Archives: Learning

As we all settle back for a well-deserved 48-hour respite1 from slaving at our respective grindstones, it’s as well to remember to keep your writerly radar pinging throughout the festive season.

What with the trapping over-excited children, confused elderly relatives, stressed-out parents and chefs on the rampage in one confined space, mixed up with a drop of misunderstanding and too much booze, Christmas and New Year can be a real goldmine for writers.

That’s not to say everyone wants to see the inner workings of one another’s families, but it’s the interaction, the banter, the (often forced) joviality that combine to offer up little moments of genius that, if you’re paying enough attention2, you’ll find cropping up in your work in the year(s) to come.

So raise a glass, kick back, chill out and enjoy the goodwill of all mankind, but remember to keep your writer wits about you – you never know when you might strike paydirt.

Merry Christmas to one and all and a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year!

1. or more, if you’re lucky enough to enjoy time off until 2011 [↩]
2. Even if that attention is subconscious, thanks to writer’s osmosis [↩]

The week leading up to Christmas is always a weird one. Whether you’re at home, at work or both1 no one is really interested in doing anything and it’s never a hugely productive period2.

So how do we make the best of the week before Christmas and the odd limbo of the following week before the New Year kicks off?

Rather than sitting at your desk procrastinating and clock-watching while dreaming of warmer, sunnier climbs, why not make use of the semi-downtime to make some progress on those little pet projects that have been kicking about in your head for the last three, six or even twelve months?

You know the ones I’m talking about: the projects that you love but just haven’t found time to focus on. The projects that you want to make a reality, but you’re not ready to share them with others just yet. The projects that really excite you, that fill you with drive and passion.

Too many great projects get lost in the maelstrom of everyday life and work, so use this little two-to-three week window to really reignite that passion.

If nothing else, just by working on a project that energises you for a few weeks, it’ll help launch you into the New Year with renewed vigour for achieving your goals and making the most of your life, your career and your talent.

1. working from home, that is [↩]
2. unless your in Panto, in which case you’re rushed off your feat right about now [↩]

When does promotion become procrastination?

When social media goes bad (cue over-the-top American-TV intro music and flashy title sequence)1.

We’ve all been there: listless, unmotivated, snowed under with things we just don’t want to be doing with our day.

We just sneak a peek at what the Twitterverse is up to before we get down to it. We just see who’s thrown a sheep2 at us before we put our noses back to that grindstone.

Before we know it, we’ve lost hours of our day to commenting, reTweeting and generally putting ourselves about, always telling ourselves that it’s all in the name of networking and promoting ourselves, our product or our project. Which it very often is.

But it’s vital not only to your productivity, but to the success of said product or project, that we pay attention to those warning signs of procrastination. There’s no point in marketing yourself if you’re never going to have anything to deliver.

So shut that browser down, Command-Q Tweetdeck and set yourself to task. You’ll be glad you did when you jump back on later to Tweet “I finished it!”

1. Apologies to my American readers, I couldn’t use British TV as all our shows are pretty bland and boring when held up against the US. Two ends of the same spectrum, I guess. [↩]
2. Does anyone actually throw sheep any more? [↩]

This weekend I took a couple of days respite from the rigours of the last couple of weeks chained to my desk finishing off a couple of projects. On Sunday morning, K and I headed to a nearby village to meet a couple of friends for some period festive merriment at a Dickensian-themed Christmas fair.

As we wandered around, my friend and I got chatting about the last 12 months: he was made redundant, which finally gave him the kick up the arse he needed to pursue his career as a magician and hypnotist full-time and I officially started – and started finding success with – my production company TinyButMighty. Then we naturally segued into our thoughts, plans, hopes and dreams for next year and the year after.

We’re both very similar people: highly motivated, hugely ambitious and very lucky to have supportive partners. But the more we chatted the more it struck me how important these real-world friendships are in these days of myriad virtual followers and “friends”.

My online friends tend to be my filmmaking buddies; the people I interact with most on Twitter are those that motivate and inspire me to push on with my film-related projects, hence the term ‘reel life’ friends.

My ‘real life’ friends are those who I’ve known a lot longer, have been through more with, but who aren’t necessarily engaged and enthused by the same things in life as I am.

Until this weekend, I’d always thought of the two sides of the reel/real coin as being entirely separate. Now I see that what they are is the yin and the yang of a cohesive whole.

