An excellent article by James D. Stern in Indie Wire over the weekend. In it he quotes the end of Annie Hall, one of my favorite films. At the end of the movie, as at the beginning, Allen uses a joke to explain what is happening in his life;
“I thought of that old joke, y’know, the, this… this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, “Doc, uh, my brother’s crazy; he thinks he’s a chicken.” And, uh, the doctor says, “Well, why don’t you turn him in?” The guy says, “I would, but I need the eggs.” Well, I guess that’s pretty much now how I feel about relationships; y’know, they’re totally irrational, and crazy, and absurd, and… but, uh, I guess we keep goin’ through it because, uh, most of us… need the eggs.”
Stern uses the same metaphor for film, those moments where the actor does something amazing, or when you’re on set and realize that everything has come together and you’re making a movie, those are a few of the many eggs we get in this crazy profession.
Despite all the craziness, Stern does make a strong case for better business sense in Independent Film. In an age where marketing costs are as minimal as those of production, we can take more responsibility for knowing who our audience is before we start to shoot. The auteur disdain for the business side of filmmaking seems to result in a lot of auteur waiters. There are tremendous resources out there for people willing to market their own work. Two books that come to mind are Friends, Fans and Followers and The New Rules of Marketing and PR.
In traditional filmmaking people say that there is pre-production, production, and post-production. In Hollywood some people are known to say there are two parts; the making of the film and the selling of the film. There are some notable films (Eyes Wide Shut comes to mind) that were ruined in the marketing.
I know how difficult it is to make a good film, but in this glut of filmmaking (something like 950 feature films were submitted to sundance this year) it will often be the intelligent marketers who get their films seen, and, just as importantly, make money from them. I would like to have a family some day, and after 4 years of film school I want to have skills that can feed my body as well as my soul.
The last thing I could say to filmmakers out there is Don’t be afraid of being small. There are so many things to learn about filmmaking, that even if you have a perfect script (which you probably don’t and that’s ok) you will have enough obstacles to that perfect vision in your head without spending $10,000 on producing it. Make small films with small cameras, save your big money for when you have big experience. Be proud of being small, of making mistakes. I had an actor two films ago look at me and my small camera and say, “Could we get a bigger camera?” It made him uncomfortable, dont let it make you. I’ve been a small camera director ever since. The big camera will come when I’m ready for it.
I spent two years not making films because I was afraid they would be bad, which would hurt my ego. When I finally did, I realized that the films weren’t so bad and that I was learning so much. That’s what it’s about at the beginning, learning, and you do it a lot more from failure than you do from success.
All in all a very good article. Check it out.
