True Independence: Filmmaking In The Twenty First Century

We are ecstatic to have filmmaker, Justin Evans writing a monthly article about the independent film industry, exclusively for the Screamin’ Demon. Each month Justin will share insight into the world of non-studio filmmaking and what it really takes to make a film. Here’s to hoping a few myths are blown wide open and the crazy film industry can be put in a simpler, less cryptic light. Read on for his introduction and a bit about modern filmmaking.

True Independence: Filmmaking in the 21st Century
001: An introduction

As a species, we’ve been telling stories with moving pictures for over a century. With each passing decade the craft has evolved. And yet, compared to the revolution occurring right now the past seems absolutely static and stagnant.

If you’ve ever wanted to make a real motion picture, not some tired tale of twenty somethings in their apartments, but something epic…then, this is your time. It doesn’t belong to the studios. It doesn’t belong to established geriatric storytellers the studios rely upon. It is your time. I don’t care if you work as a Barista in a Dallas Starbucks or your a soulless stockbroker on Wall Street. This is your time. All you need is a deep love of storytelling and a willingness to step outside your comfort zone.

Once a month, I’ll be writing an article about how one can join the independent revolution. I’ll be challenging your preconceptions on what it means to be an independent filmmaker. I’ll prove that you can do mighty things…and that the only limit is your own skill and ingenuity.

My goals are simple. I want to find other storytellers who wield a camera with grace and style. I want to help those who haven’t fully realized that a tectonic shift is underway. And, I like to keep my writing skills sharp…so, why not write an article about what I obsess about on a daily basis?

First, a brief history. We as a species have always focused our cultures on storytelling. The oral tradition gave way to writing. While other art forms competed with the written word, their inability to be stored and distributed always limited their exposure. A symphony was a powerful tool three centuries ago…but it wasn’t portable. Even since Shakespeare’s time, anyone with a fist for lettering guaranteed that a written story could be distributed with ease. Edison changed that. Celluloid replaced pulped paper. And, as a ragtag group of independent filmmakers fled New York (and Edison’s control) for Los Angeles they gave birth to an industry…

…an industry that quickly coalesced into six corporations. While those corporations were always at odds with storytellers, for three generations the studios were run by story-savvy businessmen who were literate and passionate. Yes, they wanted to make money. Yes, the business came first. Yes, they undervalued the talent that surrounded them. But, they cared about writing, about photography, about acting and about connecting with an audience. Then, the US government broke the backs of their monopoly. And, their heirs cared more about money than their priveledged legacy. And, one by one each studio was purchased by non-entertainment corporations.

Soft drink companies. Light bulb manufacturers. Insurance conglomerates. French water consortiums. Japanese consumer electronics firms. Australian news empires.

For about a decade those non-entertainment corporations understood that their newly acquired subsidiaries should be run by a hybrid of artist-entrepreneurs. They realized the studio executives had to understand finance and fiction. One movie changed all that.

Heaven’s Gate.

The largesse of that one film nearly bankrupted United Artists. It’s subsidiary, MGM, purchased it’s fallen parent company. And, Heaven’s Gate became a warning sign to every multi-national that the entertainment industry needed to be changed. They never stopped to think that creative-entrepreneurs had run Hollywood for 70 years with great success. They never stopped to think that one movie was only an isolated event. Heaven’s Gate provided the proof of a preconceived notion secretly held by these non-entertainment executives. The reason they didn’t understand the industry wasn’t because they sucked at storytelling…it was because entertainment professionals sucked at business.

That’s one hell of an act of self-delusion. It’s a bit like saying an executive from a shoe manufacturer buys a pharmaceutical company and decides the entire company’s culture is wrong because he doesn’t understand chemistry, science or mathematics.

Most Hollywood insiders look back on these executives and see them as cruel, heartless monsters. That’s not the case. Quite simply, they were just stupid. They didn’t have backgrounds in literature. They didn’t understand the purpose of storytelling within a society. They didn’t value aesthetics. They just knew that Hollywood was a small industry that made big money and that meant it was worth controlling, even if it meant changing it into something they could understand.

It took them twenty years to accomplish the job. The changes began slowly in the late 1970’s and were not complete until the end of the 1990’s…but, the suits succeeded. Every story-savvy CEO was replaced. Lawyers, MBA’s and accountants took their place. Reading scripts became replaced by reading coverage. The skills that had been acquired over 80 years were lost. The audience was ignored. Falling profits were hidden by inflation, allowing an industry with declining revenues to pretend increased dollar revenue somehow equalled growth when in reality it was nothing more than the steady march of rising prices.

No one talked about how grosses may have been up, but ticket sales were down…every…single…year. No one talked about how studios understood so little about making movies that production costs went up…every…single…year. The lie Hollywood has been telling itself since the 1970’s is that year-on-year grosses are up, and therefore profits are too. They don’t dare recognize that the second half of that sentence is a lie.

We, as a society changed, too. We stopped dressing up to go to the movies. We accepted the poorly run multiplex as an acceptable substitute for the movie palace. We allowed our home viewing habits to infect the way we viewed movies in the public. We arrived late, we talked to our friends, we answered our phones, we texted our friends.

We live in a time where going to the movies is less expensive than the 1970’s, when taking inflation into consideration, even though the general public perceives a trip to the movies to be outrageously expensive. And, the reason is simple. The act of paying ten dollars to see a two hour story is not expensive…unless the movie sucks. And since most of them suck, then ten bucks is a huge gamble. Hell, I rent movies on RedBox for a dollar and feel cheated.

In the 1990’s independent cinema seemed to flourish. And, this could have been an answer to Hollywood’s equivalent of Corporate Rock. But, it was largely an illusion. The stories were always small. The acting, lighting and sound simply bad. Much of what we saw shouldn’t have been called independent film…it should have been called amateur moviemaking.

Then, the internet changed everything. Our respect for intellectual property evaporated in a haze of piracy. Theater attendance went from a steady decline to a cliff-dive. Studios greenlit less and less movies even as the rate of amateur filmmaking increases annually. The delicate ecosystem in which experienced storytellers provided myth-infused entertainment to an eager audience became damaged…and then broken.

Sounds like a terrible time to become a filmmaker, doesn’t it?

Such negative interpretations couldn’t be farther from the truth. This is the best time to become a filmmaker. The absolute best time. We’re about ten years away from a golden age of visual storytelling. And, we get to be the ones to build the system from the ground up. Most importantly, the tools for planning, shooting, editing, distributing and promoting a movie have never been so easy to use, so affordable or so accessible.

For the first time in history, anyone can make a great movie. Not everyone will. In fact, few will answer the true calling. But, the tools are no longer the barrier.

Next Article: The New Tools Of The Trade

JUSTIN EVANS [blog | 'alpfd' maxi-single]
Justin Evans began his first theatre company at 14 and began making films at 15. He is the only undergraduate in NYU’s history to complete a feature film while in school. Justin is the founder, former CEO & Creative Director of Mystic Arts in Beijing. He has been a film professor and art director in the video game industry. He recently finished the feature film, A Lonely Place For Dying – the preview screening of which won the Heineken Red Star at The Santa Fe Film Festival. He has been featured twice in Variety, twice in Moviemaker Magazine, and a mini-doc about his film will be airing on IFC throughout January 2009. Justin is a skilled graphic designer, photographer, production designer, screenwriter, cinematographer, director & producer and currently resides in Albuquerque, New Mexico. A Lonely Place For Dying is currently touring festivals throughout North America.