Without my little online ‘tribe’, I’d have nowhere to turn when I hit that roadblock in developing ideas, concepts and screenplays. But without my friends to hang, chill out and relax with, I wouldn’t have the enjoyment and the richness in my life to motivate myself to push forward with anything.

Sometimes you need a push from someone who knows what you’re going through, who’s been there before and can sympathise, empathise and hold your (virtual) hand while you rough it out.

And sometimes it’s precisely because they’re from outside your ‘reel world’ that someone can offer more support and a bigger spur to your dedication and commitment than your hundreds (or thousands) of Twitter followers all tweeting you at once.

The yin/yang nature of online/offline connections should remind us of the balance we need to strike between our different worlds and how they can best help us achieve what we want in their own separate and inimitable ways.

Following yesterday morning’s excitable, if over-tired post, I decided the best use of my time was, clearly, to redesign the blog. There was some logic to it, since I see the blog becoming quite a key part of the new project, but mostly it was because I couldn’t really focus on anything work-related.

As part of the process, I figured it was about time to move the blog to its own server. Since migrating to olilewington.co.uk from my old blog about my transplant journey, I’ve used a masked-forwarder for the domain to hide the fact that I’ve been hosting it on the server of another of my websites.

To cut a very long (24 hour+) story short, the hosting company went all weird and ‘lost’ the domain, then when it reappeared it was still set up for the old site and the re-direct didn’t work and I’d copied the wrong database over. Deep breath.

In the end, though, it was Twitter that came to my rescue, providing as it did a HUGE volume of helpful responses from my various tech-savvy followers and, eventually, Mike Busson managed to help me get it all squared away.

The whole experience just goes to illustrate what the true power of social media is: helping people.

By offering practical advice and solutions – as was the case with my issues – supporting people having a hard day, celebrating your friends’ successes or RTing people’s good causes or crowdfunding campaigns, you are doing things for other people and forming an active part of a community.

Engagement and involvement is the ultimate key to getting the most not just from social media, but life itself. Only by being willing to give to others will you find others willing to give back.

So next time you’re asking people for a ReTweet, or encouraging people to click on the ‘Share’ buttons on your blog (did you pick up the subliminal message in there?), stop for a second and ask yourself: when was the last time I did this for someone else? What have I given in order for others to give back?

Call it Social Media Karma. Or SMarma. If that didn’t sound so much like smug and smarmy…

On Monday night a friend of mine put a distress call out over Twitter looking for an editor. Having spent the last couple of years cutting my own projects and knowing her company – markthree media – use the same system as I do, I volunteered to pop in on Tuesday and help out.

It wasn’t a hugely technical job; I was there essentially to tackle a couple of issues that had been spotted ahead of final submission to the client and try to shave a little bit off each of the four vids they were submitting. All of which is par for the course on these kinds of videos, it just so happened that their original editor was unavailable to get it done before the deadline.

It was a really interesting exercise for me as a filmmaker, though.

Firstly, I’ve never cut someone else’s footage before, which means I’ve never really made many creative decisions in editing, as I tend to have my final picture laid out in my head while I’m shooting, which means my editing is usually a case of just stringing it together in a way that makes sense. I’ve never had to spend a lot of time working through all the footage and working out how to fit all the pieces in place in a sensible way.

Cutting someone else’s footage also made me realise how much you need to think about the edit when you’re shooting for another editor. Cutting my own stuff means I know what I’ve shot so I never get too hung up on shots that may not be there, because I never think of them.  As an outside eye on an edit, you find yourself thinking, “What I really need is a quick cutaway of this thing in close up,” or “It would be great to have that bit of action from this angle,” which can make it inordinately frustrating when you find you don’t have that footage available to you. I’ve taken note that if someone else is editing my work, I need to give them as many options, cutaways and inserts as I can.

I’ve also learned the enjoyment of collaborative editing. Being a self-shooting producer/director/editor on almost all of my documentary stuff, I make all the creative decisions. While this nicely feeds my control freakery, it masks just how much enjoyment you can get from sitting in an editing suite with a director or creative producer trying different options out and seeing how they work.

Not only did Tuesday’s looooooong day of cutting (left for Town at 9am, got home at 12.35am) give me great confidence in my own ability as an editor, but also allowed me to learn a number of valuable lessons that will make me a better producer, director and shooter.

Anyone need an editor?

Apologies for the delayed return to the return to blogging – I’m not sure why I chose to re-start blogging just before going into production on yet another short film – I should plan these things better.

