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| Ochwo Emmax on Jeopardy shooting |
So why do we make films?
When the script you started writing a year ago, seems almost impossible to finish.
When the most comforting advice we will ever hear is "If you want to make movies, go make a movie.".
When it means business plans, LLCs, accounting, contracts, filing taxes, all the boring stuff no one talks about.
When the financing we have been working two years on falls through for the third time.
When we have had to hackle all of our friends and family, and our crowd funding campaigns still fail.
When we have had to empty all our bank accounts and pull money out of our houses, cars and other assets to finance them.
When we have had to call in every favor to get our crew or when the crew is just us.
When bad films are just as hard to make as good ones and we wonder which one ours will be.
When there is so much planning involved, shotlists, storyboards, location scouting, auditions, call sheets, production meetings, camera testing, rehearsals, logistics, etc.
When the lead actor that we have cast six weeks ago bails on us before the day shooting starts.
When it feels like we spend more time solving problems like blown sockets in old houses, trimming shots because we are loosing a location three hours earlier than planned, freezing on top of the mountain in the middle of nowhere, bad weather, random equipment failure, cutting and rewriting entire scenes because we are almost out of money, the constant hunt for clean audio against airplane, trains, bikes, police cars, fire trucks, ambulances, the entire world.
When our budgets are so small that we are stuck to doing almost everything ourselves, and for the things we don't know how to do, we learn as we go.
When after editing the same film for six months we ask ourselves, "What the hell am I doing? Would anybody really want to see this?"
When we need another four days of reshoot to address all the problems we found at the test screening and we wonder how we are going to pay for it.
When everyone sets their sights on the big festivals, Sundance, Slumdance, South by South West , Cannes, Tribeca, Toronto, Berlin, and we hope to be the next success stories, but after the fifth rejection in a row, we begin to wonder.
No one talks about what happens if you are one of the 98% who don't make the cut.
When we spend hundreds more on travelling and lodging to attend our screenings and then realize that some film festivals have a great turn up and others don't.
When the marketing power behind films takes precedents over the quality of the film itself and mediocre films that have it seem to prosper while great films that don't fade away into obscurity.
When most of us will have to market and sell our own films.
When we hear things like "Less than 2% of independent films make their money back" and almost every filmmaker we know who has got a distribution deal has either been ripped off or hasn't gotten a dime in return.
So why do we do it?
We do it because we have to, because its not just a hobby its a calling, an obsession, because through making films we learn who we are, and what we have to offer, because we want to tell stories that only we can tell and because we can speak for those who don't have a voice.
What we do might not be rocket science, we might not be saving lives, but we are changing them, one conversation at a time.
Some of us may have a lot of resources and other may have none but we take what we have and we make the best of it, because no matter the production, big or small, when we work long hours and live through the nights together, we become close like family.
Because we live for those magical moments when our vision comes to life before our eyes. We live for the Q&As, we live for the heartfelt reactions.
Through social media we can take marketing into our own hands, engage new audiences directly and build strong relationships with our fans.
Its a privilege to make films and deal with all the headaches that come with it because hopefully when we finish we can stand back and say, "I made that", its not perfect but I couldn't be more proud to put my name on it.
CREDIT:
Ochwo Emmax
Kizito Samuel Saviour
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