Micro-budget filmmaking is bloody hard work.
After wrapping production on ForeFans – our sixth micro-budget narrative feature – at the start of the month, I can feel that in my tired bones. And creaky knees.
We spent two weeks filming guerrilla style all over Zagreb and Paris, 18 different locations, a skeleton crew of only three or sometimes two (only Sarah and I), 12 to 14 hour days, 5 hours sleep a night.
To say it was exhausting is an understatement. We were stretched too thin, multi-tasking like mad, putting into practise philosophies for micro-budget filmmaking that we teach in our own educational courses: “Use a small crew to move quickly and keep costs down.”
But halfway through filming I realized something about this philosophy and perhaps micro-budget filmmaking in general: I’m getting too old for this.
Working through Anxiety to Find a Better Creative Process
As a multi-hyphenate creative within a tiny team, juggling multiple projects at various stages of production, my To-Do lists can quickly become overwhelming. The daily pressure, the demands of film after film needing my attention, can send me into a pit of self-pity, anxiety, and procrastination.
I fell into that pit this month. Checking emails first thing in the morning, last thing at night, stressing if things were not going to plan or tasks were not completed as quickly as I wanted, led to going to sleep with a racing heart, a self-induced state of constant pressure.
But with the support of meditation, yoga, and Ivan constantly reminding me to slow down and switch off, I was able to work through the pressure before it crushed me.
Read MoreThat Community Feeling – How Connected are Artists in 2022, Really?
The artist Vincent Van Gogh was a fan of community. In 1888 he rented four rooms within the Yellow House in Arles, France, and worked for months to convert and furnish these rooms into a studio, aiming to build a space where fellow artists could live and work together.
The idea of a community is appealing, even to the weirdos and introverts amongst us. Although I refer to artists, it’s long been proven that people, no matter their hobbies, professions, beliefs or what-not, love feeling like they belong. We like sharing ideas and talking about our passions with like-minded peers.
Read MoreThe Boldness of Youth
I have been in Melbourne longer than intended. What was initially only meant to be a visit for a month or so, has stretched into a stay over four months as I’ve helped my mum move into a retirement village and sell the family home. Cleaning out the house has taken me for a trip down memory lane as I’ve discovered props, pictures, and DVDs from my first ever film: Shades of the Soul.
Hardly a soul has seen the film. Pun intended. I made it back in 2006 together with my friend Heath Novkovic, co-writing and co-directing. It is actually a feature film, 87 minutes long. I also played the antagonist, Leviticus, a military commander leading an expedition in the jungle when he is attacked and corrupted by a demon. He puts on a mask (we knew so little about copyright the mask in question is a replica from the band Slipknot) and begins gruesomely killing his own unit one by one, until the final confrontation with the lead protagonists and lovers Alexandra ‘Ice’ Peterson and Marcus ‘Dracon’ Maitlin. It was typical slasher fare with a touch of occult, only more poorly done than most, due to our total lack of experience and budget.
It’s such an amateurish film that it was never released, and I don’t even count it in my filmography. We were a bunch of dreamers running around the ‘jungles’ of Brimbank Park with camcorders, playing at filmmakers. But as I sat down and watched the film for the first time in many, many years, inspired by the nostalgia this trip to Melbourne instigated, I realized something: there is freedom in naivety.
Read MoreGood, Fast & Cheap is Possible
Good, Fast, Cheap. Pick only two.
How often have you heard this adage? Maybe you have even said it yourself, especially if you have worked in the corporate video world and have dealt with clients who expect blockbusters on b-level budgets.
It is a popular and often hilarious meme, and an educational Venn diagram illustrating a reality check. If you want something fast and cheap, it won’t be good. If you want something cheap and good, it can’t be fast. Sure, you can create a great video or film with little money, but the trade off for not spending big is you’ll need to spend a lot of time and patience to achieve greatness.
But I am here to tell you that good, fast, and cheap is indeed possible in filmmaking. As micro-budget filmmakers, if we were to believe otherwise, we would be crippled with doubt before we even attempted to make a film.
