The film industry career flow chart

It’s throughly disturbing how accurate this flow-chart can feel as you trace its permutations through with your finger… And yet I cant help but baulk at cynicism. I declare there has never been a better time to be a screen media practitioner  because there has never been so many screens to make stuff for…!

But Don’t get me wrong. I’ve also long declared the so called ‘DV revolution’ to be bogus. Low-end costs came down but mid and high-end really did not; quality production is still costly, time-consuming, complex and difficult. There are more opportunities for production and delivery certainly, but to believe there has descended some utopian digital filmmaking democracy is deluded. As is the oft-cited notion that we are “in a period of un-precedented change”. The creative screen media industries have ALWAYS been in a state of perpetual change. Nothing born of the internet is nearly so radical as the birth of Radio was to a Theatrical culture society. No digital camera so great a herald of change as the Leica 35mm or the Bolex was to the photographers and filmmakers of the time. In the digital age the quality that seems so often missing is ‘perspective’.

Yet, I see this point-of-view not as fuel for cynicism, nor as rain on the exciting digital parade. Rather a levelled headed way to see through the hyperbole, an articulate way to see the REAL opportunities shrouded by marketing hype, guru speak and internet forum chatter. 

The real facts as I see them are:

1) There has never been more screens to make stuff for.

2) Never been fewer middlemen between your creation and your audience

3) No tangible limit to how much media people will consume

4) This is the most audience-centric age we’ve ever seen; one built of Responding to rather than Dictating to the viewer.

5) And There has Never been a period more conducive to collaboration and working with the people you Want to work with rather than the people you Have to work with. 

Hence for all the implied cynicism inherent in a humorous flow-chart like this, I cant help but be optimistic.

The problems, frustrations and cynicism - on the part of old-salts and newbies alike - seems to emerge most around the idea of Jobs and Making a Living. We may arrogantly say theres never been better time to be a filmmaker, but for the great many who aren’t and cant make a living from it, this may sound like a hollow declaration. To this I simply respond by saying that the creative screen media industries Do Not Owe Anyone a living… No art form ever has. Perhaps its the word ‘Industry’ that’s the problem. When we call it an industry we imply a right-to-work, a right to a living. The simple truth is that if everyone everywhere stopped paying for art and nobody ever got paid for making it, art would none the less still be made… Its’ scale and form may alter but creation is so much a part of our human DNA that creative endeavor will persist with or without an income. This fact alone tells us that the word industry is perhaps misapplied. And so to the idea that anyone is owed a living from the arts is a delusion.

If you want to make stuff, there are unprecedented opportunity to make it and for people to watch it. If you can make a living from it, great. Thats a bonus. But its not something the ‘industry’ owes you. Never has and never will.

Comments

[Dick VL]

Ahhh - but do you become an artist or a craftsmen. Learning the craft of filming is like learning to be a carpenter. Once you know, people should pay you for your services and what better service than making films for people that they like to see.

[MARK GEORGEFF]

Love the flow chart...so very real according to my actual experience in LA and the movie industry since leaving film school. The industry does not owe anyone anything. Just because you learn a craft, etc., does not mean anyone has to pay you for your work and talent and sacrifices made to learn such craft. You get to choose whether you want to work for free or charge a fee. The clients, the customers, etc., get to choose whether they pay you or not. I've walked away from doing free rewrites on scripts etc., because the wanna be producers assumed they could freak me out. As in..."you'll never work in this town" crap. I left LA and all that nonsense to get better as a writer, screenwriter and now director. i embraced the digital revolution and all the myriad of changes happening consistently and far away from the networking of Hollywood and their system, etc., and guess what? I got rewrite jobs for cash. And I put together a slate of genre features in both script and storyboard - concept art and now trailers packages for guess who? The global audience, the global marketplace in as many different forms as possible...and guess what? I've got meetings set up with actual investors, who totally get what I'm doing.
Mike...you're right. This new age is about the creator going right to the audience..and not wasting money in the process which is exactly why Hollywood is in the madness it is...regardless of their hits...which are no longer consistent. As I write-direct a mixed genre indie feature...that is extremely visually driven for a global audience, for under 100 grand; have spinoff products in video games, graphic novels, posters, t-shirts, and eventual tv series syndicated to the global markets, as opposed to US networks -- I will be extremely successful on so many more levels than just being adored and fawned over by the elite of the Hollywood system.
Thanks Mike.
For showing me I'm not alone on going down this road.