I was fortunate to be selected to participate in the 2009 artist trust EDGE Professional Development Program for Filmmakers. 50 hours of training culminated in a 7 minute presentation to the public at Northwest Film Forum in Seattle. This extensive course covered business and legal issues, marketing, professional presentation, fundraising – most of the critical things that aspiring artists of all stripes try to avoid.
I’ve been making self-funded short films for 5 years now. I am at a point now where I need to use funds other than my own to advance in my filmmaking career. Most of the early projects were primarily learning experiences for me – how do you put together a project, shoot it and then get it out into the world. I anticipated each project would lead to more challenging pieces and they did. I was even offered a couple of unpaid directing gigs on projects that didn’t get produced (because of financial and timing issues). Filmmaking is an expensive undertaking compared to most other art forms. Unlike traditional live theatre, there also is a perception that narrative film projects are business ventures that will lead to massive wealth – less worthy of arts funding than struggling traditional forms of artistic expression.
Even when you receive donated locations, equipment and labor, you still need to get insurance, feed everyone and get the movie edited and presentable. Unless you are a trust-fund baby, most of us are holding down a job and some are also raising kids at the same time. In our EDGE class, the thing that came up over and over again with my colleagues was fundraising. As we got through the course, I found that my perception of this changed. Fundraising is successful when it grows from something more basic. The work.
If you have a killer script, your enthusiasm and connection to that script need to shine through. Shine through you and how you talk about your work. The work should also guide who you approach for support. Most of us in the class, even coming from very different perspectives of documentary, animation, television and narrative feature content, struggled with sharing why our work is something that someone else – a corporation, a foundation, a producer, a patron – might want to fund. I’m paraphrasing one of our instructors but if we aren’t enthusiastic about our work why should anyone else be?
If you’re not enthusiastic about your work, why not? You can see all the flaws, you know the weaknesses, real or perceived. Maybe looking at the work as a whole, from idea to script to funding to production and beyond – maybe the enthusiasm would come more easily if we were confident that the choices we have made were all part of an effort to make the piece the best it can be. Discuss what you are doing with other artists – maybe even have a table reading of your script or get input from other filmmakers on your script or treatment (a narrative description of the story of your script).
Before you shoot, before you commit to a project, what is the plan? Are you doing the work a disservice by grabbing a camera and hoping things will work themselves out after you get into Sundance? What is the intended outcome of your project? Fund a feature? Learn about working in high def? Get a series produced on network or cable television? Produce a project close to your heart in a way that honors the content? If you keep the desired end in mind as you plan your project, you can make better decisions about how you use your limited time and resources to strategically produce the best product to achieve your desired outcome. Do you need to get a name actor signed on for your short? Maybe you do to get your work in front of the people who can help you achieve your longer term goals as a filmmaker. If you know where you want to go but don’t know how to get there (I don’t but I’m learning more all the time), talk to other filmmakers, instructors, business people, granting agencies, producers.
The quality of your work is your calling card. Unlike a live theatrical production, the look of your piece gets distorted by crappy festival projection systems, TVs that are set to make the football grass super green, DVDs that don’t capture the full depth and color of your HD footage, viewers who see an unintended viewing size or setting (someone mentioned that they had watched my Greenspoke trailer on an iPhone – it is possible that they might even watch the full streaming version on that tiny screen – on the bus). We can hope for a quality big screen projection but the reality is that people will be experiencing our “films” on all kinds of devices. The work needs to be strong enough in every aspect – writing, directing, photography, sound, post-production – that it can be experienced and enjoyed at some level regardless of the device or viewing setting. Ha! I’m trying to convince myself of that but it’s tough.
The other side of this is taking advantage of opportunities as they arise – I recently was asked by a friend and collaborator to help out on a SAG (Screen Actors’ Guild) short film that he was producing. My job was to help out in whatever way I could. I love being on set – movie productions always seem to be on the edge of pandemonium, barely held together by a tough AD (assistant director) and the anticipation of that moment when everything comes together – the performance, the lighting, the cooperative weather, the train passing on cue. And you don’t know who you might meet – someone who inspires you, someone who understands what you are trying to do, someone who knows someone who knows someone who…. I met some cool smart people. I recently had a former co-worker contact me about a script she would like to write and I hope to be a good resource for her. Being open to collaboration and mutual support is an important element to help you keep moving.
All this while you are making sure that people are fed, that the toilet is flushing, that the paperwork gets done, and that people know when they need to show up next so you have all the pieces you need to present the best work you can.