New Year's Resolutions are Fleeting; Long-Term Planning is Key
The concept of the New Year resolution started around 4000 years ago with the agricultural Babylonians. During their ancient annual Akitu festival, which included crop harvesting and appointing a new king, the Babylonians focused on pleasing their gods. Over twelve days they made promises to their gods that they would pay debts and return borrowed tools. Keeping this promise would gain them favoritism from the Gods in the coming year.
Other cultures adopted a similar belief around New Year's resolutions. In ancient Rome 46 B.C, the new calendar was introduced by Emperor Julius Caesar, making January 1st the start of the year. Caesar named the month after the two faced God Janus. Similar to the Babylonians, the Romans offered sacrifice and made promises to Janus to show good behavior in the new year.
UNDER PRESSURE
It’s these traditions that we have to thank for the reason most of us feel the pressure around mid-December to be better versions of ourselves in many aspects of our lives once January 1st rolls around.
Which brings us to today. Why does our society still hold on to variations of these ancient traditions?
Read MoreShow Me The Money
I have been thinking of writing this article for a long time now. It is an awkward, potentially controversial topic, especially with what is going on with film crews around the world protesting set conditions and working hours and lack of pay. It’s about money. It’s about low rates. It’s about deferment, working for exposure, volunteering, using students on set, or any of the other short cuts producers use to indicate “no pay”. It’s about the perceived exploitation producers put cast and crew through to create movies. And the fact that everyone feels underpaid and is putting their hands in the air saying “please sir, can I have some more?”
Money, money, money.
And it is completely understandable. Everyone deserves to be paid properly for the hard work they do on set, for the years of training and experience they bring to their craft, for the skills in camera or sound or production design or acting they bring to each project.
When Your Hobby Becomes Your Job ... You Need a New Hobby
Filmmaking, by most people, is considered a hobby. Something you do on the weekends or evenings after your day job. My mum still feels this way and waits for the day I give up Nexus and go back and complete that Business and Commercial Law degree I abandoned in my twenties. It's not just filmmaking though; art in general is considered a hobby, and the way artists are constantly asked to work for free across multiple disciplines speaks to the little respect art commands as a career.
So when filmmaking becomes your full-time job, and your hobby becomes your bread winner, this is a cause for celebration. Something we used to do for 'play' is now something we can do all the time. But all work and no play can be just as bad as no work and all play. Even though we love what we do, switching off from film and finding time to pursue other hobbies is crucial for work / life balance and finding a healthy way to de-stress.
Read MoreHow Long is a Feature Film?
This week, I finished yet another edit pass on Machination, our pandemic inspired horror / drama that follows the plight of a character named Maria suffering from mental illness in the face of a world pushing fear. It is running at 62 minutes, minus opening and closing credits.
When the first cut clocked in at only 60 minutes, we went back to the drawing board and wrote new scenes to be filmed. We called back the lead actor Steffi Thake and even recruited new actors to play additional characters, young versions of Maria and her brother Yorgen, which we meet in dreams and flashbacks in the story.
We had this idea in our head that we wanted the film to run for at least 70 minutes. For some reason, 70 minutes felt like a feature to us whereas anything under wasn’t quite there. But why did I feel this way? Wasn’t 70 minutes still on the short side? What is the length a film needs to run to quality as a feature film?
I RETURNED TO THE 9 TO 5 ... AND LASTED ONLY 2 WEEKS
At the end of last month, I was working full-time as an editor and videographer for a Maltese news organisation. When I first saw the job advertised, I was excited. Filming news and human interest stories around Malta, editing videos, learning more about what was happening on the island, it sounded fantastic.
I was entering my fifth month of travelling around Portugal with Sarah, staying three months longer than intended due to multiple cancelled flights, so our bank accounts were running low, and we could use the influx of steady income. So I applied. I went through two rounds of interviews to land the job. I negotiated a higher salary due to my experience. I flew back to Malta with full-time work guaranteed and the prospect of an exciting new experience and even new career.
But even before I began work the voice in the back of my head was asking ‘are you sure you want to do this?’ I wasn’t. And the result was an awkward conversation with the boss announcing my departure only two weeks into the job.