I've been in this indie filmmaking community for over a decade, and I’ve been directing since 2013, yet it always amazes me how there is always something more to learn in this industry as a director with each project.
This year I fell into directing my first documentary, Cats of Malta, and man did I learn a lot as I researched the topic and subjects that make up the Maltese cat community. Right now as we edit the project I'm becoming even more knowledgeable on how producing docos work, thanks to Google.
I have watched a few docos this year too, standouts being Tiger King, which showed me a lot about how to interview subjects and that true to life characters exist, you just have to find the interesting and sometimes kooky parts of their story. Another Netflix doco, High Score, was entertaining from start to finish. Even though I am not a gamer, High Score was so well put together as a series, each episode explaining a different shift in the industry, that even I as a novice on the subject was hooked.
One of the first things I learnt from the process of directing a doco is that I had to know what I could legally film. People in the background, peoples faces as they interacted with our interviewees on the street, and I will confess that I was reading about the legalities as we were filming.
The Cult of Busy
There seems to be this mentality held by some creative people and even non creatives who are working the daily grind that being busy all the time means you are the most productive person on the planet. That your self-worth is somehow tied up with how damn busy you are all the damn time. The busier you are, the more packed your schedule is, the more proof there is that you are working much harder than your peers or colleagues. And this is what defines us as people.
I confess that I was one of these people around four years ago. I use past tense as now I'm more chilled and sometimes less productive than I have ever been. I still get stuff done but in healthy moderation. Even with my full time job, I get home and manage to smash out a couple of hours working on an investment deck or marketing for one of my films.
Read MoreFrom Writing to Wrap: A Feature Film in Four Months
Just last week, on August 26th, we wrapped principal photography on Machination, our fifth feature film shot in the last four years. This was very much a film inspired by this new Covid-19 reality we live in, a story about a highly anxious woman named Maria who struggles to cope in isolation as a pandemic sweeps the world. Maria is forced to confront the monsters in her head, in the media, and in her past.
Maria in her bedroom, Machination Behind the scenes. Credit: Monika Kopčilová
We had the initial idea for the film during our own lockdown in April in Malta and spent a few days at the end of the month writing the first draft outline. May was spent redrafting and refining the outline. In June we approached cast, researched the equipment we would need as well as the VFX we wanted, and worked to fill gaps in knowledge for the story as well as the production, such as the specific mental health issues Maria was suffering from or how we could pull off a particular shot – a period that was a mix of development and pre-pre production. One month of official pre-production and rehearsal began from July 13th. Finally, in August, we went into a 10-day production period split into two halves – August 12th to 16th and August 22nd to 26th.
This was all done between Sarah working a full-time job and myself working on other projects, including still shooting our Cats of Malta documentary and planning a short film called Crossing Paths for the end of June. So until production, and perhaps the last couple of weeks of pre-production, we never dropped everything to simply focus on Machination, and Sarah didn’t stop working her day job until the first shooting day. That makes Machination a feature film done from first draft to wrap in four months, mostly part-time, during an uncertain time in the world where many productions shut down completely. And the budget was only €6000. And we still paid everyone.
This is how we did it.
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Black, White and Writing in Color
To begin I would like to inform readers that my words and thoughts flow solely from an inner place of reflection. This piece is written by me, a privileged white, approaching forty female with European ancestry. I am a writer and filmmaker who is currently working on a personal journey towards educating myself on African American history and the representation of minorities in film. Some of the topics I have been reading, watching and listening to over the last month have included police brutality against minorities in America, how American history is built on a foundation of oppressed black slaves, and how white feminism has and continues to exclude women of colour.
I felt compelled to write this article during the beginning of recent protests occurring around various states in and around the USA, after countless unjust deaths of black men and women at the hands of white American police officers. I can’t identify to my core with the African American community as I have not lived my life as a person of colour. I will never understand how it feels to have to make calculated daily choices based around my safety due to the colour of my skin, but it doesn't mean that I don't feel angry, sad and frustrated when hearing of the unwarranted deaths of George Floyd and the many who have come before and likely will follow.
For me, though far removed, the protests brought up a lot of memories of my past and made me think about how much American Black culture I consumed as a child and a teenager through watching American movies and music performed and written by African American artists. It also made me realise that despite all that consuming in my youth, as an adult I did not know much at all what a truthful representation of African American culture was, what the culture was built on or what it stemmed from.
With this miseducation and ignorance in mind, I want to talk about how I personally consumed and then perceived African American culture as a white woman growing up in Australia. Also, I want to share with fellow white artists reading this ways in which we can take responsibility for what perceptions are put out there and how we can change the narrative through storytelling.
Personally, my introduction to African American culture started through music. Growing up in my pre-teens I listened to my parent’s record collection religiously, and that is when I fell in love with the sounds of Motown. I would listen to Marvin Gaye, Chuck Berry, Ray Charles, Otis Redding, Tina Turner, The Supremes, and more. Jimi Hendrix was my favourite.
