Skill set mismatches - or running before walking.

[paulears]

I'm seeing more and more topics started by people who 'need to make a movie', but don't have the skills to do it. They seem to expect the forum to provide easily understandable bytes of info that will solve all their problems. They have the ideas, so want to produce and direct. They also have a need to be the cameraman. Ideally, they'd also do the lighting and handle sound too. Often, they do realise they can't do all this, so collect random people to do these other quite tricky jobs. They have little management ability, and seem to believe that having somebody who can plug in a few lights and attach a mic to a boom will make their vision work. When members suggest paying people, they never have any money. Instead of developing some business skills and generating the funding, they decide free is best, yet are never happy with how things are.

I want to make a movie, with good actors that will be able to compete well in competition with hundreds of others, for free!

Some members never seem to learn either. They use Google and produce a kind of recipe for making movies. Usually based on absolutes.
Always "I've been told that ....." and we just smile and wonder who this advice gets peddled by. We spend ages explaining how it really works, and often people provide craft advice and even sometimes physics only to have it rejected because somebody else unknown messed their heads up further with even more duff information. Usually, you can actually see where this faulty advice comes from, and perhaps even accept that for some situations it was sensible, but it gets moved to a new inappropriate situation - but they just don't get it!

All the colleges I've been involved with here in the UK build in a business unit to the educational programmes to give the students the grounding in money - and how it works. Many recent posters seem to believe money is not important, or even required.

 

[David Jimerson]

But even here you have people who insist that all you really need is pluck, determination, and creativity, and you'll create a masterpiece. Craft? Management? Money? Learning and following well-established techniques? Bah! After all, some schmoes beat the odds without any of that (though when you actually get under the hood, it's rarely the case), and that means YOU WILL, TOO!

Wishful thinking, often fueled by "I don't have X; I can't get X; therefore, X really isn't necessary."

 

[Gary Huff]

I support myself entirely though production work. Which is why I get bent out of shape when people want those with expensive gear to work on their "feature" (of which has a 99.9999% likelihood of having a terrible script with a plot that doesn't make sense, ridiculous dialogue, clichéd/unbelievable characters, and, the worst crime of all, is incredibly boring). These individuals also routinely show up to set woefully unprepared (showing how much they actually care about this project), and they're not even trying to tell a story. There's far too much, "Well, filmmaking seems like an interesting/easy career that you can make a lot of money at, so I want to do that" attitude.

So when people ask how they can get people who have to do grunt work (which is a lot of what filmmaking entrails, don't kid yourself) for free, it grates on me because I absolutely cannot work for 4-5 weeks without pay and expect to pay my rent, my utilities, my car payment (of which I recently had to acquire because I have to have transportation for this job and I finally drove my 10-year-old vehicle into the ground), pay off my gear that I'd be bringing to your project, and so on. Where do these people think you're going to magically get that money to pay for all that if you're working for them for free?

 

[hscully]

I have learned a lot in the past two years. I have self produced a few projects and decided to open up to others to get experience outside my own projects and to grow out my skills and maybe pay off some gear on their projects. It hasn't been all that great. I have been working with different producers on pretty small projects and the level of competence has varied greatly. The better ones have done the non-profit Kickstarter, multiple fund raiser thing and raised money for it. Usually it's not enough and where things go off the rails is on what they do and do not have to pay for. It's always a compromise on projects this size and by that I mean web series, or shorts in the $5K range, which is about all they can drum up from their networks.

The ones who have done better have taken producing as a serious thing. For instance some have come to me from http://www.produceyourownwork.com Molly is an accomplished producer with a couple of great films with real budgets she's produced and she does these workshops in NYC. They are not only for films, a lot are for theater. She's also artistic director of an off broadway group.. Anyway, there are resources.

I had a young film student.. a smart kid, come to me about a project. I tried to get him to take a class with Molly, when he didn't, I tried to guide him on how he could get a 501c3 project through and umbrella organization, take donations, have fund raisers, and get an online crowd funding campaign going and he just didn't want to do it. As anyone who has done it knows, it's a TON of work.

As a production company.. even on the ones that do raise money, I am losing my shirt. I'm not sure quite what to do. I understand that there are more lucrative uses of my time and gear... I just like the narrative stuff. I've done some event stuff and have a couple of talking head jobs coming up but meh... I like the narratives and frankly if someone has a "real" budget, I'd go bigger than me too.

 

[Gary Huff]

I had a young film student.. a smart kid, come to me about a project. I tried to get him to take a class with Molly, when he didn't, I tried to guide him on how he could get a 501c3 project through and umbrella organization, take donations, have fund raisers, and get an online crowd funding campaign going and he just didn't want to do it. As anyone who has done it knows, it's a TON of work.

And that's the attitude I hate. It's why I feel like these people just think that filmmaking is an easy way to make lots of money. Because once it turns into actual work, you know, paperwork, coordination, all that unsexy stuff? Then suddenly their passion isn't so strong anymore.

 

[hscully]

And that's the attitude I hate. It's why I feel like these people just think that filmmaking is an easy way to make lots of money. Because once it turns into actual work, you know, paperwork, coordination, all that unsexy stuff? Then suddenly their passion isn't so strong anymore.

Yep, the producing work is hard but it's like any other business where you develop a budget by doing research and then use that number as a goal to raise the money. It ain't rocket science. I always tell anybody who will listen... stay for the credits on any movie you see. Just look at how many people it took to make that, then when I say we need to hire a gaffer and a grip, you'll feel better about it!

I think what you said about just showing up on set is a huge problem. The pre-production is weak or non-exisitant on some of these projects. Plus the director usually is not competent... no shot list or an ill conceived one, no basic knowledge of observing the line... stuff like that.. for some reason they spare no expense for makeup!

I had one theater director who was directing this piece he had written. It was getting late, the actors were getting cranky, and we were off the grid shot list wise. Any way we get another of these week long takes and I say, "hey, we need to pick up this reverse or it won't cut" which was promptly ignored. We get to edit and I said... yeah we don't have that and he was kind of incredulous. It so happens that the camera was rolling when I told him about the reverse and I played it for him.

Oy! I can't even think about editing... that's where I'm really getting killed. At least shooting has to end so you can go to sleep!