So you want to be a filmmaker?  Well, having worked on feature sets as well as short films and commercials I can offer a bit of perspective on doing this kind of work.  Let’s start with a bit of philosophy. 

Woody Allen once said that 90 percent of the job of filmmaking is showing up.  What he meant by that is that if you want to be a filmmaker, you need to make films.  It’s kind of like writing a hit song.  Unless you sit down and focus on writing songs you will never have a hit song.  You have to actually do it to get the result.

Simple right?  Filmmaking, like songwriting, requires that you expose yourself to the world a bit more than say if you were working in an office every day.  That work, however important or menial, only exposes you and your efforts to a limited number of people.

When a film is released or a song is published the potential audience might be in the millions of people.  As such, you are putting yourself out for potential praise or criticism to essentially the entire world instead of a very small slice that you might have in, say, your office job.

That is a much greater risk.  There are a myriad number of methods for mitigating that risk.  In filmmaking these can range from having a friend or colleague read your script or watch an early draft of your film to get feedback as well as to gauge their reaction to the work.

But, unless you actually take the risk of trying to make a film, you will never be a filmmaker.  So the bottom line here is to take the risk.  Don’t think about what other people will think of the work.  That comes much later.  Focus on giving them an example of the work to react to first.  After that you can worry about the reaction.

In the next blog post we will talk about the realities of working in film.  The positives and the negatives.  Make sure to check back for that episode and until then, take care and stay creative!