Filmmaking as it has always been is just an expensive process. It has always required huge, mounting pieces of equipment, loads of lights, a crew of personnel, lots of electricity and reels upon reels of film which then needed to be processed by experts. And that’s just for the camera. That was then, and for a small elite percentile of the filmmaking world, that’s still how film is made.

I say small, but you probably already disagree with that, because so many movies are made with film & $30million budgets today. But those are only a few select movies, the majority of motion pictures (be they 3 minutes long and premiered on youtube or 2 hours with an enormous plot) are shot on video and they are made by US. Not them. They are very few and very powerful and they want to keep things as they are. I’m sure the mighty, earth-shattering dinosaurs thought the same thing when the comets came down and the planet was surrendered to little mammals with emotional issues. And we’re all okay with the fact that we don’t have elevator operators anymore; they’ve all been replaced with a 1-inch circular button. Times change, that’s a fact. Get on board or die out quietly.

I’m writing this because I’ve watched the change, I’ve observed the artistic and commercial communities around me and I have some theories on how we can embrace the future. Embrace the future, meaning we can’t clinch onto the past, and we can’t let them beat us over the head with it.

So I already described how film has been made for a hundred years. So in contrast, let’s look at how films can be made now. Keep in mind, my description before was all to do with the camera, and not the overall production. Now all you need IS the camera. Everything else is luxury. The clarity of the picture you can get with an HD camera, matched with the audio you can pick up using a decent enough shotgun mic is all you need to get your story in front of people. The only reason I wouldn’t recommend using a 6 year old mini-DV camcorder with on-board mic is because your picture and audio won’t be clear to the viewer. But thanks to recent and ongoing innovations you can now get your vision on screen with very little effort, time, or knowledge. The only thing further required of you is the story.

(Those statements bring up two points, the fear of knowledgeable people making movies alongside us backbreaking or educated filmmakers, and how incessantly people recite the old incantation “The story is all that matters” I will get to how both of these points are Oscar Meyer ® brand bologna, but that’s for another bloggin’)

Someone recently asked me if that’s true, why isn’t everybody making movies. My response was the simple truth that everyone is making movies, they are just incredibly terrible and most of them are short films, or rarely have any commercial appeal and therefor stay shelved. The only movies that seem to break that barrier are either gimmicky microbudget films like Paranormal Activity, or independent films made by experts with lots & lots of money. I submit that the only reason independent films with lots of money behind them are the only successful ones is because they are using a tried and true formula for filmmaking: Throw money at it, hire tons of people, schedule it, hold focus groups, talk to people, network, whore yourself, etc etc etc… This works, but not for everyone.

So what’s to become of us working with the super-indie budget? We have no money, little expertise, no connections. I refuse to believe that this means we are doomed to making bad short films. I suggest we change the formula, or rather, that we apply a formula that is more appropriate to our situation.

Think about the filmmakers you know in your community; There’s a few actors who have purchased a nice camera and make movies featuring themselves, a lot of people claiming to be producer/writer/director and, scattered throughout town there are specialists who float from film to film doing makeup or marketing, etc. and no film community would be complete without the gossip & chatter about every other person and how they don’t understand their strengths and weaknesses. We talk about the actor/director who can’t act, or the writer/producer who can’t produce. The biggest and most common theme of the super-indie film community is that every single person who owns a camera or knows where to borrow one has a “production company”. (yet another subject I will be stabbing at with a mix of dull and sharp weapons)

The crowning achievement of this mudlog bug community is that the films coming from it are all substandard and nearly unwatchable save for 1 or 2 from people who may actually know what they’re doing. This is a mess, this is unacceptable. We are wishing we were something we are not and fighting what we are. What we are is independent artists, what we are not is Hollywood.

So I’m getting at something, obviously. Think about it, for a long time there has been a certain field of artistry not unlike ours which thrives on a group joining together for a single artistic purpose and using only a handful of affordable equipment they strive to make a creative outlet for all involved. These soldiers of collaboration are known.. as garage bands.

I believe we as filmmakers need to seriously observe how these artists have successfully created artwork without hiring staff for many, many years. I’m going to get into detail about this theory but let me summarize and maybe you can even stop reading here if you genuinely get the gist.

If you can afford a guitar, and know a few people who like the same music as you, you get together, you have very typical components and each person knows their place in the project. The singer, the drummer, the guitar, the bass. You work together, you collaborate, you trade ideas, you make an album, you sell the album, you do it all over again. You may be thinking to yourself how friendly everyone was on your last set and how they all believed in it and had a good time, but you’re forgetting how they all left at the end of the day, and how you paid for everyone’s lunches. Everything from how the producer treats the cast & crew to how the actors wander around doing nothing but asking for a splice in their demo reel is at the center of the garage band-filmmaker theory. Its down there, pure and simple, after all the crud is boiled off. Over the next few months I’m going to be delving into this thought process and what kind of actions need to be taken to better the community… to create the community we all want to see. Until next blog, give it some thought, challenge me if you think I’m wrong, or just wait for me to finish my point. But let’s all stay calm, kids, this is after all a call for community.

Check this out to hold you over: George Lucas, opressed VS calling the shots