The film in question, Love Like Hers, went remarkably well despite a hectic schedule and 3 lost hours on the first morning thanks to the good old Yorkshire weather.  The writer/director, Danny Lacey, has already detailed the ins and outs of a crazy 3 days on both his blog and his live show, which you can watch back on demand on his LiveStream channel, so I won’t go into it too much. For those of you who want a taste of what we went through, here’s a short behind the scenes vid from Danny’s YouTube Channel:

My role was essentially as an on-set coordinator, since I’d come on board too late to really be able to take a lot of the “real” production stuff from Danny. Although, frankly, I ended up with more than enough on my plate as it was. It definitely would have been an impossible mission had it not been for the extraordinary Bethan Davis, who started as a Production Assistant, but ended up as a Production Co-Ordinator/Production Manager and was outstanding, as was Danny’s girlfriend, Jacqui, who shouldered a huge amount of stress on Danny’s behalf.

If there was one mistake we made it was in not having enough time for me to take financial control of the picture, meaning all spending decisions had to come from Danny himself. That will doubtless be rectified in future projects together.

What I’ve learned over the last few weeks, though, is that I’m actually not only a big fan of, but also well suited to being a producer. I like the coordination, I enjoy the on-set challenges, but most of all I like to be able to help other writer/directors achieve their vision.

This became abundantly clear to me yesterday after spending over 2 hours in a script meeting with a first-time writer/director who’s got a great little story mapped out.

Louisa is unique in many ways, not simply because she has made a powerful and fascinating documentary exploring her physical and emotional recovery from an horrific accident. She also knows exactly where she stands in terms of skills, abilities and desires.

The script she sent to me has, at its heart, a really strong emotional pull and a really quirky, captivating idea behind it, but it it – by her own admission – in very rough form. Yesterday afternoon she stopped in to my place and we talked through the whole thing from start to finish and really started to delve deeply into the characters, where they were coming from and why they made the decisions they did.  I’m totally confident that when she sends her second draft over it’ll be a vast improvement.

For those of you who want to know why I find Louisa such an exciting person to want to work with, check out her doc, The Highest Low:

And while I’m here, if there’s anyone out there with a script they want to turn or see turned into a finished product, I’m all for taking a look.

Not only did the phenomenal weekend of new model distribution practices put on by Chris Jones feature keynote turns from Sheri Candler and Jon Reiss (detailed here and here respectively), it also managed to fit in several fascinating, inspiring and illuminating turns from key indie film supporters and enablers as well.  Here’s a (very) quick low down on what we got from them all.

OPEN INDIE

Kieran Masterton stopped in on Day 1 to talk to us about OpenIndie.com, the great new website for indie filmmakers designed to help organise screenings of flicks where they’re most in demand.  I’m not going to go into heaps of detail, as it’s all available on their website, but I did learn a huge amount from Kieran about a platform I’d previously been a little dismissive of.  Although I’m still somewhat sceptical about how many non-filmmakers will join the site and thus the number of potential audience members who’ll be requesting films, I do think that given the right support and promotion among filmmakers and film fans, it has the potential to be a game-changing site for indie distribution.  I’ve gone from disinterested disbeliever to fascinated, active observer, so Kieran clearly did his job well.

He also treated us to an impromptu masterclass on websites for filmmakers which was remarkably insightful seeing as he was essentially riffing unprepared from his own experiences.  His key advice: know what you want your site to do before approaching a developer.  And don’t confuse development with design – they’re two VERY separate things.

SHOOTING PEOPLE

Although I have to say I didn’t learn anything new about SP from James’ talk to us on Day 1, it did serve as a reminder of just how effective it is as a tool to connect filmmakers across the country and – potentially – the globe.  As part of the new model of distribution and marketing, I think its use is limited given that it’s an audience of filmmakers, but as a resource to help you get your movie made it’s clearly invaluable.

OPEN CINEMA

Not to be confused with Open Indie, our presentation from Christoph of Open Cinema served as a stark reminder as to how we as filmmakers can make a real difference.  Open Cinema is a project aimed at kitting out hostels for rough sleepers with their own cinemas to show challenging, thought-provoking films to some of the most under-priviledged people of our country.  They also run projects to help homeless people tell their stories through film by partnering with established filmmakers.

