Things I’ve Learned as a Moviemaker

by Jacques Thelemaque | Published February 3, 2007

It's not the means or the money, it's the passion and ideas.

If you look at the biggest indie breakouts over the past decade, they were all films done on shoestring budgets with passion and vision. And if you reach back to Cassavetes—and even further back to the European neo-realist and New Wave movements—you see films that were poor on production budget and rich with texture, authenticity, ideas, insight and cinematic mastery.

It's not who you know, but who cares about what you care about.

You'll get support at every juncture of the filmmaking process if you have a point of view about film and the world that those of like minds can rally around. You can "network" all you want and meet "connected" people, but they are useless to you if you are not useful to them. And then you are serving them instead of yourself.

Educate yourself and have something to say.

These two notions go hand in hand. Of course educate yourself technically and artistically about filmmaking. Absolutely. However, also educate yourself about the world. Develop a point of view. And with that, learn how other creatives have expressed their points of view—not just cinematically, but in other artistic disciplines.

Inform your cinematic communication with a broad palette of creative alternatives and life experiences. This is the fastest way to get the world to stand up and take notice of you as a filmmaker. Standing out from the crowd may be lonely at first, but it is the surest way to develop an audience for you as a filmmaker.

Budget for the entire filmmaking process.

Especially if you are a beginning filmmaker, don't just budget through production. Budget for marketing the film at festivals and to distributors and even minimal theatrical distribution and/or DVD self-distribution in case no one picks it up. The point of making film is for it to be seen by audiences. It is insane that filmmakers have never included the exhibition part of the filmmaking process in their budgets and just hoped that someone would pick it up. This is not sound business strategy and needs to be changed now at the filmmaker level. This will change the face of distribution in ways that are unimaginable right now.

Forget the industry. Just make great films.

Don't waste your time looking for them. They will come to you, trust me. Then you can decide what, or what not, to do with them.

SHARE THIS STORY

TAGS
digital

COMMENTS | POST A COMMENT

Latest from the blog:

In Theaters Now: Hancock & The Wackness

This July 4th weekend box office demonstrates what America is all about: Big superheros and movie stars battling it out against a potential independent gem.

Posted 07.4.08 | In Theaters Now | No comments yet...