FILM PRODUCER | WRITER | HUSBAND | FATHER
Stop using inanimate objects or others as an excuse to not make the thing you say you want to make. Movies can be shot on iPhones and still get into Sundance. Stories are free. Books can be written using a pencil and paper or using a free text app that comes with every computer. Words …
I just finished Start With Why this last week and thoroughly enjoyed it. I thought I’d gotten the gist of it from watching his Ted Talk years ago, but turns out you get way more from a book than a 20-minute presentation for a specific audience. The biggest note for me was that a leader …
Last night I attended the monthly Creative Collaborative meetup here in Provo UT, featuring one of my favorite humans Chris Clark.
Chris is a theater director, as well as a producer, writer, and actor. His remarks were very poignant and I wanted to share a few takeaways.
What was amazing was how universal his points were. Rather than specific technical ways to become a better theater director, they came across more as universal truths.
A few weeks ago I attended the American Film Market for the second year in a row.
It’s an annual film market where Sales Agents are selling the films they represent to foreign distributors and buyers.
Producers, like myself, will often attend to try and meet with these Sales Agents and find one to represent their films, but it’s also a great place to learn as they have great conferences and workshops centered around every aspect of the filmmaking process.
Here are my notes from the week. Hoping something is useful as you go out to make your own films in the future. To see last years notes, check out this post.
Last night I met another local filmmaker who excitedly told me about how his $150,000 movie made $2,000,000 in foreign sales and DVD. Now, that’s super impressive, and I’m happy for him-
But I’m also massively pissed.
When you make a movie for $150k, you generally — not always — have to make some sacrifices. These sacrifices are typically at the expense of everyone else that worked on the film, other than you and your producing partners.
Some examples —
These are the detailed notes I took at the 2014 AFM Conference Series and Producer’s Forum sessions. The format will be more like a notebook, rather than a blog post, but I hope it’s still valuable for those that want to know what was covered throughout the week.