10 TIPS FOR YOUNG FILMMAKERS
1. WORK WITH WHAT YOU’VE GOT. Don’t
write that epic crowd scene unless you know there’s a festival happening
next week that you can steal as a backdrop. Play to your strengths.
There’s probably something unique that you or your family have access to
that you can use in your movie. If your dad has a tractor, write a
movie around that. If he doesn’t,
don’t.
2. YOU CAN’T BEAT HOLLYWOOD. Tempting as
it may be to try to imitate the style and gloss of your favourite
blockbusters, let’s face it; the game is rigged in their favour. You can
try, and your failure may be unique and interesting (or at least funny)
in its own right—but you can also just do your own thing, and try
something that the studios wouldn’t have the balls or the imagination to
do in the first place.
3. STUDY FILMS. A lot of the mistakes
that young filmmakers make could be avoided if teenagers actually just
paid attention to their favourite films. Pick a movie you love and watch
it with the sound down; look closely at the camera angles, the editing
and the lighting. Watch short films on Youtube and see how an effective
story can be told in five minutes. You won’t be able to match the
production value of these films—and you don’t need to, anyway—but
oftentimes the craft of good filmmaking doesn’t cost any money. You just
have to actually
watch films.
4. PUSH YOURSELF. Every film you make
should teach you something you didn’t know before, and achieve something
you didn’t know you were capable of. This doesn’t mean you have to go
out every time and do something that you have no idea how to do. You
should draw on the skills and techniques you’ve already learned—but if
you’re not building on them, if you’re not pushing yourself further in
some way, you’re playing it safe. It will show.
5. KEEP IT SHORT.
6. TEST SCREEN. Showing your film to an
audience is one of the most important ways of figuring out what you’re
doing right or wrong as a filmmaker—but that isn’t the same as saying
that you always have to try to please the audience, or make a film that
you think “they” will like. A lot of the time just seeing your film with
other people in the room will help you see it more objectively. And if
you’re still thinking your film has to be 20 minutes long, just imagine
how long that 20 minutes is going to feel when 300 people are sitting
beside you watching it…
7. DON’T NEGLECT THE BASICS. Audiences
will forgive a lot of technical flaws in your film if your story is
compelling, your actors are engaging or your jokes are funny—but there’s
still a threshold point where the technical mistakes start to get in
the way. That point is usually when they’re no longer able to clearly
see, hear or follow what’s going on. So get to know your equipment, and
practice with it. Learn the basics of shot composition. Do your best to
record quality sound, and if that’s beyond your means, make a silent
movie—there’s too much talking in most movies anyway.
8. EMBRACE LIMITS. The limitations of
teenage filmmaking can often be discouraging. How the hell are you
supposed to make a great film when all you’ve got is this crappy camera
and your stupid friends? Well, the first step is to change your
attitude. There’s an old French filmmaker named Robert Bresson who said,
“Someone who can work with the minimum can work with the most. One who
can with the most cannot, inevitably, with the minimum.” In other words,
you should be celebrating the fact that all you’ve got is a crappy
camera and some stupid friends: that means all your solutions to the
problems you encounter are going to have to be
creative ones,
and as Robert Rodriguez wrote, “that can make all the difference between
something fresh and different and something processed and stale.”
9. DON’T GIVE UP. If you haven’t failed
at filmmaking yet, then you probably weren’t being ambitious enough. If
you have, congratulations; you’re on way to becoming a great filmmaker.
Just keep at it, and as Beckett put it, “fail better” next time.
Finally, the über-rule which contradicts all the other ones:
10. DON’T LISTEN TO ANYONE. Hollywood
screenwriter William Goldman famously said of the film world that
“nobody knows anything”; and it’s true. That doesn’t mean you should
ignore everything anyone tells you, but if you’re really passionate
about a project, don’t let anyone talk you out of it.
Make the film that you want to make—not
the film you think people want to see, or the film your teachers or
your parents want you to make. Most of all, don’t listen to people who
say that you can’t do something, or that what you’re aiming for isn’t
possible. I’ve argued above that limitations are your friend, but the
types of restrictions that really get in the way are the ones that you
let get stuck inside your own head. Who says films have to cost a
certain amount, look a certain way, be made a certain way, or contain
this element or that one?
Hint: they don’t.
