Filmmaking Is Business, Art, and War

Business means money, math, and strategy. You budget, you plan, you clear rights, you deliver, you market, and you sell. If you cannot monetize and recoup, it is not a sustainable profession.

Art means truth, taste, originality and craft. Story, performance, pacing, cinematography, sound, music, and the details that make a film feel alive instead of cliché’ or generic. Art is what makes people care.

War means endurance, audacity, tenacity, fortitude and leadership under pressure. You are battling time, fatigue, doubt, chaos, egos, weather, setbacks, and compromise. You protect the vision, keep the team moving, adapt fast, and finish no matter what.

Great Filmmaking Requires Filmmakers to Maintain and Execute Extraordinary Attention to Detail, and to Add, Refine, and Render Every Element with Care:

Filmmaking is not for the faint of heart or wallet

I have always maintained that if you cannot monetize your films, it is not a profession, it is more like a hobby. There is nothing wrong with being a hobbyist filmmaker, but if you want to monetize, to satisfy yourself and investors, you need to understand the business before you ever turn on a camera, or you and your supporters will get hosed. In indie filmmaking, the devil is in the details, and the time you invest in those details matters long before you hit record.

If you do not know what you are making and why, the audience will feel it. Confusion on the page becomes confusion on the screen. If you are unsure of what the hell you are making, rest assured your audience will know it. You have to be clear and concise about what you made and what your viewers need to understand.

The industry has changed. Hollywood is going to do whatever Hollywood is going to do, but a notable actor no longer guarantees financial success. A recognizable name can help distribution and monetization, nationally and internationally, but it is not a guarantee, especially when paying a higher-priced actor drives up the cost of your final film.

The gatekeepers have changed too. It is not just studios and executives anymore. It is attention. It is algorithms. It is the scroll. If you do not know who your audience is, where they live online, and why they would stop and watch, you are making art in a vacuum. Today, you have to think like a distributor while you are still writing, because distribution is not a step after the film. It is part of the film.

People love to talk about cameras and actors, but the real landmines are boring. Rights. Releases. Clearances. Music permissions. Chain of title. If you do not lock that down, you can have the best film in the world and still be dead on arrival or soon thereafter when it is time to sell. You cannot monetize what you cannot legally deliver.

And then there is the professionalism piece. Sound mix, color, captions, artwork, metadata, poster, trailer, stills, press kit. Deliverables are where indie films either become real products or stay forever in the category of passion projects. This is where details stop being aesthetics and become money.

Story gets you in the door. Sound keeps you there. Music defines how the director’s images on screen are meant to be interpreted by the viewer.

The details are not decoration. The details are the film. And which details you choose to breadcrumb or spoon-feed your audience will make the difference between a good film and a shallow one, between a film that goes over the edge and one that holds the line, between something too long or too short, and a story that lands, stays memorable, and feels real.

Casting is art, but it is also math. You have to balance talent, cost, schedule, and market value without losing the soul of the film. If you are smart and fortunate enough to cast what you wrote, and direct what you cast, then you know exactly which actor you want to represent you and the characters in your film, and what they are capable of, because you know what you want to show your viewers, and no one else does.

Indie filmmaking is leadership. You set the standard, you protect the vision, and you keep the ship moving when everyone is tired. You pick up your own flag and banner for your film, and you lead from the front, not from behind. If you do not have compassion and empathy, and if you are not a strong leader, rest assured any toxicity will flow from you into your crew, and it will affect your actors and how your film turns out, scene by scene.

Inspiration is a spark. Discipline is the engine. The careful curation and assembling of a team that will follow through is the engine that finishes the film.

Marketing is not a dirty word. It is respect for the work. If you cannot explain your film in one clean sentence, you do not have a pitch, you have a diary entry. Build your audience early, show the process, collect emails, create momentum, and give people a reason to care before you ask them to buy a ticket.

They say to market your film, you need public relations, PR. To me, PR is not merely public relations, it is personal relationships. And when you are an independent filmmaker, either you have personal relationships, or you build them. You build trust in your community, with your peers, and with your contemporaries, other creatives and other vertical professions that can enhance what you are doing, so you can offer the best possible production to your viewers.

A film is a product, and a product needs a plan, a calendar, a path to the audience, and the right funds and team to get you there.

And even after you finish, and even after you land distribution, if people do not know where to go to watch your film, it does not matter. If you do not have a budget for promotion, advertising, press, print interviews, and maybe even a respectable, well-done red carpet with one or two of your actors, most people will never know to switch on a channel, click a link, or pay to watch your film. Keep that in mind, because word of mouth and going viral are the exception, not the rule. Most things get made and never reach the public at a meaningful level. For an independent film to reach extreme heights is rare, and for an ultra-low-budget film to be profitable for the filmmaker or their investors is rarer still.

