What are our expectations when we sit down to watch? How strong are they? Are these expectations actually demands? Will we be punished if we don’t fulfill them?
I think there are universal hopes all audiences have for cinema each and every time they sit down to watch. When we fail to provide them, people start to lose faith in our product. We need to keep this promises front and center when we create new movies. Many do, some don’t. Which side do you want to be on?
In June 2014, director Alex Lightman produced his first feature film, Tear Me Apart. Here he talks about the major lessons him and his team learnt along the way.
The London Screenwriters’ Festival 2011 was where my career really began. Made to talk to the person next to me by festival creative director Chris Jones, I shook hands with screenwriter Tom Kerevan. A fateful encounter.
We started working together and soon after met cinematographer Ernesto Herrmann on a short film shoot. The three of us have been working together ever since.
In May 2013 we made the somewhat snap decision to take the plunge and produce a feature film ourselves.
Okay, we aim for mastery (yes and autonomy and purpose too) but it’s most exciting to grow. And personally I think it is more exciting to WATCH someone who is learning than someone who is demonstrating what they know. I describe this as loving the experiment over the proof. I get chills when I watch
Gary Meyer’s blog EatDrinkFilms captures three of life’s great pleasures in a single dose. I am very pleased to have one of my favorite tales from my book excerpted there now.
Picture this: it is the first film you’ve financed yourself. You and your team are in a foreign land. Your money has been cut off and your financier picks you up, refusing to speak, and takes you up into the mountains where you are required to disrobe.
“One trait that helps producers is an imagination that can take you to the worst-case scenario, so that you can guard against it. I am prone to many dark thoughts, but I hadn’t anticipated this.”
Sort of…
Now, for the first time ever, anywhere…. sort of… the full length interview Filmcourage did with me. Got 30 minutes? I don’t know mind if you even play it in the background!
If you need a
How do you know someone is someone you are going to work with for the long term?
How do you know each other is capable of being supportive of what the other has to be doing?
What are things needed to make this unique relationship work?
The latest installment of my Film Courage interview attempts to answer precisely that:
Colin McCormick did a really great and in depth interview with me for SAGIndie. We covered a significant amount in pretty substantial detail. Suffice it to say that this excerpt is just the tip, and you will want to read the whole thing. But to begin with check this excerpt out on the similarities between producing and directing, and how they demonstrate everything has got to change:
I often say that there is the role of the producer and there is the role of the director that are remarkably similar. The producer comes in and has to extract the big vision, the dream of everything that you