Non-profit Smiling Z Studios has been designated as the production team for the winning script in the 2010 ReelHeART International Film Festival (RHIFF) short screenplay competition. If we meet our fundraising goals and produce the project, the finished film will screen in Toronto in June 2010 on RHIFF’s main stage. Toronto is a great place to visit and RHIFF is definitely a go-to event.
You can help get this film made AND get a gift for your ‘person who has everything’. The wanna-be movie mogul in your life can have an Associate Producer ($500) or Executive Producer ($2000) credit on imdb.com and in the credits for our upcoming production. Lots of other levels of support are available too. You can support the project on indiegogo.com or go directly to the Smiling Z Studios site and choose Donate in the left column. You’ll further the art of filmmaking in Seattle while strengthening ties to Toronto’s filmmaking and viewing communities.
Want something you can wrap? Choose our recently released short environmentally themed sci-fi thriller Greenspoke on DVD from indieflix.com. Greenspoke is an Accolade Award of Merit winner and received a great review in The Seattle Weekly. Greenspoke posters, T-shirts and even temporary tattoos are available on the official Greenspoke site (scroll down after you watch the trailer).
Filmmaking has been a passion of mine for many years, supported financially by me through my corporate employment. When I was at the 2008 ReelHeART International Film Festival (RHIFF) with my short film two julias, I received a phone call from my employer of 6 years letting me know they were laying off several people in my department and that I was one of them. The ironic timing of the call did not go unnoticed since I had made my first film as part of an employee filmmaking contest there. They let me go while I was on vacation at the first film festival to show one of my films in competition.
RHIFF is a great filmmaker-friendly festival and definitely worth the submission fee – I have entered again for 2010. However my overall festival submission strategy has definitely changed since then. I tended to take a shotgun approach before. I research the festivals more and take advantage of early bird submission rates where I can to save money. If you use withoutabox.com, use their search and watch list functions rather than waiting for their e-mail notifications. Most of the e-mail notifications are for the higher fee late or final deadlines. More money for WAB and the festival but not the best use of limited filmmaker bucks.
I took a leap of faith and used my severance to fund Greenspoke, a project that was already in pre-production before my layoff. I do not regret making that decision – that project kept me sane through what I thought would be a couple of months seeking employment. Greenspoke has done well so far, showing in four festivals and getting a good review in The Seattle Weekly. Oddly my layoff from a high profile employer and continued filmmaking also led to a small piece in The Seattle Times as well. Unfortunately the article makes it sound like the layoff somehow helped my filmmaking career – that is not the case. That story came up in a job interview I had shortly after the article came out.
As I have been searching for a web editor job over the last 15 months, I have had to adjust my expectations as a filmmaker to line up with current realities. Before I would have gone ahead with a project even if funding was iffy — that just isn’t possible anymore. I can’t proceed with any production activities until firm money in place. I set up non-profit Smiling Z Studios as a means of soliciting tax-deductible donations. When many of your previous supporters are also out of work or worried about losing their jobs, it is tough to make the pitch that a non-profit independent film production is a great place to make their charitable donations. We do pay all of our cast and crew, many of whom are struggling financially, as part of the studio’s mission. However, if a potential donor is on the fence between supporting our projects vs making a donation to a food bank or the Red Cross, I would not want them to choose the studio.
Most of us wonder what we would do if we won the lottery. I often think about what it would be like to make that transition from mostly self-funded director/producer to working as a director with full production support and investors who believe in me and my abilities enough to finance my projects. While that is not out of the realm of possibility, I do believe the odds are better to win the lottery and give these feelings the same kind of weight. I think most artists sans trust fund or those who lack a family connection to Francis Ford Coppolla struggle with how they are going to pay for their art.
So what do I do while I’m sorting this all out? Work on the things I can. Besides checking in with friends and former co-workers (again) who may be able to help me find work, I’ve redoubled my efforts to seek gainful employment. There do seem to be more jobs out there in my field and I’ve even had a couple of promising interviews. I’ve also started working on storyboards for my feature length screenplay The Smiling Zombie, which was a finalist in the 2009 ReelHeART International Film Festival Screenplay Competition. The Smiling Zombie is about Jack, a successful musical theatre performer whose career is cut short by multiple sclerosis. With the support of his HIV+ partner, Jack attempts a comeback of sorts with a featured extra role in a no-budget zombie film. Making the best out of a bad situation seems to be a theme here?
Paper and pens I got, and storyboards help me to really think through the script, its problems and strengths, and what the overall look and feel will be. If I work on the things I can, I’ll be ready with a new job and a solid script and storyboards when things turn around. And who knows, maybe I am related to Francis Ford Coppolla?
Filmmaker or not, what are you doing to keep your passions going during these tough times?