Even if you can legally deliver it exactly as you want it, with perfect color and sound, unless you can promote it and get the audience who might want to view it to buy it and talk about it, if it is not dead on arrival, it is dead shortly thereafter. If you are in the business of making films and trying to make a living from it, Business 101 dictates that expenditures cannot exceed income. In this business, like any other, it is not about mere survival. It is about thriving, becoming a successful filmmaker and an outstanding storyteller. That is exactly what I strive for, to be the best storyteller I can be.

Attention is the currency. Trust is the interest it earns. Viewers talking about it, recommending it, and respecting what you and your team of filmmakers and actors have accomplished, that is the reward.

Nowadays people make films on iPhones. Some are genuinely creative. Some are not. I am a filmmaker, a storyteller, and a cinephile. I read, I go to plays and performances, and I watch films from everywhere. We are living in an era of content, not cinema. That is why originality matters more than ever. The world does not need another imitation, another reheated formula, another safe version of something that already exists. What cuts through now is a voice that feels lived in, specific, and fearless.

My standard is simple. If I do not like it, and if it does not hold attention, it does not belong on screen.

As a filmmaker and a storyteller, if I can keep a viewer engaged, be thoughtful, have an opinion, and draw them into my world of actors and storyline, so they forget about their toils in life, having to move the car because of alternate side street parking, having to do the laundry, or something even more mundane, even for a little while, that is everything. And if some of the scenes and storylines touch them in any kind of way, that they are memorable and they think about it after they see what I have made, and if they tell their friends about it, that to me is priceless as a storyteller.

For me, making something, telling a story, writing anything down on paper, speaking to my children, speaking to the public, speaking to friends and family, at church, at social events, or in a public park, it is about the people who are listening. It is not just about me. But one thing is certain. If I do not like what I am going to say, and I do not believe in what I am going to say, I am not going to put anything out to the public that I disagree with, unless that is the purpose of doing so. It has to be entertaining, or it does not get done at all.

Entertainment is not the enemy of truth. It is the delivery system for truth. And if the people who fund and deliver a film only want their truths to be told, there is a problem. That is why independent films, filmmakers, and the right rules need to be in place to protect independent theaters, not only in this country, but around the world.

You are never going to be in a situation where everybody likes you, or everything you make, or your actors, your music, or your film. But it is important to understand this. You do not own your audience, you are only renting it, and since rent always goes up, more is expected of you each time you offer your audience your storytelling.

In this business, your reputation is your resume. People remember how you finished, how you delivered, and how you treated them. And nobody cares how hard it was, or the sacrifices and hardships you faced to get the film out to the public. No one but you.

The biggest competition you have should only be yourself, because jealousy and envy have no room when you look at yourself in the mirror and see exactly how you want to be, how you want to be seen, how your work wants to be perceived, how you want your viewership to feel, and how you want your actors to act.

When you put together your final script and film, your final scenes, the writing is not truly finished until the edit is finished and the music is curated for each scene. There is no room for jealousy. There is no room for envy. There is only room to improve, as you work hard to be an excellent writer, storyteller, and filmmaker.

Like I tell everybody who asks me, what is going on with your film, why do you not say something, I simply say, I will have something to say when I have something for people to see. How they feel about it is what matters. Nothing I have to say matters more than that.

Once a Week for Life is just one of my planned scripts. It is a multi-part film saga, and one film was made, and I divided it into two because it was lengthy to watch. The third installment, if God permits me, and I am able to fund it, and people still believe in me and what I have made in the past, is the third installment of Once a Week for Life. Otherwise, other scripts are DEZ, Spyros Yeeros, The Abduction of Lilly Waters, Everything’s Anonymous, The Last Tailor, Marquis de Sainville, and Le Marquis Noir de Maudville, all ready for filming, awaiting funding.

Lately, I have not been impressed with the pastiche of recycled clichés that my contemporaries and I are forced to wade through just to find something that feels honest, engaging, and not boring.

But the old saying goes, the gods favor the bold. Virgil put it bluntly, audentis Fortuna iuvat. The Greeks carry the same idea in the proverb, Τοῖς τολμῶσιν ἡ τύχη ξύμφορος. That can be true, but the gods also favor the foolish. So let us hope you do not destroy yourself trying to be bold. I, on the other hand, have always been the type to believe in nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Boldness without a plan is gambling. Boldness with a plan is filmmaking. Having the audacity and the tenacity to be bold, to make a film from beginning to end, to get it to viewers, to have them love it, and to monetize it, now that is what I call outstanding success.

Nobody is coming to save you or your film. You either build the path, stand tall, get up each time you fall, pivot on your back heel as much as you have to, and always move forward to the end, or your film will remain invisible, along with all your time, talent, funds, and effort.