It’s a pretty rare thing that a director has the opportunity to watch other directors at work. As a crew-member, I had a front row seat to almost every aspect of the job, pre-production through post. I never worked on a film that didn’t teach me something—whether it fell in the “to emulate” or “to avoid at all costs” column. These lessons helped me direct actors, assemble good crews, communicate effectively, have realistic expectations, and generally feel at home on a film set.
Tag: Guest Post
If you asked me how I came to the film world and I told you I essentially started by selling vintage clothing on eBay, you would probably think I answered the wrong question. This myopic line of thinking is exactly why you might think it’s hard to make, sell, and distribute a film. When I started selling on eBay 10 years ago, it was like the Wild Wild West – there were no instruction manuals or established models for success. I was trying to figure out how to sell something that my customers couldn’t touch or feel (or even see that well, as I still had no idea how to operate a camera).
The new world of independent film is looking more and more like this uncharted territory everyday. With existing consumption patterns becoming outdated, crowdfunding emerging as the new normal, and myriad new digital distribution models developing, there’s really no *one* right way to get your film made, sold, or seen.
Here are five things I learned from selling on eBay that might help:
TV is known as a better place for writers than any of the other dramatic media, with the sole exception of the theater, of course. Besides, TV drama is nowadays so highly regarded that it is already changing some of the old rules regarding old industry traditions. The crossover of the boundary between cinema and TV, whereby writers can move once again from one medium to the other, with greater ease, is one of the changes. It remains to be seen whether the crossover experiment will affect the writer’s importance in other media too – especially in film.
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Brand? Oh…
As the democratization of film has made it possible for just about anyone to make a film, it has conversely made it more difficult for the individual filmmaker and his or her films to stand out. Online content platforms now offer a hundred times more films in their catalogs then the films cataloged by IMDb from the inception of film (1,764,727 titles as of 14 Jan 2011). So despite assertions to the contrary, branding is more important than ever.
Filmmakers Are Brands, Their Films Are Products Though difficult for some in a creative pursuit to accept, in the words of Moonstruck (1987): “Snap out of it!” The music world has brands Madonna Louise Ciccone and Joanne Angelina Germanotta, known by their much more memorable brand names, Madonna and Lady Gaga.
So how can you stay true to yourself as a writer, especially when one is supposed to be imitating another writer’s voice? For one thing, one can stop chasing fads or writing what one think the showrunner might want to see. Jane Espenson, who has written for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Battlestar Galactica and Game of Thrones and has also created her own Web TV show, Husbands, talks to me about how important it is to trust your own instincts and your own good taste. She is not the only one: Jenny Bicks encourages “writing what you want to write, going towards the love” and Tom Fontana goes as far as to very simply state that “being successful is being faithful to oneself.”
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Why Filmmakers Fail
As the manager of a group of 10,000 producers, directors and associated industry professionals, one can’t help but notice certain fallacies coming up on a recurring basis. So I’d like to briefly consider the question, what are some of the principal reasons fledgling independent filmmakers fail?
1. BUILDING IT ISN’T ENOUGH While a struggling artist can get by with little more than a canvas or guitar, film requires an enormous investment of time, money and many. “Build it and they will come” just isn’t enough; it’s perhaps the easy part.
Making films is akin to launching a new product. Statistics show that most fail. “All we need is money” isn’t the answer. It requires a marketing plan.
After the collapse of 2008 – entertainment banks began taking less risk – which in turn meant it became more difficult for independent film producers, filmmakers and film sales agents to access the capital (whether equity or debt) they needed to complete, gap, bridge, leverage or develop their project.
Today in 2014 – these same entertainment banks have adjusted their mentalities and aren’t necessarily “evacuating” the niche’s they once partook in — but they are certainly not re-visiting the previous opportunities of the pre-2008 era.
When we launched BondIt in early 2014 – we wanted to provide liquidity for union deposits (SAG, DGA, IATSE, etc…) and we expanded on that model as the demand grew for our services to broaden.
In the past few weeks we’ve begun beta testing our newest form of financing by offering liquidity once more – but this time to filmmakers, sales agencies and individual agents.
