Tag Archives: filmmaking

The Final Countdown

August 1, 2012 By in Uncategorized Tags: , , , 2 Comments

Ok Ladies and Gentlemen, it is the final countdown to the For Patrick launch!

It doesn’t seem real to me that after working on this little film for so long, it is finally going to be online for all to see. Next week, here on the blog, I will release the film. It’s completely free and shareable to your friends (and enemies if you like).

Am I pumped? Yes. Am I absolutely terrified? ABSOLUTELY. You see, a film is like a child. You pour your heart and soul into it and send it into the great wide world. Hopefully it will make friends. Hopefully it will have the live you always dreamed for it. But like all parents, you have to let it go. I have done all I can for this little bit of cinema and it is ready to stand on it’s own little tripod. (Honestly, I’m kind of excited for it to move out of the house…)

This week, I wanted to give my final thoughts on producing a short film. My recommendations. My warnings. If you are thinking of producing your own short, please consider:

What is your goal for this film?

Where do you want it to end up? Do you want it to go to festivals across the country? Do you want to just do a film so you can work with your friends? Do you just need something for your reel?

Whatever the answer is (and all answers are valid), make sure you know and are honest with yourself about it before you begin. If you just make a film for fun and then decide you want it to set the festival circuit on fire, you may be in for some disappointment. Your film might have a lot of success, but it might not. Research the films that are getting into festivals. Attend the festivals. Know what your competition is. Entry fees to festivals can get pretty expensive, so keep that in mind as well.

If you want to make a film for fun, that’s great! Just know that films cost money. Do you want to drop a few hundred, or few thousand, on a pet project? If yes, go for it! If no, you might want to reconsider.

If you want something for your reel, make sure it is super professional- as professional as you can afford. You want something that showcases your talent, and will also be taken seriously.

What was my answer? A little bit of everything. I wanted to work with specific people and put their talents to use. I wanted something for my reel that shows my work at a higher level. But for this project, it was mainly the story. It was a story I believed in and wanted to tell. I also wanted to distribute online because I think that is going to be the new norm soon. There are so many great shorts made that people never get to see and I wanted this to be something anyone can see, anywhere, anytime. You never know who is going to see it and you never know who you will inspire.

That being said, it will be a while before I produce again- I have to recharge my movie-making batteries!

Do you want to make a short, or go for a feature?

There are tons of shorts being made. If you need to practice your craft before you work at a higher level, shorts are a great way to do that. But distribution for shorts is almost impossible. Unless you distribute online. If you put it online, most people don’t want to pay to see ten minutes of footage. It’s too much work. We are used to just clicking and watching. Also, keep in mind the length. Would you rather make a few two minute videos that may get more views, than one ten minute short? Our attention span is getting shorter so keep that in mind.

For the amount of time and money that goes into a short, why not add a little bit more to your budget and make a feature? Features seem to be the calling card of hot filmmakers now. You can still enter into festivals, and if you do distribute online, you can easily charge a few bucks. You can also sell some dvds. You may even get a distribution deal to get it in theaters.

Whatever length of film you make, know the benefits and limitations of your choice. This is a huge consideration for me as I look into new projects.

Should I crowdfund?

I talked at length about my Kickstarter campaign here. I believe that crowdfunding is an experience all indie filmmakers need to have. Everyone is doing it so you should know what it is all about. Basically, it is hard. It is really really hard. DO NOT run a campaign by yourself. Unless you have a very low goal, or a very large fan base, hustling a campaign yourself is exhausting. I mean, it is anyways, but imagine pulling a school bus up a hill. By yourself. That’s what it is like. It would be much easier if you had say, five to ten other people helping you and sharing that weight. Yes, there are ridiculously generous people (thankfully I know a few!), but the bigger your team is the easier it will be.

Make sure you commit to backer rewards you can handle. Not everyone claims their rewards, but plan on them all being claimed.

Crowdfunding is a lot of time and social media pimping, but at the end of the day, you will be inspired by all of the people that believed in your project and shared their hard earned cash with you. It is pretty overwhelming.

Are you prepared to dedicate all of your resources to this project?

Because that’s kind of what you have to do. You will go over budget. It will happen. Unless you budget a 25% extra. You may not go that far over, but you get what I mean. Things come up. Reshoots are needed. Whatever it may be you either have to be prepared to hand over your credit card, or stop production.

