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.