commercial doesn’t have to mean cr*p

ok, so you have all these incredible ideas: you want to make, like, “Lost”, but set in space; you have the most perfect script ever for Jack Nicholson / Brad Pitt / that pouty dude out of “Twilight” in a drawer under your bed; you once had this amazing hour just sitting watching your cat slowly kill a spider and it was the most horrifically profound thing you ever saw, you feel you need to make a film about it right here, right now, and it’s going to blow people’s minds…

stop.  this is your first film.  once you’ve proved you can out-direct Tarantino, then you can do whatever the hell you like.  but for now, you have to make compromises, and that means choosing a script that is both:

1.  cheap, and

2.  commercial

so why can’t you just do what you want, like any other artist would?  after all, filmmaking is an art, right?

well, yes, or course it is.  it’s highly creative – from the scripting, to the set design, to the lighting, to the actor’s performances.  however, it differs in one way: unlike creating a sculpture or composing a symphony, making a film with any kind of artistic value costs a lot of money.  99% of the time you can’t just go out and fund it yourself, you have to raise money, and be organised enough to coordinate financiers, a cast, and a crew.  let’s say you do make your own film: now what do you do with it?  it’s not like a painting, you can’t just sell it and make your money back straight away.  you need distribution…it’s not enough for filmmakers to simply be artists, they have to be business people too.

what I’m getting at here is that a filmmaker has to have a track record in order to persuade other people to come on board with them and create a film.  therefore, a first time filmmaker has such a major setback simply by being a first time filmmaker, that everything they do needs to counter balance this in some way.  in the first instance this is through choosing the right film project to be your first film.

so, back to the two criteria.

by cheap, I mean ideally under the £850,000 mark.  absolutely no more than £1.5 million.  with a first time director, producer and writer team, it is unheard of for sales agents, distributors or film bodies to take a project with a budget bigger than this seriously.  no matter how much raw talent is bleeding out of you onto exec’s floors, no matter how many times you refer to yourselves as “fresh” and “the voice of the youth” (feel free to use those.  they’ll open doors).

now, because your budget will only just cover putting crew up in hostels and feeding them on food from Lidl’s discount aisles, how are you going to make it commerical?  you’re probably not going to be able to afford the £million salaries commanded by household name stars, or huge CGI battle sequences.  don’t panic.  all this means is that you’d be ill-advised to make a romcom, or a straight drama film, or a science fiction film.  romcoms and straight dramas traditionally pull in audiences using their celebrity leads, therefore an investor / sales agent / distributor will probably not touch them with a barge pole if the cast list isn’t up to scratch. with a science fiction film, the CGI is the a-list celeb, and people aren’t going to be impressed if it mostly consists of empty cereal boxes covered in tin foil.  unfortunately, kids have evolved since the 60’s Doctor Who audience.

so, you’re left with horror, thriller, comedy, or dromedy films, as the people going to watch them want to be scared, laugh, or geek out, no matter if Keira Knightly or Leo DiCaprio is or isn’t in them.  for example, the film I’m making at the moment is a horror comedy.  not only this, but it also has “hooks” – by this, I mean it has themes and elements that grab people’s attention and can be used as selling points.  in our case, these are that the story centers around stoners and zombies, and is aimed at a youth market.  all this relaxes everyone slightly: yes, we are first-timers.  but the film is as commercial as possible on a low budget.

the problem about some filmmakers is that they turn a blind eye to this.  if you seriously want to be a successful producer, and you don’t have a track record, you’ll be making it extremely hard for yourself by starting out with a niche arthouse film.  raising finance will be a nightmare, because they just don’t pull in the general public, and this isn’t because the general public have poor taste, it’s because art installation videos and arthouse films are generally dull and pretentious.  feel free to slander me for saying that, it’s true.

however, there is absolutely no reason why a commercial film with the potential to secure theatrical release should be artistically inferior to a niche, arthouse film.  of course, Hollywood studios churn out a lot of crap because they can afford to hide mediocre scripts behind an expensive director and cast.  but low budget films that obtain cinema release almost always balance subtext with engaging plotline, empathic characters, and visually arresting cinematography.  if you want to comment on high-culture issues, do it through a commercial film – at least your voice will be heard by someone.  and if you can’t handle difficult subjects in a way that engages the general public, then chances are it’s because you’re not a good enough writer.  look at This Is England, which brought issues of racism and the BNP party to a huge audience, or Juno, which dealt with teen pregnancy vs abortion in a way that wasn’t completely depressing.  if you can commercialise the BNP and abortion, you can commercialise anything.  anything.

dahling, hi

first off, I just want to make it clear that I’m not some young raa raa, running round Soho with daddy’s credit card, lounging in Home House by day, and shagging D-list celebs in Chinawhite by night.

I’m also not a pretentious arthouse filmmaker who essentially is making films because they’re too lazy to get a full time job.

I think what’s made me take the plunge into attempting to make my first film is:

firstly, the want to make something that is mine, and that I can control – one of the things I find frustrating when working on other people’s projects is having to hold my tongue when I see them going in a direction I don’t agree with,  but which is not my place to call;

and secondly, well, pure, unadulterated impatience.

surely this must be true for a lot of young first-time filmmakers.  when you’re youngish, you have far less to lose if it all goes tits up.  most people don’t have a mortgage, or kids, or perhaps even an other half to think about.  hell, I can barely schedule taking care of my cat (his name is tiberius.  yeah, I know, it’s awesome…).  so it makes sense that we can act a bit crazy and have a shot at something we shouldn’t really be shooting at for at least another 10 years or so.  my parents actually like the fact I’m doing this, they think it’s brave.  it isn’t.  if I was 40 and had a reputation to ruin, money to squander, or a family to alienate, it would be, but I don’t.  essentially, this is a gamble, and I have enough “no-strings” and “years-left” chips spare to throw at it.

this blog will follow my learning curve as I try to blag being a producer, despite only having worked up to production coordinator level before.  I intend to include enough practical information so that other first-timers can be helped by reading it.  time costs money and vice versa, and if I’d known half of what I’ve learnt in the last year and a half, I probably would be around 5 months further down the production line, and about £5,000 less broke. the film I’m producing is a low-budget British independent horror, so pretty standard for a first film.  so yeah, subscribe, and throughout next week I’ll bring you up to speed with the production.

big love xx