Hollywood studios are hiring fewer filmmakers and giving them less power. So, what is wrong?
Making a movie is probably one of the most challenging things you could try to do.
Yet nearly everyone in the world of Raindance is an aspiring filmmaker, which means you have to:
- Banish your personal life and become totally absorbed in your project
- Ask every single person you know or meet if they can help you (or not)
- Pour your blood, sweat and tears into your movie
- When it’s finished wait years before you get paid (if at all)
So why does everyone want into film?
Here’s the Catch. To really make it as a filmmaker you need to be able to make compromises to the faceless moneymen who finance your film. And as any astute observer of the Hollywood system can see, filmmakers are allowed fewer and fewer choices.
Even the Christopher Nolan’s of this world are allowed the creative freedom to make Inception IF and only if they concede to a demand from their financiers – in this case Warner Bros – in exchange for directing a 3rd Batman.
Yet, this ‘terrible job’ is something that everyone seems to want to do. And why? Because when it works out, being a filmmaker is probably the most powerful, rewarding and satisfying job that there is.
So, what is the secret formula that filmmakers like Nolan and Tarantino use to make it to the top?
They all started at the bottom, learned and honed their craft by making films – films with incredibly modest budget. Nolan’s first film, The Following, made for a modest £6,000 and screened at Raindance.
What better way to study and learn about filmmaking than coming to this year’s Raindance Film Festival and seeing the Nolan’s and Tarantino’s of tomorrow. Most of the filmmakers are attending making it the ideal venue to listen, question and learn.
Quitters never win. Winners never quit.
Lets make a movie.
😉 here’s a cool place to look for film work
*go on: comment below:
About Elliot Grove
Photo Credit Jay Brooks / BIFA 2015
Few people know more filmmakers and screenwriters than Elliot Grove. Elliot is the founder of Raindance Film Festival (1993) and the British Independent Film Awards (1998). He has produced over 700 hundred short films and five feature films: the multi-award-winning The Living and the Dead (2006), Deadly Virtues (2013), AMBER (2017), Love is Thicker Than Water (2018) and the SWSX Grand Jury Prize winner Alice (2019). He teaches screenwriting and producing in the UK, Europe, Asia and America.
Elliot has written three books which have become industry standards: Raindance Writers’ Lab: Write + Sell the Hot Screenplay, now in its second edition, Raindance Producers’ Lab: Lo-To-No Budget Filmmaking and Beginning Filmmaking: 100 Easy Steps from Script to Screen (Professional Media Practice).
In 2009 he was awarded a PhD for services to film education.
Despite having written three features (including two award winners) with two more on the horizon, I never really wanted to be involved in film making. It somehow just happens!
I could certainly tell you some stories… :-/
Not only directors are filmmakers. What about the DF, the producer, the rest of the crew, the cast… Everyone is film making, and not always the director is honest, humble, clear or assertive about his/her vision…