Sometimes I get pretty excited — particularly when I can see the future starting to grow concrete right before my eyes. Sometimes it seems we can run right off the cliff into open space and lo and behold the road grows beneath you. I gave
Tag: A2E
1 down, 99 to go. I look forward to the day when the need for A2E is no longer. But that sure ain’t now. We need to launch new iterations in new locations with new participants. We need to build on what has started. We need to put the entrepreneurial knowledge into the filmmakers’ tool kit. We need to make filmmakers as savvy with the platforms as they are with the creative aspects. If we want a sustainable, diverse, and ambitious filmmaking culture, we need to make sure that the creators and their supporters are the direct financial beneficiaries of the work they generate.
Here’s the initial wrap of round one. Much more to come:
Note: If you’d like to share this post, this is the shortened link: http://bit.ly/AlterCreative
If we want to move forward, we need to recognize where we are currently standing, and adapt our behavior to the reality we encounter.
Warning: Such recognition, often makes people think everything is getting worse. That simply is not true; that is just nostalgia playing havoc with your perception. There never were good old days because back then people still needed to find best practices too. They did not know then what you know now, just as those coming down the pike will have full benefit of all your excavation tomorrow. So be it.
So…
- This is an Era of Grand Abundance. There are more things to do than ever before. Everything is competing for increasingly limited available leisure time. As many of 50,000 feature film titles are generated on a worldwide basis annually. Good movies don’t get seen.
- Movies are not the dominant option for leisure time activities for most people.
Note: If you’d like to share this article, this is the short link: http://bit.ly/FilmBizRealities
On May 2nd, 2013, I launched the A2E (Artist To Entrepreneur) program at the San Francisco Film Society with OnRamp (The Direct Distribution Lab). This is a pilot lab of a pilot program designed to give filmmakers the necessary entrepreneurial skills to achieve a sustainable creative life amidst this changing paradigm. We will be working out some bugs but I hope to launch the second iteration as soon as possible (but to do so requires some support, both financial and otherwise, so if you know anyone or any organization that might be interested in advancing film culture and enterprise, please do send them my way!).
As part of the lab, we have a first day of big ideas and case studies that hopefully will give the participants the foundation for a design for living and thriving on their art. As part of that I have prepared three brief lectures focused on what every filmmaker needs to recognize about the business, the culture, and their practice if they want to have a sustainable creative life. Split between the three categories, I came up with fifty things you should know. I will provide them to you over the next week or two, but I wish you all could have been there. It’s always different when you are in the room.
Today, I will unleash what I think it is necessary to recognize about our industry if you are a filmmaker looking to survive from the work you generate.
WARNING: taking any of these points out of context, could create unnecessary fear or depression. If you want to
We have lived so long in the era of the inverted pyramid that we don’t yet recognize that the pipes have all burst. For the last twenty-plus years the number of movies made each year increases, but the number of movies theatrically distributed remained around the same. But theatrical release — or even a festival premiere — does not a movie make.
No matter what camp you sit in — artist, audience, or industry — the onslaught of titles now available to you is nothing short of devastating. We miss more than we see, and forever will. It is a flood and no one is throwing us life rafts.
All the new digital platforms and social media tools have effectively crushed the dam. It was a barrier that needed crushing, but