This presentation really hit home to me and is something I very much want to be involved with.  I hope to have a meeting with Christoph in the next week or so to see how I can apply my skills in education to helping out with the Open Cinema project.  And I would encourage any filmmakers who can spare a little time to check out Open Cinema and see about volunteering to help brighten the lives of some truly wonderful but over-looked people, even just for a day.

NOVEMBER FILMS

We also had a great presentation on true DIY distribution from James of November Films, whose documentary BEYOND BIBA has been sold all over the world from James’ office at Ealing through judicious phone calls and constant hard work.  Along with global sales, the film is also a prime example of Jon’s “Live Event/Theatrical” model, having held over 60 screenings all over the UK that have been hugely successful.  They also highlighted the fact that merchandise can play a key role; at one screening, the team took over £1500 in sales.  Granted they had the film’s subject there and a packed auditorium of her biggest fans, but it still shows how making your screenings an event can turn a profit for you.

As I’ve said before, I could write reams of stuff on here about the weekend, but I could never do the experience justice.  I cannot recommend this workshop enough, nor the importance for filmmakers to follow, interact with and learn from Sheri, Jon and Chris.

What makes these three unique is there truly unselfish willingness to share their knowledge, insights and theories with all filmmakers and to enter into discussions over how to get this model out there.  They’re not precious; they want the best for all indie filmmakers and are willing to debate the issues we face from dawn ’til dusk (and then a little after that, too).  If they’re coming anywhere near you with this workshop, you HAVE to do it.

So Sheri Candler supplied us with a wealth of information, tips and tricks on Day 1 of the Chris Jones-organised marketing and distribution seminar and we all left with our heads ringing with Sheri’s “engage, engage, engage” message.

Little did we know Day 2 was going to bring on even more information to cram into our little heads as fast as we could assimilate it.

Jon Reiss, through the self-distribution of his feature-length documentary BOMB IT, has become a pioneer of the new model for indie filmmakers to get their film out there.  He’s collected his experiences and thoughts into his book, Think Outside the Box Office, and Sunday was spent going over some of his key concepts.  As for Sheri’s day, I’m not about to take you through it line-by-line, but rather highlight the salient points as they stood out to me.

The essence of what Jon was teaching throughout the day – in various different guises – was that self-distribution is both achievable and, potentially, profitable, but that the very best model to adopt is a kind of hybrid model between doing it all yourself and partnering with distributors to help you reach markets you may not be able to tackle on your own.

The biggest thing Jon stressed is something I mentioned in yesterday’s post: budgeting.  Not just having the money to do it, although that’s a key part of it, but also your time.  Getting your picture out there, especially if you’re doing all the work, is at least 12 months of full-time labour.  That’s a lot.  To help us think of it in a clearer way, Jon has introduced the concept of “The New 50/50” whereby you should be spending 50% of your resources on making the film and 50% on marketing and distribution.  And by “resources” we’re talking everything from cash budget to man-power.

There are bound to be arguments (and probably already have been) about a model that proposes that cash-strapped filmmakers should “wave goodbye” to half of their production budget, but that is fast become short-sighted in the extreme.  If independent filmmakers truly want our film to reach an audience and achieve our goals, it’s essential that we learn to embrace this sort of model.

For those who are still shifting uncomfortably at the thought of having to “market” your picture, Jon has another solution – the PMD.  Intended as a team member as vital as the producer, director or DP, the Producer of Marketing and Distribution is a new role who should be brought on board as early as humanly (and budgetarily) possible to start the audience outreach that is crucial for the successful marketing of the film – that early-stage engagement I spoke of yesterday.  Through pre-production, production and post, the PMD connects with and primes the audience so that they can leverage this support and transform it into sales of your movie – whether that be DVD through your own website or a sale to a distributor, the PMD takes care of it all, in close connection with the filmmaker.

It’s undoubtedly going to take time to build this kind of role enough in stature to convince indie filmmakers on a tight budget that it’s necessary, and for them to trust someone else with building this level of engagement, but I believe it’s crucial to the monetization of indie film.

It is also worth noting – and investigating – Jon’s ideas about the re-branding of a “Theatrical” release to his definition of “Live Event/Theatrical” – a concept that is defined as being any screening of a film in the way the filmmaker intended – ie, in controlled conditions with an audience.  That may be in a traditional cinema, or a church, community hall or anywhere you can project your movie in any capacity.

