Recently, I focused all of my creative energy and time solely on one film project over a six-week period. It was the Kickstarter campaign for our documentary Cats of Malta. A week before the campaign launched, I was fired from my English teaching job in Malta for not coming into work when I was sick (that’s another story). So then there was nothing distracting me from this single project, an odd experience for me, a serial multitasker and juggler of life.
The campaign took up almost all of my waking hours each day. It proved to be mentally and physically draining because it meant taking on multiple tasks — social media, campaign page building, interacting with fans, managing a team, updating backers and sending newsletters on two platforms, going live on Facebook to engage online, sending emails daily, and watching and learning from crowdfunding course videos.
If only this meme was a joke!
Imagine if I was also focusing on our other films with Nexus and all the tasks I have to complete for them, which are plenty! I was promoting, marketing and building audiences for Machination, In Corpore, and No Woman is an Island before the Kickstarter campaign for Cats of Malta went into prep. Not to mention I do the same tasks for our filmmaking courses, YouTube Channel and website, plus I update the website regularly and write the monthly newsletter.
That all stopped for six intense weeks.
What I found from focusing on one film alone was a few interesting things, some positive and some negative. You can't have one without the other, it's how the balance of life works.
The negatives:
Clearly by focusing on just one film project, I neglected our other film projects — Machination, our 2020 feature film, sits in the post production stages just like Cats of Malta, and I stopped marketing that. So I may have let our audience slip for this film and other released films.
Losses in sales or subscribers and views on our YouTube channel was also a negative. Ivan put his editing tasks on hold, so our weekly YouTube clips for our fresh playlist Location Independent Filmmakers currently sit amongst a backlog of unedited projects.
The other negative I found was that it was too much work for two people. All these branching off tasks required a larger team, and ours was small. There was still so much more I could have done for Cats of Malta, and not just for the campaign — we still don't have sponsors or partners attached to the film for example.
The positives:
First and foremost, it led to success. We reached our funding goal on the Kickstarter campaign, we built an audience for Cats of Malta across the USA, Australia, Malta and different parts of Europe and 27,000 people viewed our campaign video on Facebook. Along the way we learnt how to correctly run a crowdfunding campaign.
Undivided attention. Focusing on just one project was very beneficial in terms of coming up with new ideas for the film and campaign and executing immediately. Being solely focused on Cats of Malta and being the voice for the film I was reminded of that time I did just this for my short film Daughter.
Working hard for the money!
That film was a success because I found an audience and connected with people first hand, and like just I did with Daughter, I made Cats of Malta personal and built a community around the film and campaign. It is the type of work you can only do when you are completely focused on one project as there are so many messages to send and reply to, so many emails, so many posts to do to build and maintain a community.
Last year, Ivan and I purchased a Producer Accelerator course, a plan that takes the filmmaker down the traditional path to raising finance, making, and selling a film. The instructor, an Australian producer named Alexi Ouzas believes in the power of one, teaching that you should only work on one project at a time. Develop, finance, produce one film, then once it has a distributor and is doing well, move to the next. Such narrow focus ensures all your creative energy and time is dedicated to making that single project and ensuring you have the best chance of success.
I can definitely see the power and appeal of this approach. My bursts of single-minded focus these last few weeks on Cats of Malta and Daughter in the past demonstrate just what can be achieved when you have nothing else vying for your time and attention.
Alex Ferrari’s IFH getting the lowdown on JS’s method
However, filmmakers who inspire Ivan and I are those that work on a different model based on multiple projects on the go. Joe Swanberg has churned out more than one high value feature a year in order to make a profit and gain enough attention and momentum going forward. In fact, he made seven feature films in 2010 alone. Yes, I know that Joe was around in a time when selling a film was a completely different ball game, but his mentality is still relevant. With our method of improv, micro-budget focused filmmaking, producing, planning and shooting a feature film in four months is not an issue. We have worked this way often since 2017 – but in post we get overwhelmed as only one of us is an editor, so the work piles up, and though we can plan and shoot quickly we experience delays in post production.
Currently, Ivan’s editing workload includes the feature films Cats of Malta, Machination, No Woman is an Island, How Deep is the Ocean (a job for Australian film director Andrew Walsh), a GoFundMe video for a cat shelter, plus our YouTube videos (which are meant to be weekly but have understandably fallen behind). That is way too many plates spinning in post and I know Ivan is looking to pass on jobs to other editors.
Joe Swanberg talks business, DIY filmmaking and how he made a multitude of films before his mainstream hit Drinking Buddies.
Lately, we have also been inspired by and learning from Jason Horton, a micro-budget filmmaker who makes his living solely from producing films (mostly docos) and distributing them through various platforms. Jason has more than 60 producing credits and is able to make two feature-length documentaries a month! That type of production and release speed amazes me and I find it inspiring, though my head hurts thinking about all the marketing I would have to do if we produced films so quickly. Once again, it comes down to having a set formula and I know that Jason has this down to an art now, even if he continues to learn from trial and error. Plus he makes films with a niche audience already in place and gives them the content they want.
It's easy to see the differences between the approaches Alexi and Jason apply to their filmmaking. It almost comes down to that age-old debate of quality v quantity but it is not so simple as it wouldn’t be fair to say Jason’s films are low quality. Both filmmakers are very successful with their approaches. Alexi is an award-winning producer who has screened at prestigious festivals, sold films to television networks and raised finance for his projects over and over again. Jason is completely independent, making his living from his own work with no investors to answer to, and enough money from the profits of his films to make his next project and the next one after that.
So which method is correct? Or better yet, which one is the method that sees your film succeeding in the film market? There are a few obstacles one faces when trying to answer these questions, and they just raise more questions, debates, and moments of philosophical thinking.
Our community of cat people are totally awesome - sent in by a Cats of Malta Fan during the campaign.
To begin, what is the measure of success for a film? Some filmmakers are convinced they have had success with a film when they get into a small festival and have a screening, others see securing traditional distribution as a successful moment for their film, others like us at Nexus see our films turning a profit as success so we have enough money to make the next one. Success is in the eye of the beholder it seems.
To find the light at the end of the tunnel as filmmakers we must acknowledge the fact that a healthy balance needs to be found somewhere during the many steps of the filmmaking process. Maybe focusing on one project at a time can be achieved, while also making two films a year if tasks are delegated. This is something I have touched on in the past when writing about filmmaker burnout. Yet I know how hard it is to be a two-person company trying to turn a profit on a micro-budget feature film in the current climate.
There are benefits for both methods of working and it does come down to preference and a few other factors like how much time you have, how much pressure you can take on, as well as how good you are at organising your workload and if you have a team to delegate certain tasks to.
For me, there is value in just focusing on one project at a time, as I have seen the success I have achieved by doing this in the past and with the Kickstarter campaign. When you are spread thin you let things slide or keep telling yourself ‘I need to do that for the film’ yet it hardly ever gets done because you have another film that needs something looked at, and all projects end up suffering. I can already see this happening with Cats of Malta. I am aware, however, if I want to make a living from filmmaking I cannot rely on one single project but need a library of films generating income. Quantity, in the beginning, gives you the space and financial capacity to slow down and breathe. In other words, quantity leads to quality.
Written by Sarah Jayne
If you want to join this discussion, write back and let me know your thoughts. I would be interested in knowing where you sit in the debate and what has worked and not worked for you in the past.