Read MoreGet to Set Quickly
We all know the maxim time is money and this maxim seems especially relevant to filmmaking. More time in development, more time in pre-production, more time on set usually means more money – either money you are spending by paying cast and crew for more days, hiring equipment, spending on locations, or money and time you are wasting by working on that script day by day, week by week, month by month. Time that you could be spending elsewhere.
Film is an interesting artform. Is there any other artform that requires such high initial costs, such high end equipment, such specialised and various personal to the point where budgets commonly top $1 million and crews on film can reach into the hundreds, only to then sell to a consumer for a few dollars on a streaming platform, or for 1 cent per hour if you are an indie filmmaker on Amazon Prime?
The economics of filmmaking are rigged against you. The amount of independent filmmakers who make a living solely on their films is low. But it can be done. Targeting a niche audience is one method and this approach, combined with regular and consistent output, gives you a chance to make money.
Saying No To Yourself
“I want it all and I want it now.”
Freddy Mercury first sang the iconic line in 1989 and to this day when I hear it I feel inspired to pursue all my goals. All at once.
The greatest hindrance to this is we all have a finite amount of time and most people cannot work on their creative dreams all the time. You have rent or a mortgage to pay. You have to put food on the table. You have to save because who wants to live cheque to cheque. Maybe you even have children or a family to support.
So you work a day job. It eats up your peak creative hours when your brain is the most proactive (and for most people that is mornings according to studies) so you are already drained when it is time to work on your own stuff. Or you run a production company, you serve clients, you work in the field you enjoy, but adjacent to what you really want to be doing – creating your own work instead of videos for others. You freelance, you write, you edit, you shoot, you crew on productions. The work is inconsistent, you hassle, you network, and then it all gets shut down anyway because 2020. What a year.
But even in better years there have always been those jobs you know in your heart you shouldn’t take but your mind says I need the money or it may lead to future work. The time wasters. The lowballers. The clients who demand strawberry sundaes but don’t have any strawberries for the recipe.
Read MoreThe Mind-Body Connection
When I am not in front of the camera acting, I coach some of the most phenomenal people of New York City and around the globe. My clients include CEOs, company presidents, judges, UN delegates, students, teachers, medical professionals, footballers and basketball players, ballerinas, PhD graduates, economists, media representatives, administrators, actors and artists, accountants, parents, children, business executives, plus many more beautiful kind successful humans.
The reason these people from all walks of life and varied professions come to me is for Speech Coaching, Accent Reduction and Public Speaking training.
When I moved into doing this work at a company, my boss had opened up a concept to us speech coaches called 'the rate of no clutter', which we applied as instructors. The rate of no clutter is a technique using a series of drills and exercises that helps the client master their public speaking from a really practical perspective. Through this work I started to notice certain clients had massive blocks (as the healing world would call it) towards achieving success, which ordinarily could be mastered with the practical application of tools like the rate of no clutter drills.
Staying Creatively Focused During Uncertain Times
It's a difficult time right now. I don't have to tell you that, you are going through it, as am I. Everyone around the world is suffering, some worse than others due to the situation they were in even before this COVID-19 virus started to change everything that most of us took for granted on a daily basis – family, the environment, work, our mental health, spirituality, our finances and the arts.
The physiological human response when a pandemic of this capacity strikes, or any situation really that a human (or an animal) feels is out of their control, or when a threat is suddenly present, is to go into 'fight or flight mode'. In response to acute stress, the body's sympathetic nervous system is activated due to the sudden release of hormones, boosting alertness and heart rate and sending extra blood to the muscles, prepping the body to respond and to survive. I don't know about you, but as a writer and a film director, I find human behaviour fascinating and the human condition to be so complex and full of possibilities.
Read MoreI'm Self-Distributing my Indie Feature Film and the Idea Scares the Hell Out of Me
That's right – I am doing something different this year, self distributing my production company's indie feature film, In Corpore. It's not my decision alone, my partner and co-director is jumping on this rollercoaster ride with me and we plan to market our self funded, no stars attached, micro feature in all four countries we shot it in – Germany, Malta, Australia and America. Not only that, as part of our self distribution plan we are looking to use four wall distribution where possible, and even tour smaller states in America should the interest be there.
You are probably wondering why. You are probably screaming it at the screen. Please stop yelling, it will be ok.
Well, with all those distributors, aggregators, online platforms and sales agents who seem supportive and constantly hungry for fresh content it's a fair call to ask why we would go at it alone. For us, the first reason is that we have lost faith in handing our hard work and money to someone who does not have the film’s or our own best interests as the main priority.
Read MoreThe Value of Micro-Shorts
“If you want to be a filmmaker, grab a camera and go out and shoot something, anything.”
This is advice I've heard multiple times during my decade plus long involvement within the indie film scene. This very same advice I have given, and still do give to new filmmakers, however the camera element can now be a phone and the filmmaker part can also be broadened to include 'content creator' and such. How times, technology, and thinking have changed.
Luckily, what has also changed and evolved over the years is my mentality towards the value of short films, as myself and most others once shared the idea that you made shorts early on in your career, then you graduated to features. Now you are a 'real director' – whatever that means. But this kind of thinking is limited.
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