The madness of trying to shoot an non-Indie, Independent feature.

for film making...

Are you indie, or do you want to try for real?  This is the question I keep asking myself. The answer continually is that I want to try for real. Yet every time, with each new project it seems like I am setting the bar too high. It's as though I have gone out and learned about how to get a movie into theaters through a distributor and all the pieces that that takes for now reason. 

What I mean is, it doesn't matter that I know how it works. It doesn't matter that I now know what I didn't know before. At the end of the day "Chicken or the Egg" still rules the world. Now there is tons of great advice by respectable people that are "Coming Up" who will tell you how to get out of "Development Hell".

Angie Gaffney from Black Apple Media, has a great article about "Development Hell" on her blog at angiegaffney.com . 

She has some great advice here. I should take her advice, I should do what she says to do. What she is doing herself. I simply don't know if I can. 

I met Angie once, at her office inside Cinespace in Chicago. It wasn't more than an introduction but I got the impression that she was really happy with how her world was going and she is absolutely on her way up in the film world. Especially the indie world in Chicago. 

That is my biggest problem I think. I know another producer who has been working in film for 20 years and is still "indie". Another guy who says he is a distributor (actually an distribution sales agent, a common trick they use is to call themselves distributors. May be in some sense but none of those guys have relationships with thousands of theaters. Especially not domestically) and he has been in the business for 20+ years and is still indie. 

Indie means that you get your stuff into local small festivals, the city you live in puts you in the art based news and media. If your really lucky and really talented and really connected you get into a festival that someone has actually heard of. If that happens maybe you get approached and get your movie sold yada yada. 

I have spent the last two years trying to not do this. This system of doing things seems like trying to hit the lottery. Or somebody who thinks they have figured out how to beat the casino at blackjack in Vegas. Without getting kicked out for counting cards. Who am I kidding, the Vegas analogy is what I have been trying to do. I have been trying to either beat the system or join it at a bigger level.  

Without an "indie" pedigree it is almost like I am lying to myself that anyone will take what I am saying seriously. Even if I am right.  It doesn't matter that the project is good, or that the director has somewhat of an "indie" pedigree. If we have not made a feature film together it means nothing. 

So the thing you have to go off of next is the content of the movie, the strength of the script. What is it about and is it well written. 

The well written part I think that it is. Although we just paid someone $10k to tell us it's not when previously we had paid someone $10k to help us rewrite it. Ok so then the subject matter. Well we have a story with a built in fan base that has not been over saturated (we are actually ahead of the curve) and a period piece set in a war. So it has layers depth, and interesting set up etc. 

But it's market is mainstream. The indie audience won't care. It's not a current or recent past human interest piece. It's pure fiction, yes it follows the character story rules of ark and growth. It has relate-able human elements.

Barring the miraculous at this point it feels like we are doomed. I just don't know anymore, I can't see the future of the project. I have no sense of the horizon. Where will it be in three months. 

The bottom line is, follow Angie's advice. Shoot, make it happen, put it up on YouTube, or whatever. Shoot low budget stuff with achievable content. Then, do it again but go a little bigger. Build up one project at a time. Step by step build a resume of features that while they are not in 2500 theaters domestically are still showing up here and there and your investors are getting what they want out of it. Make the pictures as quality as you can. Then write something truly ambitions, move to LA. Work on commercials and what not while you shop your project around town. 

If you don't do this, if you shoot for the moon right out of the gate because you KNOW that it's what you should be doing, it will be the hardest, most risky, trying, make-you-get-a-divorce-because-you-are-obsessed kind of thing you can do. Honestly at this point, I don't know that I can tell you it will be worth it. Since starting this project I have not lived in a place I can say is "my place" in over a year. That's right, bumming squatting, or just plain old sofa surfing. Intermittent pay, and lots of missed meals. Phones shut off, credit destroyed, and a broken heart many times. And I don't know if it is worth it...yet!

You see I am afflicted by the disease of being a true believer, a dreamer. I cannot in good conscious leave you on this depressing of a note. I know that the director and myself are right about this film. So we will not stop, we can't. I don't know if it's going to work. But I know for sure that if it fails it won't be because I gave up or I let my friend give up. We keep going, because we know we are right, because I don't want to make a $50,000.00 movie that I wouldn't watch myself. This, this is the madness of shooting an non-indie independent movie. Your not in the indie world and the studio world won't let you in. So you have to make a whole new world...

Give us $10,000.00 and we will tell you how bad your product is.

"Give us $10,000.00 and we will tell you how bad your product is. "

This is a service that many companies is the movie business will do for you. Although they will dress it up as many other things.Also known as justifying there own existence, giving a bad review because the reviewers would not be in optimal position to have the "in-house" project green lit. Of course they won't do this for free, even though you have been working for free for two years on your project. Of course, it will cost $10k, and that's a deal. Even though your supposed to be involved in a collective partnership of companies trying to make movies. The fact is, they have some guy they are paying $30.00 per script because he is still in film school and they can, read the script give notes then pass it to another more qualified person who scans the notes, make some more fills out a form and sends it upstairs. Now your project is in the persons hands who is supposed to be reviewing the script with the rest of the partnership.Almost immediately the FU label is stamped on it in a 30 second conversation that kinda happens and you get 4 sheets of paper worth $10k.  The $2,500.00 dollar a piece, sheets of paper are basically telling you that your script is garbage and that you need to bring "professionals" into the project...


The thing that stands out the most to me is the assumption that we wouldn't remember that the Directer/Writer and myself have already vetted this particular project MANY times. Which means we have taken it to other people(producers) of name and value that have said quite the opposite of this. WE HAVE DONE THIS MORE THAN ONCE! This script is over a dozen rewrites and nobody is afraid of that. We can hand a critique, in fact it is encouraged. Whey you get script feedback and project feedback that is this bad, sometimes you just have to laugh.

Especially when it comes with a, "Why are no actors attached?"

Well, let's see. Because your company is supposed to do that for us, we are in fact paying you to give us feedback based on the assumption that the talent you claim is "in house" will be attached. So this question is super stupid...oh wait I forgot you simply don't care. We didn't bring the millions of dollars to the table that you where going to steal from us. So you took the $10k and told us to go "f" off.

Welcome to Hollywood.....again