How to Become a Successful Filmmaker
There are a lot of articles online that are focused on how to become successful as a filmmaker. But the majority of these articles sound like a fairytale. Many of these tips are not doable for an indie filmmaker because they require having great amount of money to put them in practice.
Every filmmaker knows the filmmaking processes, they need to be given an opportunity to show their creative work and that costs $$$$$$. Of course some filmmakers in Hollywood would tell you, with an iPhone you can make film these days and send it to film festivals. But would they sell? Short films no matter how wonderfully they are produced, won’t sell. I am not talking about 1% that return the filmmaker’s investment. We are not talking about the exceptions here. This is an expensive industry and it requires funding. Pitching to major player film distributors at film distribution companies is a long and expensive process. Because the majority of these executive producers are on filmmaking platforms and want you to pay them ( $350) per script to read your screenplay and then they look for all excuses under the sun to reject it and get your money. The other ones have their own film projects. If you are making your first feature film, you have to try to fund it yourself because no film institute and producer would help you with funding. In fact funding a movie these days is like winning a lottery ticket. It is almost impossible unless you have a collateral as a security deposit in order to loan from the bank and make your film. Why nobody invest on movies these days anymore? Because they do not know if your movie sells or not. They want their money back including profit after the release. You can write whatever you want in your pitch deck in regards to sales projection, but film investors won’t buy it. However if/when you make your first film, if it sells then you have a proof to show them.
In such situation how to establish yourself as a filmmaker and writer that is different from anyone else? Innovate and reinvent yourself. If you put yourself in disruption and innovation mindset, you will be successful because you will come across some opportunities that you never seen before.
Build a story that can be shopped as a TV series, video game, mobile game and book series.
Some transmedia stories got successful because they had all these elements in them.
I wrote “ The afternoon when she died” based on the same mindset back in 2014 which sold 30000 copies worldwide. My readers asked me to make a movie based on it and this is how Ghostware my sci-fi fantasy movie got created.
The movie has a franchise potential and I have a big plan for transmedia marketing. I pitched the script to film producers in 17 countries and they all either were busy with their own productions or didn’t understand the business mind behind Ghostware. I finally decided to make the film off of my own money. I will use my unique film marketing and transmedia strategy after releasing.
Building Audience
The whole point of making a successful film is to build a loyal audience. If you are writing a book and make a deal with a publisher and build an audience around it, you will be able to attract them to your TV series. A friend of mine kept pitching her TV pilot to 300 different producers in Hollywood and TV networks and they kept rejecting her TV pilot finally she decided to publish her book series. She become very successful. Because she built audience around the book on social media. Producers who rejected her work came to her and suggested to make a TV series out of the book and she did.
Making a quality movie requires having enough money to make it happen. Film institutes have become monopolized and they don’t support indie filmmakers. It supposed to be for them, but they approve the same people’s script every year for funding. They all follow the same pattern in Europe. It really doesn’t matter how unique and professionally written a screenplay is, they just don’t support your film. Winning in a film festival is more difficult than winning a lottery ticket. When it comes to major film distributors and studios, they send their newly graduated trainees who call themselves “executive producer” to get out there and find good scripts, but they find almost the same stories in different genres or buy/ take an option stories based on established IP. Not everyone is like Netflix, but for pitching to Netflix you must have a proven sales track record of previous movie/s.
People always judge the others but not themselves. People are never quite grounded when dealing with themselves. Some people think they are huge superstars. Some other people think they are minor stars but in reality they are huge superstars. If you are in PR you should get them grounded and understand the reality and saying:” here we are starting from and here we are going to”.
How can you find out if someone becomes the best seller in film or superstar in his/her business? You have to find out what the client want to achieve and if it is achievable at all. Did you know that 20% of teenagers believe that they will become famous? Not wanna be but famous? They are right because there are many mediums that can help them to become famous. They got Facebook, YouTube, reality shows and other social media channels. There are so many ways to stand out in this world as a filmmaker. It all starts with a recognition with: “here where I wanna start and here where I wanna go”.
You can be famous for many things. Becoming famous is easy. What you should do is to get recognition in your filmmaking field. You have to aim at achieving your goal in your niche. There are always ups and downs in business, don’t get me wrong. But being patient and having perseverance are the key in success.
Recognition is good because you build a brand that you can monetize. You cannot monetize for being famous. You don’t make a living by virtue the fact for being famous, you make a living by virtue the fact that you do something well and fame helps to accelerate a lot of these things. You want to be in control of the velocity of fame and recognition and good PR takes time. It is like cooking a good chicken dish, you prepare the ingredients, the chicken and then you place them in the oven and it is delicious in comparison with placing a fast food in a microwave.
I don’t judge people’s motives. Some want to become rich, some others want to change the world but the question is what is their next 5 years plan.
Create a trend for your film
Build relationships with journalists. We don’t have good journalists anymore. Good ones got a lot to write about and have a little time, so when you do some works for them, they really appreciate it. You can give them tips about certain people doing certain things or hot news here and there that nobody pays attention to.
To create a trend for your film or book can be different from making the way a person wears clothing to travel, science, an APP and so on. Health issues and medical science have always been hot and journalists love to get their hands on news like that.
You just have to look at components of the PR you are working on and take it from there. This means improving each component in order to reach a successful PR for your film or screenplay.
What should you do as a filmmaker without having a network and connection? You should think how to approach the marketplace differently more than the networks, studios and showrunners. Things are different today than back in 70s and 80s. There are a lot of powerful filmmaking strategies you can use to make your film become successful. So get out there and make it happen.
To Your Success
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