Are you ready to spend hours and hours answering emails and coordinating meetings and shooting schedules? No? Then stop now. Making a film is a full time job that doesn’t pay well. If you can’t treat it that way, you are going to have a hard time.

I don’t mean to be a Negative Nancy here, but making a film is a lot of work. It is a craft as well as an art form. This is why there are professional film makers. I have so much more respect for any film that gets made because like a child, they are little miracles.

Tune in next week for the online premiere of For Patrick!

xoxox,

Jess

KickStarter

April 19, 2012 By in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

WARNING: THIS IS A VERY LONG AND INFORMATIVE POST. TIME MANAGE ACCORDINGLY.

Everyone and their mother have a Kickstarter campaign now, so I was both relieved and nervous. Relieved that everyone gets the drill and is prepared to donate to projects that speak to them, and nervous for the same reason. The first thing I did when I was getting serious about my campaign was to meet with my good friend Wonder Russell. You may know her as @bellawonder on Twitter. She’s a rock star. Before our meeting I read as many articles as I could on her website www.bellawonder.com where she has compiled an extraordinary amount of articles in her Crowdfunding Bible. These articles informed a lot on how I approached my campaign perk levels, timeline, ask amount, etc.

At the meeting she helped me adjust my perks and perk levels from what I already had. Then we talked about strategy. Having advocates in place before the campaign begins. What the updates would be about. She just kept a quick fire of ideas coming; it was really impressive. I’m not going to share all the juicy details and pieces of advice because there was a ton!

So, the meeting was a huge success, but I felt like I was on the verge of a panic attack. Here I was running a campaign BY MYSELF. I produced this movie myself without any partners. So that meant I was the only one to really do the campaign. After a mild freak out which was probably due to having very little sleep, I crashed in my bed and woke up twelve hours later. I highly recommend this strategy for your campaign. YOU MUST SLEEP. Seriously. Do it.

Okay, so I got some rest and then I went to work. Before the campaign even started I sat down and started hammering out updates. Things I could post several times a week but wouldn’t have to stress about writing them.  They would be ready to go: copy, paste, pour myself a beverage. Like anything, the more work you can do before hand, the smoother it will go.

I made some checkpoint goals for myself: to make 25% in the first week, and be within a $1000 of my goal at the start of the last week. This made it more manageable than just thinking about the total amount. Then I sent out an email a week before the campaign started to my film making contacts telling them about the movie and that I would appreciate it “in epic amounts” if they would tweet or post a FB status about it. I also told them I would send them the link once the campaign began. This gave me some advocates and interest before I even started the KS clock.

Then I had a variety of targeted emails to certain social groups. I told them all about the project and simply asked them to visit the campaign and share it if they couldn’t donate. One of Wonder’s amazing ideas was to give a phrase and a link for people to tweet/FB. Make it as easy as possible for people to share your message.

So on my planned day to launch the campaign I go to Kickstarter and fill everything out. It’s super easy and straightforward. Then I get to the end and ready to launch, BUT NO, Kickstarter takes a few days to look it over and approve it before you can launch. This messed up my whole schedule. Starting on a Monday is the best option so I had to wait another week to launch. I wish I had known this info beforehand, and I think it may have taken a little bit of momentum out of the equation for me.

The first week was great. These are the people who already know you and the project and are prepared to back right away. I made my 25% goal right on schedule. The hard part is what to do after that. Once you exhaust your email contacts, Facebook friends, Twitter followers, you don’t have many other places to go. This is when I started depending on the updates to bring me more backers. Though I had them ready to go, I didn’t notice a correlation between updates and people backing. Maybe a few but not a lot. That said, most of the $5 backers were in it for the updates and that accounted for $40, which is better than nothing. You have to honestly evaluate the reach of your social net. And I hate to tell you, but it isn’t as big as you think. And not everyone is going to back- the ones that make a difference are the ones that back a lot. Do you have the social web to support your goal? I think I was right at the limit of my social reach in being able to fund this campaign.

Around the two-week mark, things started to get personal. 30 days is a long time to promote a project! Not only promote it without it being finished, but to continually ask for money. This is where the value judgements came in. Am I worthy of this money people are giving me? Is this film even any good? Should I just give up now? It was starting to look pretty grim there. I finally just told myself that I would make up the difference from my savings. That way I would still get whatever amount had already been pledged. And wouldn’t you know, right when I let go, everyone else stepped in. Wonder started sharing the link all over her social media. My friend Kay put it on her website. Other friends and colleagues started spreading the word and people started upping their pledges. You truly have no idea who is going to pledge. A lot of the donors I had never met or heard of before.

