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GIVING IT ALL YOU’VE GOT
“It’s only a movie.”
If you are someone involved in the independent motion picture business, this is stupidest thing you can ever utter – especially if you are the producer or director. Movie making a complex beast and is going to take planning, cooperation and commitment, open channels of communication, paying attention to details, and sacrifice to pull it off successfully. This is required of EVERYONE on the production: producer, director, editor, cameraman, screenwriter, composer, actors, costuming, special effects, props, grips, lighting – if one department is slacking off it can have a domino effect on the rest of the production. Movie making is a field that encompasses so many different areas of expertise and disciplines; you cannot afford for one area to be weak. Letting something go as “good enough” almost assures you that point will be brought up in a review, forum, or blog and ripped to shreds. You did not set out to make an inferior movie – why let one be released to the public?
When you are asking people to commit their time and energies to your project, you owe it to them to make it the most polished, professional, successful motion picture you can within your budget and means. To shrug your shoulders and do a so-so job means that you are not taking the business seriously. Every single person in the cast and crew MUST be on their game. With people sacrificing their evenings and weekends to help pull off an independent film, no one wants to see their hard work ridiculed or collecting dust on video store shelf. The whole production must give 100% of themselves.
It is up to you how far you can go in this crazy business; you have to decide early on whether movie making is simply a hobby or a possible career for yourself? Shake off procrastination and laziness; find focus, pay attention to details, and go the distance. Take what you are doing seriously, give a damn, and you will see your movies improve and get positive notice.