MATT'S EDITORIAL 4/12/2014 - I have an idea for a film, so you should give me money.

In the last while I have been listening to a lot of podcasts by Bret Easton Ellis, the great American writer of such works as Glamorama and one of my personal favourite books of all time, American Psycho. His podcasts are centred around the subject of cinema, though they usually branch off into other artistic territories, such as literature, music and the art of life in general. Though he is largely negative and American based, he is obviously passionate and knowledgeable about his chosen topic and I for one am convinced that, although they tell me The Canyons - directed by Paul Schrader and written by him - is a vile and laughable film, I would love to see him fill the role of the director in the near future.

 

While I do not agree with almost everything I said, perhapos due to his leniances towards the commercial, I certainly admire him and his ability to make learned observations about the current state of the film industry. Taking for instance The Canyons, he mentioned that he raised funds for that film through crowd funding and aside from revealing certain tips about being careful with prizes and asking for a lower sum than the one you might actually need so that you actually get the money in the end and probably even a little more, he also pointed it out as being the future of cinema. Studios, who can blame them, have already got their eyes set on this particular method of raising money, and Disney even has a concrete plan drawn up that sees them releasing possible plots of future projects and letting the people choose which one should be developed by allowing them to contribute to the budget. It is quite frightening to think that the leaders in commercial cinema, the most powerful entertainment company in the world, one that indeed is possibly most responsible for shaping the mentality of future generations by starting them off from an early age should also be the film company most eligible for convincing people to give them money, something that they most probably do not need, and should definitely push independent filmmakers closer to the shadows.

 

Even still, if we take a look at most projects that exist and that I have seen, I have inevitably started to think that perhaps cinema has been watered down. If we think about it, because the crowdfunding thing takes time and social media tactics, it's easy to see why people who might actually be busy spending time reading, writing and living on the moment might find it hard to pay attention to possibly the most vital part of promoting your idea in order to make people pay money for it. It's also easy to deduce that the films that people are crowdfunding are projects by people with a lot of friends, or projects that are to be developed by relatively well known names. For instance, once again, The Canyons had clear appeal and hoards of passionate fans, but also showed a cleverness in offering as one of the prizes the opportunity for Ellis to read someone's novel - a prize that Ellis particularly stopped to notice pretty time consuming.

 

The question is always the same one. How does one come up with the money to finance their film. I believe that the answer is more simple than many believe. One must simply be brave enough to take chances and instead of starting off by promoting a pet project, build up a reputation of their own personality. Let me make a mundane example. A few days ago, I had the pleasure of talking on Skype with filmmaker Helen Simon, whose feature film debut No Lullaby about a family's history of sexual abuse has just won the student competiton at IDFA. Surely, in a perfect world one would expect that even just having a film screening at IDFA where all screening rooms are packed with people willing to steer away from fictional cinema, and a festival that is regarded as the Cannes of documentaries, would be enough for Helen to be able to find funds for her next project quite easily. Yet, she admitted to me that for the next project, she has money to make the film, but no money to pay herself and the camera person.

 

While I think this is a great opportunity to just set off adventurously in a project that sounds adventurous and fascinating in itself - the film is about child trafficking, I cannot recall at this time where from in particular - in my opinion there are two ways to go about it. One is, just do it, forget about getting paid and hope that after the film is finished you may be hired to give lectures about the subject, invited to write articles, do TV shows and all that. Or, you could simply do it the other way around. A lot of the time, people interested in filmmaking do not even consider the option of building your own reputation up before you start promoting your project. We are lucky to live in an age where you can make videos, record podcasts, start a blog, a Facebook page, a Twitter account and build your own reputation to the point where you can, though it takes time, build enough of a following that sooner or later will find an interest in whatever it is that you do.

 

The important thing is that you are passionate about what you deal with in your film, whether it is factual or fictional. Then, it should not be a problem to gather up enough money not to shoot the film, but to go around schools or colleges and give lectures, and promote your ideas. Start a weekly podcast, keep your blog regularly updated. Sooner or later, if you're good or even just determined, people will become aware of you. In the meantime, another possibility might be pitching stories to major newspapers. Get them to print you. Go over there and write a story - that would be your ultimate pitch to the world. If they ignore you, keep trying.

 

Point is, it's not enough to simply have a project in mind and even enough knowledge, research or premise to back it up and promote it with crowdfunding. When we think about that sooner or later the big studios will have monopolised this money raising technique too, we can also see that the problem might be simply a temporary solution to a permanent problem. Cinema has always been about names. Lars Von Trier has recently announced that all his films, he developed whilst under the influence. I say, all his films were developed because he was Lars Von Trier.