With the current heatwave melting filmmaker’s equipment, we thought it a good idea to remind ourselves how independent filmmakers are cool!
While independent filmmaking can be challenging, there is no doubt that being an independent filmmaker is the coolest of cool occupations and an independent film can become the flavor of the month amongst the cultural elite.
1. Everyone Digs A Filmmaker
Filmmaking has got to be just about the most glamorous job there is. But don’t fall into the trap of wannabee athletes who adorn themselves with expensive kit with numbers of their favorite players and then parade around trying to look cool. To be cool, you have to do it.
2. Independent Filmmakers Do What They Like
Is this cool or what? You get to put each of your ideas onto a screen, large or small. And if you do it right, you can get paid for it as well. Sure beats stacking shelves at the supermarket.
3. Independent Filmmakers Don’t Need Cold For Snow
Want to raise some eyebrows in the middle of a heatwave? Learn how to make fake snow!
4. Independent Filmmakers Don’t Need Money To Make A Movie
You used to need a mil or three to make a movie, but now filmmakers can make movies good enough to play in a cinema shot on their cellphones. Like Dicke Madchen’s movie Heavy Girls shot on a cellphone for €500 and played theatrically in German cinemas.
Watch the trailer here:
5. Independent Filmmakers Never Sit In Stuffy Classrooms
Filmmaking is about doing. And learning by doing. If you ever get stuck websites like No Film School, Filmmaker IQ, Filmmaker Magazine, Mentorless and Philip Bloom have dozens and dozens of tutorials on how to make movies. Of course if you want some individual mentoring and tutorials, check out the Raindance Higher Education programmes.
6. Nothing Like Hollywood
Sure, Hollywood filmmakers get all the headlines, but that doesn’t make them cool. It makes them subjected to a whole raft of rules, protocol and restrictions that independent filmmakers can ignore. Independent filmmakers are cool because they do what they want to do, not what they’re told to do to preserve some gol-darned image and need.
7. Independent Filmmakers Fear Not The Apocalypse
Read any newspaper and you will see daily stories about how screwed up our planet is. Independent filmmakers fear not the apocalypse because it makes filmmaking a whole lot easier! Read how filmmaking works in the post apocalyptic world.
8. Filmmakers Get To Surf All Day
That’s right. Independent filmmakers these days spend almost their entire day on the web. whether it is building their social presence, managing their online reputation or researching their latest dream, filmmakers have become successful users of the web. Isn’t that cool? The networking site filmmakers like me use is Stage32.com.
But hold on a minute! I just got an important Facebook message. Back in a minute!
9. Self Distribution
God how we at Raindance hate the term ‘self’ film distribution! Doesn’t it imply some sort of failure and therefore ‘lack-of-coolness’? But if you call it alternative distribution, or better yet, just plain old-fashioned distribution, then a filmmaker distributing film themselves becomes cooler than a cucumber. Read the 7 deadly sins of self distribution and see if you have the fortitude to call yourself cool, wear sunglasses day and night and dress all in black [I’ve been told that is cool].
10. You get to change people’s lives
In what other walk of life do you get a chance to make people change their ways? Novel – maybe. Health ‘how-to’ book? Maybe.
But a proper grown up movie, properly executed, and with a message that can speak to a wider theme, and which transcends genre can actually make people think twice. And then change their ways.
What a terrific power and scary responsibility. And nothing is cooler than this one.
[read the 10 elements of award winning movies]
Fade Out
OK, I didn’t go to film school and I didn’t manage to go to university. so, dear reader – what have I missed out. Please leave your thoughts, suggestions, omissions, ideas and otherwise in the comments box below.
Yours in filmmaking,
PS: What are you doing reading this post when you could be out writing, producing, directing a film and looking really cool!
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Photo Credit: Bertie Watson
I founded Raindance Film Festival in 1993 because the British film industry was closed, polite, and congratulating itself while shutting new filmmakers out.
I co-founded the British Independent Film Awards in 1998 because British indie film deserved more than a shrug, a pat on the head, and a Tuesday night screening.
Raindance didn’t start as a brand. It started as a rebellion: film training without gatekeepers, a festival without permission, and a community built by filmmakers who weren’t waiting to be invited in.
Later, we took it global: Toronto, Vancouver, New York, LA, Berlin, and Brussels, because independent film doesn’t belong to one city, one class, or one accent.
I’ve produced 700+ short films and seven features, including Deadly Virtues (2014) and ALICE, which won the SXSW Grand Jury Prize (2019) not because someone “discovered” us, but because the work earned its place.
I’ve written three books used by filmmakers worldwide because too many courses taught compliance instead of survival.
In 2009, I was awarded a PhD for services to film education, ironic, given that most of my career has been about tearing down the rules that education insisted you follow.
I don’t believe in waiting for permission.I believe in making work, building systems, and forcing the industry to catch up.
Specialties: Independent Film (the real kind) · Producing · Writing · Film Education · Festivals · Breaking Broken Systems
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Elliot, you are definitely cool.