All in all it was a really trying campaign, but I’m glad I did it. Now I have committed myself to the distribution of this film and the inclusion of these new producers-those that backed the project. The arc of making a film is twice as long as you think it will be and you need to be able to have enough energy and resources to get to the end. Will I do another crowd-funding campaign again? Maybe, but definitely not any time soon. But it is part of the process for indie-films now and I’m glad I have first hand knowledge.

Thanks to all who backed, those who spread the word, those who tolerated my incessant social media posts, and most of all to those who believed. I really started to doubt myself and it turned out those who I was trying to inspire, inspired me. Art is a pay-it-forward loop that never ends.

xoxox,

Jess

Pride and Filmmaking

February 15, 2012 By in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

As I embark on my next producing project, I want to talk about pride and it’s place in film making.

Now, I freely admit that I am not a writer, but to play the roles I want to play and stretch myself as an actor, I have to make my own opportunities. Last summer I started writing a short film about a young married couple in the crux of a world pandemic. As they struggle to survive they are also struggling with their relationship and the choices they have to make.

Of course after I wrote it I was so proud of myself. OhlookatmeI’msosmartIjustwroteamovie. I thought it was a great script. Looking back, I’m glad I believed in the story more than anything (and not the actual script).  I was lucky enough to get Zeek and Chris at SHEP to come on board to direct, after I had such a great time with them on In the Pines. My good friend Aaron Blakely also agreed to join the team to play opposite me. Surprisingly, I wasn’t completely precious about the script and said that I would like their input.

Now we are two weeks from our shoot date and I am so glad I have learned to distance myself from the work. What I mean is, it is imperative to not let your pride get hurt by the creative process. Earlier this week, we had our first meeting on the script and it was really just all of us tearing apart the first few drafts and putting it together again. Changing things, realizing what would never work, adjusting, complicating, problem solving. Had I been extremely attached to my first script this would have been agony.

Though this process has been difficult (and I hope to share more over the next few weeks), I have learned so much. Mainly that you mustn’t let pride get in the way of the creative process. Film is a collective medium and everyone’s voices must be heard. Let yourself be surprised!

My strategy now for film making is to surround myself with people who are smarter than me. That way they can see the weak points and will have great solutions. This will bring criticism but you must embrace it if you want what is best for the project. I want to make good films and if that means my ideas get torn apart, or I need 20 takes I am willing to do that. Rejection is a means for growth, and as they say, if you want to increase your rate of success, increase your rate of failure. Go ahead and keep the ideas coming, but be ready to let them go and let something better come along.

xoxo,

Jess

So Many Hats

February 7, 2012 By in Uncategorized Tags: , , , 1 Comment

As an actor in this day and age you have to wear a lot of hats. If you really want to do the work you want to do, you can’t wait around for it. Granted, I have been able to be a part of some ridiculously amazing professional projects, but you have to keep the ball rolling after those projects are over. You constantly have to be working your chops and putting yourself out there.

The most common way to do this is through short films. I wrote and produced a short a few years ago so that I could act in it and it taught me some very valuable lessons. Number one, producing is hard. Number two, it costs money. And the more people that you bring on the team, the more money it’s going to cost. So, like most people, I try to keep the numbers down by wearing more hats myself.

This is where I am starting to struggle. I do one thing really well, and that is acting. I’m not going to be able to do these other jobs as well as my first talent. I know there are so many other talented people that could do it better than me, but I have to do it myself to stay in budget. This is where I get discouraged. I want to do everything well. I don’t like the feeling of only being adequate. But, I’m forced to be a great producer, writer, editor, production assistant, wardrobe mistress, hair and makeup artist, and actor.

I will say that having to do all these jobs myself makes me appreciated SO much when I don’t have to do them. When I can show up and go to the makeup trailer, have someone do my face and dress me, then tell me where to go and how to act the scene. And get paid. That, my friends, is luxurious. However, at this point in my career, I have to fill in the gaps by making my own work.

Some days I feel like I’m wearing all the hats like a boss, and on others, not a one will fit on my head. I don’t have any answers or words of wisdom, I just try to think about you: The people I’m making these movies for. I want them to be something you would like to watch- something that would make you stop and think during your busy day. As I move from “actor” to “filmmaker” I realize this is all bigger then myself, and that gives me the inspiration to keep going.