Don’t let lack of experience stop you from achieving your goals

Just like everything else in life worth doing, there is a steep learning curve to becoming a great film maker.  This is true whether or not you are trying to break in using the traditional route or the entrepreneurial route.

The traditional route is to start out as a production assistant, work you way up to line producer, then to production manager, and so on until you reach your goals.  The problem is you no matter how many films you work as a PA no one is ever willing to put their faith in you to do the next job up.  You just don’t have the experience.

The same is true for the entrepreneurial filmmaker.  If you are going this route, then you are out hustling for investors or for a studio to back your project.  “What have you done before?  Can you show me something?” will be one of their very first questions.

If either of these sounds like a situation you are currently facing, let me share with you the advice of a friend of mine named Donny.  This advice came up during a conversation with a friend of ours, a young actress, who was looking for a day job, but couldn’t find anyone who would hire her because she lacked some skill  for each of the jobs she had applied.

The advice he gave to her was golden advice that I will remember forever.  He said:

If you let not knowing how to do something stop you from getting what you want, then you’ll never get anywhere in life.

Donny has a great story of how he had got his first job working for a video production company.  He wanted to work the camera, but the company wasn’t hiring for the camera position.  Instead, they were looking for someone to do DVD menus and animations using the Lingo programming language in Macromedia Director.  Donny is a good friend of mine, and for all of his skills in art, film, animation, and business, if there is one thing he is not its a programmer.  So when they asked, “Can you program Lingo, because that is what we really need?“  His response was “Absolutely…but I want to give my old job two weeks notice…can I start in two weeks?”

He didn’t need to give his former employer two weeks notice…he didn’t have a former employer.  He was broke and jobless.  Instead he went out and bought three books on programming lingo, and proceeded to teach himself for those two weeks.  He got the job, and worked his way into a camera operator position in no time.

Now, I’m not saying lie about your abilities…and please please don’t lie to an investor about what you’ve done before.  There are severe legal consequences for lying to an investor.  But what I am saying is that you can’t let your own lack of experience dictate what you can or can’t accomplish.  People always tell you to think outside the box.  I’m here to tell you there is no box.

Let me give you a real life example.  I have an a friend who is an actor who wants to start producing some feature films.  However, he has absolutely nothing produced.  He has all the contacts to make a film.  He knows crew and talent both here in the south and Los Angelos.

He called me asking me to do some random projects for him to use as a reel that he could use to approach investors.  The thing is, what he is basically trying to do is do a bunch of projects for the sole purpose of building a reel, because he thinks investors won’t give him money without one.  The fact is, he hasn’t tried to raise money yet, so he doesn’t even know if they will ask for that sort of proof.  Ultimately he might spend the better part of a year doing purposeless projects, just to make a good reel.

Capitalize on other peoples experience

If you aren’t trying to get a ‘job’  but are instead trying to get a movie funded you have another great option available to you.  You can capitalize on the experience of your team.  Think of the above example.  My friend wants to raise money for a film.  He thinks he has the investors, but is afraid to approach them without some proof of experience.  However, he pretty much knows who his core crew is.  They all have experience and extensive reels.  Do you think that if he had a good possibility of getting funding that that crew wouldn’t let him use their reels to get the money?  After all, as a crew person it means you will get work and get paid.  Try this experiment: Call any professional camera operator in the world…preferably a steadicam operator because they usually have killer reels.  Tell him you have a feature script, you want to hire him as Director of Photography, but you are still raising funding  If he is interested, ask him if its ok to use his reel  to convince an investor to fund the movie.  He won’t say no.

Take the group of experience crew who have agreed to work with you. Form a Production Company, and edit together an extremely awesome reel from all of them.  Then say the following words: “This is an example of various projects my crew has worked on in the past”.  You haven’t lied, and you aren’t really even being deceitful.  After all, the people responsible for this reel will be working on your film, so the investor can probably expect close to the same quality of work.

Does it really matter if you personally don’t have the experience?  It shouldn’t because obviously you are good enough to surround yourself with smart enough people to get the job done.  Are you smart enough to get the job done?

The only film making advice you really need

Yesterday, I told you how Listening to ’so called’ experts could destroy your film career before it even starts.  Today I’m going to share with you the few principles you really need to know.  If you’ve ever dreamed about being a director, then this post is a must read for you.

The 9 things you need to do if you really want to be a film maker.

