Please, please, please: stop thinking “one film at a time”
Perhaps I need a regular column to examine the missteps Cine-makers have been ill-advised to take over the years.
I have long felt there was a better way – or rather, several better ways.
And by better ways, I mean better ways to do this thing that we do. Here, on HopeFor Film, we make and love movies. We want – and hopefully have – careers making movies. Or once had them before the bottom dropped out.
We want this to be sustainable, for everyone. And I know we can make it be so in the not so distant future, but to do so we are going to have examine the errors so we don’t get fooled again. For instance, let’s leave alone the fact that SC-Indie film never prioritized the sustainability part, or why perhaps that never happened. One day we are going to have to talk about that part.
Today, let’s examine just what we need to do to prioritize sustainability.
It takes more than hope to make a movie well (although Double Hope helps). And it takes more than hope to build a career making movies. However, both of these goals are so exhausting, it is easy to fall into a thinking pattern that puts the first into opposition with the latter. We want to make the one at hand so well, we often ignore how it all needs to be in service to our career – or rather, to our overall sustainability.
Not that I have ever or ever plan to run one, but I think that the most likely appropriate metaphor for getting a movie made is training for a marathon. Or maybe a better metaphor is a political campaign? Or climbing Mt. Everest? Losing 50 pounds or more? Okay, those are all pretty apt comparisons, and you can see why most people who do any of those don’t think too much about what comes next. You just have to get it done and it takes so much energy to do even that, why would we waste any of our precious effort towards considering the next stage or three?
Film however is even more brutal than any of those over endeavors. Why? Because in many ways it operates against common sense logic – at least unless you filter it through the filter of the powerful’s relentless pursuit of profit that is. For instance, our Industry generally doesn’t want you to think beyond that single film. It’s not just your shortsightedness that’s to blame for the challenge of building sustainability, it’s THEM too. Our industry is so dang dead set on an extracting value from anyone participating in the field, they will blind you to what is actually best for you (and the ecosystem as a whole) if it gets in the way of them earning extracting a few dollars more.
You are at your most vulnerable, desperate, and manipulatable when you have all your eggs in one basket. You just spent three or so years on this film. Whatever you earned surely is not enough. Maybe the cinema gods have smiled on you and your film got into a festival/market. Congrats, your movie is now perceived of being in the top 1%, even if only 1% of those films will likely sell for a significant profit. You are now prime to compromise your goals, values, and strategy.
Even if they can do a good sale, the next level up is committed to sell you into a deal for maximum value extraction. Everyone but you will get what they want. And let’s say you seem to win this round and have a big hefty fee coming your way. They will advise you to reach beyond your means because “surely more deals like this will be coming your way”. They each take their cuts and you mortgage on up, so when the time comes for another “opportunity” you are required to take it, less you are willing to sell the house, the kids, and anything else that might fetch a pretty penny or two.
To think beyond one film at a time is a significant challenge, but one we should all embrace and weave into our creative and professional practices. Let’s examine all the ways that one-film-at-a-time (aka 1FaaT) is counterproductive to building a sustainable career.
20 Reasons Why NOT one film at a time (1FaaT)
1. OneFilmAAT does not support sustainable careers — it is not your movie that you need to treat like a business but your career.
