The Filmmakers Toolbox

How filmmakers can avoid wasting time.

“Time is money” the saying goes and it cannot be more true. Unfortunately many filmmakers are experts at wasting time, what makes matters worst is that they are not even aware of it. I learned many facts about project and time management the last few months and have achieved incredible financial results. Managing Time has always been a priority for me. I have tried to implement systems that can free up time and also allow me to be more effective in my goals. Notice that I say effective and not efficient. Many creative filmmakers spend to much time in multiple projects and never truly develop their full potential in any of them. They should focus their energy in fewer activities in order to achieve mastery of their chosen field.

Redefining Time Management

As it turns out to time management is not so much about how to be efficient, it’s more about choosing carefully what to work on. You can be very efficient by being busy in hundreds of tasks. However, it’s all for nothing if you keep working on the wrong tasks the won’t allow you to be the best in your field. Instead of filling your time with activities that don’t contribute much to your overall goals. It’s better to decide to drop the activities that do not contribute substantial gains. Jim Collins, who teaches at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, suggest annotating on what we spend our time on and ask ourselves three important questions:

What are you deeply passionate about?
What are you are genetically encoded for — what activities do you feel just “made to do”?
What makes economic sense — what can you make a living at?

Collins suggest to stop doing activities if more than 50% of the time is spent on areas outside these three questions. These philosophy is echoed by Seth Godin, famous entrepreneur and author of the book “The dip: A little book that teaches when to quit and when to stick”. Behind these axioms lies the core message that to be the best in any given field, one most focus the majority of time and resources in individual projects vs having multiple goals and multitasking. Godin uses mathematical concepts like Zipf’s law, which states that the majority of benefits goes to the number 1 or leading brand spot. Godin also strongly urges that in order to be number 1, one must discard all activities that will never reach their full potential. In other words, discard any activities that will never be above the level of mediocre. We all know that in a majority of situations the best kind of musician is the one the starts learning on a relative young age; because their parents spend time and financial resources from early on to make sure the child has maximum probability of success. The key to success comes by measuring if your progress in relation to your primary goal.

When to start a project

Of course we also want to make sure we do not waste our time. Fortunately Godin also gives us a few guidelines in order to avoid activities that would be time wasters. Use the following questions to asses before engaging on a project to verify if it’s worth pursuing in the first place:

Do you have the time and financial resources to reach the goal?
Can you handle fear?
Will your interest hold overtime?
Do you have talent to reach the goal and if not can you learn and master a skill overtime?

If the answer to any of these questions is no then look for another goal or project the meets the criteria. Hopefully using these guidelines filmmakers can be more conscious and think before engaging on any task.

Comments Leave a Comment
Categories Uncategorized

What are the four crucial steps to make your film?

14 Apr

When I was younger…I didn’t want to be pigeonholed…

Basically, now you want to be pigeonholed. It’s your niche.-Joan Chen, actress from “The Last Emperor”

Here is how the mind of a “creative filmmaker” works most of the time. They have this idea for a film that they think is the best idea ever conceived. Since this is a “passion project” for them; they decide to become the producer, the director, the writer and even the actor. They only plan to shoot the film, they get in debt to shoot said film and the only distribution plan is to submit it in film festivals where they will be “discovered.” Odds of that being financially successful? Less to 3% according to Jeremy Juuso author of the book “Getting the Money: A Step-by-Step Guide for Writing Business Plans for Film.” For the sake of simplicity and to getting to the point, here is the reality of things expressed in a mathematical way.

Low cost of filmmaking gear≠Writing, Producing, directing, marketing, distributing all by yourself.

Hence why I cringe every time I hear a creative call themselves Producer/Director/Writer/Editor. That usually means that the latest film they produced is collecting dust or they are massively in debt trying to distribute a film that will more than likely never turn into a profit for them. Today we are going to cover the steps that need to happen to increase the small odds of success.

Don’t do it alone

This will be the most important step that you must hammer it down on your mind with nails; put on several bulky objects like safe boxes, anvils and piano’s to make sure it never leaves your mind. Writing a script and directing are hard enough as it is. Concentrating on making business plans for films, raising funds, marketing, etc… is a daunting process. Studios have whole departments and an army of people at their disposal to manage these. Who ever gave the idea to filmmakers they can DIY the whole process? While they are certainly exceptions which I prefer to call them “anomalies,” the odds are low. Still don’t believe me? According to Mark Gill; president of Millennium Films which distributed the Sylvester Stallone hit “The Expendables”, the odds of losing all your money on an independent film at 99.95 percent. Most of those 5,000 movies, in his words, are “pre-ordained flops,” made by people “who forgot that their odds would have been better if they’d converted their money into quarters and taken the all-night party bus to Vegas.” By the way this does not mean grabbing a friend so he can be the producer of your film, this means searching for a producer with a at least a bare minimum of short films under his/her belt. Surround yourself with people that know what their doing.

Identify the audience

Who is going to watch your film? Even the Hollywood studios don’t cater to everyone. Their marketing is precise and specific most of the time. They divide it by genre, sub-genre, age and sometimes even location. I encourage anyone to read boxofficemojo.com to get a better understanding of why identifying your core audience is important. This is called niche marketing which by definition is finding a segment of the general market for a service or product line.

Approach groups interested in the idea

Once you have established a niche market you will proceed to connect with them to see their reaction towards your movie idea. For example, you wouldn’t approach an evangelical group to talk about your awesome idea of making a Marilyn Manson movie wouldn’t you? You would approach the alternative metal crowd and try to raise funds from them. Similarly you would approach the evangelicals with christian movie ideas like Fireproof and Courageous and raise funds plus direct your marketing efforts towards them.

Make your film

Only when you have raised the funds for your movie using the method of your producers choice is where will you get actual validation that there is an audience for your idea and that you will likely turn into a profit. Just make sure it’s a low budget movie and that a marketing plan is also taking into account when raising your funds. Who makes sure that gets done before shooting the film? Read again step one.

This covers the basics steps to follow when making and independent film. Soon I will write an article on how to assemble the best team to make your film. Until next time!