Treat Your Movie With The Love It Deserves
that is, if you want to expect it get any love at all.
We are fairly late in the game. In fact this one is the last of the season. We’ve been playing for forty years and that one is about to be put to bed. And it is just as well, since most of the audience has already moved on.
You thought your audience would find you and give you the love you deserved. But they didn’t, did they? And know what’s worse? You are to blame. Okay, you and the system are to blame, but you should have left this game long ago. You knew it was rigged, but you still stuck around. Why? Just because you thought you knew those rules.
What were the rules that you were still following even though they long ago stopped working? First and foremost, it was the one that you just had to get your film into a film festival and then the momentum would gather from there.
Don’t you see how that looks? How that looks to the outside world? It looks like you abandoned your child. Even worse in fact. It looks like you are trying to sell your child into slavery! Where’s the love?
You wonder why no one wants to watch your movie? Chances are you haven’t shown us how much you respect your film yourself. If not that, chances are you demonstrated that you an ignorant or arrogant little whateveryoucallitbutIknowit whenIseeit. When you only have a single initial step for strategy (i.e. “I applied to Sundance/Cannes and I will see what happens from there”) you show that either:
a. You’ve been living under a rock; or
b. You think you are a god’s gift.
Why do you think any of us should help you out from there?
If you are willing to abandon that old way of doing things, I can suggest some initial steps on…
But first, we interrupt this read… to sharing some news….
We have just (soft) launched a new publication, FilmStack Deep Dive. Another community-curated (like FilmStack Daily Digest) newsletter, this time though, each issue will focus on a single theme. Why soft launch? Because the news was TOO BIG to delay.
Give it a read and please subscribe to get in on the ground floor. We will eventually get to a once per week publishing cadence, but for the time being anticipate simply once per month.
And now back to our show!
How To Give Your Film The Love It Deserves
In 20+ Chronological Steps (put one foot in front of the other)
Take the development and maintenance of your creative practice seriously. All mistakes are made in prep and this is where you begin making this movie. Always be learning.
Be in dialogue with all of culture. This overlaps with the prior point but how can I trust an artist who doesn’t love art, listen to music, watch films, read books.
Cultivate possibilities. Engineer serendipity. Tune into the little miracles. Marvel at the wonder. Feel the love that always surrounds creative endeavors.