Key to this model for smaller indie pictures who can’t or won’t achieve the traditional theatrical run is making any screening an “event” by adding value beyond just that of the film.  That may be a Q&A with some of the team, it could include raffles, give-aways or similar.  But by embracing the short run and making the most of it, it’s possible for a filmmaker to earn more from a single screening in a town than a week-long run, as Jon himself can attest.

I could write a dozen essays on things we learned this weekend and I’m sure more of Jon and Sheri’s tips are going to be bubbling up and landing in my writings here over the next weeks and months, whether it’s specific to a project or in general discussion.  But I would encourage any filmmaker who wants to make a living from this to check out both Jon and Sheri’s blogs (jonreiss.com/blog and shericandler.com), as well – of course – as keeping up-to-date with what Chris is up to.  His courses are second to none and I have no doubt this one will end up repaying its costs many times over as we all apply these theories to our projects both current and future.

Thanks to all three of the marvellous trio for giving us such insight, help and knowledge.  Tomorrow, I’ll talk a little more about some of the visiting speakers over the weekend.  For now, you’re free to go make tea.

This weekend I headed down for Chris Jones’s 2-day course on the new models of distribution for independent film with Sheri Candler, indie film marketing guru, and Jon Reiss, pioneer of DIY distribution and author of the “new model” bible Think Outside the Box Office.

I could spent hours here – and thousands of words – going over everything we learned, but to be honest, you’d be better off buying the book.  Instead, I thought  I’d see what elements have really stuck in my brain and give a few notes.  This is not intended to be a comprehensive review of the weekend, but rather a toe-dipping to introduce any of you unfamiliar with these people’s work.

DAY 1 – Sheri Candler

Sheri Candler – indie film legend and marketing supremo – spent the first day introducing us to the “new” concepts of marketing.  I say “new” with inverted commas because actually, a lot of what Sheri was teaching us is fairly standard practice in the commercial and business worlds.  It’s just that not many filmmakers consider any of it at all and if they do, they approach it way too late.

What Sheri is preaching (and preaching really is the right kind of word for it) is audience identification and engagement.

IDENTIFICATION – it’s no good, as an indie filmmaker, making a horror movie and saying that you want to target horror fans.  There are far too many out there for you to successfully reach and you’ll end up throwing away money that you don’t have and won’t recoup.  Instead, you need to drill right down into you audience and find the core.  That may be, for instance, people who like independent horror movies featuring zombies.  If you can, it should be even narrower than that; the more precise you can get your target – or core – audience, the better you’ll be able to connect with them.

ENGAGEMENT – isn’t just sending out flyers and posting on internet forums.  To get a true following for your movie – a hardcore fanbase who will spread the word into wider circles – you need to full engage with them.  From the start.  That means finding out where they congregate (usually where online – forums, websites etc) and joining with them to start discussions about the subject – not just YOUR MOVIE.  This is a crucial soft-sell approach, without which it’s not real engagement, it’s just advertising.  At this level of movie making, advertising doesn’t really work – connecting with and befriending your audience is the key.

The biggest lesson I took out of day one is, without doubt, that the earlier you start the better.  You should be starting your audience “outreach” in pre-production or even as you’re finishing your script, but you should certainly do it before you reach post-production.  The kind of engagement you need to promote your small indie flick is too complex to take a stab at once you’re ready to release – you need to be building it from the beginning.

The other key element to this is budgeting – when you’re budgeting and fundraising for your film, make sure you include the marketing costs in there, too.  This isn’t simply advertisements (in fact, they may not feature at all), but you will need GREAT key art, a BRILLIANT website and also the TIME to engage your audience.  All of this costs – especially if you’re hiring a pro, which is something that’s really worth thinking about.  A professional can handle things for you while you focus on your movie and keep an over view of all the rest, because it will take up a lot of your time and your mental “bandwidth” to be doing both.

At the very least, you’ll need help in doing it.  You have help making the film (more than likely) so why not get help marketing the film?  As Jon would go on to tell us on Day 2, reinforced by Sheri herself, the ideal marketing, publicity and distribution spend is going to be 50% of your budget.  Allow for it.

Tomorrow, I’ll hit you with the key take-aways from Jon’s 2nd day session with us, which was packed with a ton of information and ended up running long without losing any of the filmmakers listening.  The whole weekend was exceptionally generous in the sharing of information and tips and none of the filmmakers there could thank Jon, Sheri and Chris enough for their help.

On Wednesday, I’ll also talk about some of the guest speakers we had visit over the course of the 2 days.  Right now, I think this is enough for one blog!