . I did that for three years, and I kind of worked on magazines as an artist and then applied to film school. Since then I've been developing scripts and writing scripts.

RON PEREIRA: I've never gone to film school, but I went to art school, and then after art school I got a job as a graphic designer and worked as a graphic designer for a while and then got a job in an advertising agency and just did ads for like Chevron and shopping centers.

During that job sometimes they would ask me to do storyboards for television commercials, and I like doing that. . . . And so I would do those and I got interested in making my own films from doing that. Then I stopped working at the advertising agency and tried to put together my own short films, and I've just been doing that.

TYPICAL DAY

SPORN: I have a studio, so I have about eight employees that have to be fed basically. So a lot of it is dealing with that type of work, business work, trying to get jobs going and then when the job comes in, then making sure everybody is drawing in a style that they're supposed to and supervising them, while doing my own drawings usually at night because I don't have that much time during the day.

(I carry each film) through from recording to soundtrack, doing all the drawings and animation for the film to the final editing of the film. So, there are really no typical days. They're all different. . . . I have maybe 15 projects in the works.

PEREIRA: A typical day for me during filming is just trying to be calm and prepared and not letting all the outside distractions (in), because there's about a million things that can go wrong. . . . Keep your mind focused on what you want to communicate in the film.

JOHNSTON: It varies. It's like whether you're actually making a film or whether you're preparing a film and that's quite difficult - just coming up with the ideas or writing the script or talking to somebody that you might want to photograph the film.

DIFFICULTIES IN MAKING FILMS

PEREIRA: I would save up a certain amount of money - not nearly as much as it takes to do a film, but I'd get a good start. And then I'll take that money and make an investment in some part of the film, usually the equipment or film stock.

Then I'll get on the phone and just tell my friends to meet us six weeks from now on a certain street at a certain time and we're going to begin filming. And then I'd force myself to figure it out and do it, because your whole life can go by without you doing something.

JOHNSTON: In Australia, we're incredibly lucky because we have film commissions. Like if you want to start out making films, you can go to film school or you can write a script and go to film commissions and try to get money to develop the script.

SPORN: You (sell) off bits and pieces of the film to put (together) a package to make the budget. . . . HBO will buy the broadcast rights just to the United States. The home video company will buy the home video rights to just the United States, and then I can sell to Europe to try to raise the very little money I need to make my films.

JOHNSTON: There's a lot of things you need to know about bureaucracies in terms of what funds films, you know, where the money can possibly come from.

PEREIRA: It's worth it, but it's such a long process that it'll go for the rest of your life.

SPORN: I think you have to want to do it more than almost eating sometimes. When you can't afford to eat, you can still (find the money) to make the film.

The world is constantly trying to stop you from making a film, and you have to be the one to keep making it. You have to tell the world that "you're wrong and this film is going to be great" and you got to keep doing it.

PEREIRA: I've stolen. I remember I used to steal some sound stock - which is a sound module to record sound - out of people's lockers in film school because you just didn't have much money.

FILM FESTIVALS

JOHNSTON: It's fantastic to come to the festival really. . . . You just see the audience, hear them, watching the film.

SPORN: The world's gotten to be like big companies, giant companies that are in charge of making films and showing the films and they own the TV stations and it's all locked up. Well, film festivals in a way are starting to fall into this. What's the point of having Pulp Fiction here when tomorrow you can go see it at a theater?

PEREIRA: I think that this is a very rewarding experience because without festivals like this one, then there is no place for independent films. . . . Film festivals are vital, and I'm grateful to be here. EDITED BY: Aaron Shackelford, 16 ASSISTANT EDITORS: Cindy Dyar, 14; Katie Bell, 14