1. Shoot the damn thing - Stop obsessing over what gear you need, stop worrying about raising money, stop obsessing over every little detail.  If you can’t raise the money you need, then figure out how to do it with less money.  If you can’t find the location you need, rewrite the script for a new location.  Rewrite until you have a movie you can actually do right now then do it right now!
2. Three takes and go - Ok, so its digital video.  You can have as many takes as you want right?  No!  Shoot three takes and move on just like you were shooting 35mm film.  Only on the really really important scenes, or really short shots are you allowed to go up to five takes, but after that move on.  The actors aren’t going to do it any better. Deal with it.
3. Get coverage first, then do the fancy stuff - Do a wide establishing shot, do a medium close up of each character, then do some inserts.  If you are positive the scene will edit together, then you can start doing some more fancy stuff.   But even then…if that “fancy stuff” you want to do doesn’t add to the film, maybe you should just move on to the next scene.
4. Get good sound or learn to ADR - It’s imperative you get excellent sound.  If you can’t do it while shooting, then you will have to ADR.  This can be very expensive, if you don’t have access to a post production audio suite.  Try to capture the best sound you can during production, but be sure to budget and plan to do a little ADR as well.  It’s probably a good idea for you to start trying to figure out how to ADR dialog right now.  It is a skill you will definitely use later.
5. Learn to edit - Regardless of whether or not you intend to edit your film yourself, you need to learn how to edit.  If you don’t know how to edit, then you’ll never know if your movie will cut together at all.  Or, on the opposite end of the spectrum, you’ll shoot way more coverage than you could possible use and your editor will have to sift through hours of pointless footage.  This is also a bad thing because if the editor gets bored while sifting through useless footage, he is more likely to half ass his way through the edit.  If you’ve directed the thing right, the edit should naturally evolve from the footage itself.
6. Finish the film - Above all finish the film.  If its your first film, it will probably suck.  Deal with it.  But you have to realize that no matter how bad, a a finished film has value but an unfinished film is worthless. Go to best buy and search for some of the action or horror four packs and watch them.  It will likely be the best $7.99 you ever spend.  Many of these movies aren’t just bad…they are laughably horrendous.  Everything is out of focus, the story makes no sense, and fifteen year olds pretend to be mob bosses.  It’s utterly ridiculous…but they have one thing going for them:  They were finished.  Not only that…they were sold.  There are distributors who make it their business to pick up extremely terrible movies and sell them in retail stores like best buy.   Typically, a producer of these types of movies can make between $5000 to $10,000 selling 100% rights on one of these masterpieces.  Not going to put you sipping Champagne in Beverly Hills…but at the very least you can say you’ve sold a movie.  The reality is very few people can actually finish a film.  It’s a difficult, if not nearly impossible task to do even when you have millions to spend.  But if you’ve finished a film, you can approach real investors and pitch yourself as a real producer.  Let the entire movie fall to pieces, frame every shot poorly, stay out of focus the entire time…but finish it.  Your career has to start somewhere.  It starts here…with one crappy (yet finished) film.
7. Nail one aspect - Hopefully I’ve convinced you by now that you are not going to make the next big hit movie shooting DV with your friends and editing on your iMac.  And also, I hope that I’ve convinced you that its still worth doing regardless of the fact that you aren’t hitting theatres anytime soon.  How do you go about making sure you build the most momentum towards achieving your real goals in your filmmaking career?  Well, as I’ve said, the persuit of a perfect film is a fools errand…but that doesn’t mean you can’t be perfect in one regard.  Make at least one aspect of your film really stand out.  Ok, so maybe it doesn’t have the best acting…but maybe you have the skills to make the cinematography really wow the audience.  Maybe you know someone with an epically beautiful location that you can use to make your little movie seem larger than life.  Maybe you and your friends are black belts in karate and you can put together a killer fight scene.  The idea is that you want at least some aspect of your film to really stand out.  Lets say you do put together that killer fight scene.  Maybe you will never make another film again, but you and your friends are noticed at your film festival premiere  by a producer looking for a stunt team for his next action flick.  Two years down the road you are now a professional stunt and action choreography team.  Maybe not the goal you were chasing in the beginning, but certainly not a bad result.
8. Nail one scene - Make at least one scene in your film really highlight the one aspect that you want to show off.  Maybe you need to expand the fight scene and make it more epic.  Maybe you can do one scene as a single continuous take to show off the skill of your actors and your direction.  Above all you need one really solid scene that you can use to show off your talent in the future.
9. Make a badass trailer -Without a great trailer no one will want to see your film.  The secret to a great trailer is to build curiosity…and on that note, stay tuned for my upcoming article:  Thirty seconds to a successful film: How to make a good movie trailer.

The New Cinema Advanced

Those of you who have been followers of the site for some time will notice that I’ve just implemented a huge design change.  This is in addition to alot of back end updates and fixes.

You’ll probably notice one huge change in particular.  The front page has that big video  section right up top.  Can you guess what that means?  If you guessed that I’m entering a thumb war tournament, then you should contact your elementary school teacher and ask them to go back over the concept of context clues again.   But if you guessed Video Tutorials then you win.  That’s right, within the next few weeks I’ll begin presenting filmmaking tips in the form of comprehensive video tutorials.

These videos are going to be unlike anything you’ve already seen.  These aren’t going to be cheesy effects tutorials that teach you how to do a campy stunt or effect.  Instead these are going to be about core concepts that will allow you to make professional looking films on a low budget.  These videos will cover everything from gear, production, directing, audio, acting…and ok I might even do a few things on effects.

Now that doesn’t mean I won’t also still do written articles.  There will still be plenty of written articles, news blurbs, or any just random stuff about my life that I feel like discussing.  In short, expect a ton more content of all types in the near future.

I want your questions

Finally, I want your questions.  If you have a question involving filmmaking be sure to Contact me.  I’ll try and answer all questions either personally or in a video tutorial.