1. Be a mentor to someone. This is more than just hiring interns. It is about really educating someone, giving them access to experience.
2. Do something “the better way” instead of the easy way. We make ethical excuses in order to say money, but we need to focus on the big picture.
Avoid 15 Passenger Vans as they are the most dangerous vehicle on the road.
Provide housing when someone has worked an excessive day.
Recycle bottles and cans.
Print less. Use less paper.
Email Call Sheets
Provide production packages (shooting schedules, breakdowns, lists, etc.) on line.
Crew Lists as Address Cards so they can instantly be in one’s phone.
3. Remember that everyone is first and foremost a human being and not just a worker drone.
Learn everyone’s name and what they like to do. Remember that everyone is working together.
4. Keep the crew updated as to the progress of the production — through post and release.
Recognize they make the movie; treat them as partners.
Via email updates during post and release.
5. How can you have the movie actually help improve the world?
Can you generate charitable items that could raise money? Can you collect signatures on petitions for particular causes? Can you educate your cast and crew? What can you do with the completed work that will make this a better place?
6. Can you help out another filmmaker with your film? Invite another artist to film a doc about the process.
7. Stay focused on what the movie needs and don’t get distracted by the thrill of 100 new friends.
8. Show your appreciation. Feel it. You wouldn’t be doing this if it wasn’t for your cast, crew, and financiers.
- How can you help other artists with this film you are doing? Can you bring others into the process?
- Do something stylistically just because you like it. Allow something to be “outside” the film, something that doesn’t fit so right and is only there because you dig it. Why does it always have to fit?
- How can you help the world by the content of this film? How can you work for impact first, and business second (without ignoring those financial obligations, that is)?
- How can you have less environmental impact on the world with your process? Recycle. Use less paper. No styrofoam. Car pool. Carbon credits.
- How can you do more to show appreciation for your collaborators? What if you put people first would that change your content significantly?
- Are you really collaborating with your crew? Do they feel like you are? What if you listened more, and spoke less?
- You say it is a team approach, but what if everyone was treated equally? What if your equality carried over not just to financial matters, but also in terms of access?
- What if you completely demystified the process and opened it up to comment by all cast, crew, and fans? As opposed to the studio’s no-twitter policy, what if you made it a requirement>
- What would be a different business model? Could you give it away? Free it? Never plan to screen it theatrically? What if the movie was not the main event, but something else was?
- Place the bar higher & reach higher. What makes something better? What if you made sure you could answer any question as to why before you started? Or maybe this would be the opposite and you should answer no questions but hold it all within yourself…
- Is your work truthful? Is every action, emotion, reaction honest? Are the settings truly lived in? Can you extend only from your characters, their psychology and socio-economic situation — removing your own intent from the design?
- What if you built your audience base prior to shooting? And maintained significant communication with them throughout the process? How might that change your final work?
- Innovate. Try some new equipment on every production. Improve a simple process. Isn’t production about the communication of information in the service of art, as efficiently, economically, and aesthetically as possible?
Jason Brubaker has “Prepping Your Film For Distribution” in current edition of The Independent. It’s all good advice and the equal attention paid to self-distribution demonstrates the reality-check that has finally seeped through the layers of denial most indie filmmakers have held on to for too long. I wonder why “getting pick up” is even looked at on even ground with the DIY approach. Let’s face it, the odds are practically 1 in 400 that your film will be picked up by a major distributor. The time to start to prep for self-distribution is now, not later.
This site could not have been built without the help and insight of Michael Morgenstern. My thanks go out to him.
Help save indie film and give this guy a job in web design or film!
