Clapboard Jungle: Surviving the Independent Film Business

Making movies is beautiful.

Prepping them,

raising the money, selling them is horrible. Horrible.

And I think I can make movies

the rest of my life.

Selling them, you grow impatient.

You see it for what it is more and more with every year.

'It's been said that there are three things you should never do

'when making a film.

'Make a film about yourself, make a film about filmmaking

'or open the film with a quote.'

And... test.

Record. Yes.

OK.

Here goes.

I'm Justin McConnell and, uh...

Welcome to the documentary currently entitled, um...

See, you can tell it's a current... a working title,

because the name doesn't jump to my mind the second I have to say it,

but right now it's called Slate and Gain.

No, Slate and Game.

See? It's gonna have... It's gonna need a title change.

'I wanted to make films since I was very young,

'but not since I was a little kid.

'At first, I wanted to be a paleontologist or a criminologist,

"but eventually I realized.

'I just loved Jurassic Park and Silence of the Lambs.

'I absorbed everything I could get my hands on,

"and aside from a few stop-motion experiments with toys...'

...I started seriously making my own movies at the age of 15.

'Documentaries for class at first.'

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to make a movie?

Well, in this video, I'm gonna tell you

what the roles of screenwriters and directors are,

from big to small budget, from commercials to major films.

"Then short films and even my first feature

"when I was still in high school.'

Open the fucking cash register!

'Consumer video tech was just then cheap enough

'that I could save up and buy a Handycam that wasn't great on quality,

"but served its purpose.'

Just a question here. How do you expect to get away with this?

'Growing up in the '90s, my generation of filmmakers

'were raised in the wake of the independent film movement.

'The working-class success story,

'the self-made kid who worked inside the system and then broke in,

'the Sundance darling, the director as a rock star.

'So I grew up dreaming of when I might get the big break,

"that moment I made a film that would break into the public consciousness

'in a way that my career would be set. The dream of making it.

'A dream worth working toward,

'for that one day when lightning strikes.'

'But who was I, and what chance do I really have?

'I came from a small town in Canada,

'starting with zero contacts in the business and just a dream.

'Now, it's over twenty years later since the dream was born,

'and the business is not what you dream it'll be.

'The industry is not the same as the hope,

'the reality does not match up to the dream. How could it?"'

OK. Mm-hmm. Uh, OK.

'Film has always felt like the most important part of my life, my whole identity.

'My family and friends matter to me greatly,

'but for most of my life, I've had this feeling

'that if film was stripped away, I wouldn't be much of a person.

'I'd be a rudderless ship drifting in open seas

'with no hope of direction.

"But I can't deny that it's taken its toll in more ways than I can count.

'A few years ago, when I was at my lowest point,

'I began to question why I'm even trying.

"The doubt began to creep in.

'I had tragically lost my best friend and writing partner of a decade,

'the co-architect of my strategy for breaking in,

'and it hit a big reset button.

'I gained weight and hit nearly 300 pounds.

'None of the projects I was trying to get made were getting off the ground.

'I'd had a no-budget feature horror movie released around the world

'that while some people really enjoyed, enough people hated it

'that I started to really doubt my own abilities.

'I was in a slump, and the business didn't seem to be doing any better.'

I find myself second-guessing myself a lot, lately.

It sort of feels like opportunities happen for other people

way more than they happen for me, and I'm wondering...

I'm always wondering why that is.

I question it sometimes. I question my place in a business

that is tough enough to get into on its own

and even more difficult when people have written you off.

"The film business that existed when I was growing up,

'the one that I dreamed of working on is long dead.

'It died before I had a chance to even get to the proverbial locked door,

'much less walk through it.

'In its place is a Wild West of competing ideologies,

'a greater gulf between mainstream and independent cinema than ever before,

'more product than the population can handle,

"and more new types of media entertainment

'to compete with film than the business can sustain.

'The possibility of having a career actually creating content is there,

'but the competition is fierce.

"The market's oversaturated, only the very best break through.

"But in that, there's hope, I think.

'There is a reason to keep trying,

'and there's more reason than ever before to try and become a self-made creator.

'The doors to getting your work seen are wide open now.

'The ability to make money off your work

'is what's much more difficult,

'which means, as I've learned the hard way countless of times,

'you have to be smart. You have to keep learning.

'You have to work hard enough and survive long enough to get your chance

'and know that your chance, your lightning strike moment, may never come

'and you have to be OK with that. That's a form of insanity, isn't it?

'I think it might be to be a dreamer, to live for a dream,

"but it's a form of insanity everyone trying to be a filmmaker shares

'and somehow I take comfort in that.'

I decided to make this doc,

because I've been working in the film industry now for 15 years

in an actual somewhat professional capacity,

but I also don't want to show a biased opinion of who I am,

because I'm not really anybody yet.

'I moved to Toronto in the year 2000, just a fan with a dream.

'Slowly built a career in post-production,

'made a bunch of short films and music videos,

'amassed a lot of debt, made a lot of mistakes.

'The first film I made that did any sort of real distribution,

'the documentary Working Class Rock Star,

'I made zero money on after being conned

'by a predatory producer's rep,

'having one distributor go bankrupt before I was paid out

'and another's releases get lost in the shuffle

"when their sub-distributor sold to a bigger company.

'I made a horror film called The Collapsed on basically pocket change,

'but sold to 13 territories and some sizable companies,

"and made a tidy profit.

'And then another documentary, Skull World,

"which has a few distributors on board, but was partially self-distributed,

"and not very profitable.

'Around 2009, I started trying to get a bigger feature, The Eternal, made with little luck.

'Despite having a really cool attached cast of people who I grew up watching,

'the recession and a lot of bad luck led to that one going on the shelf.

'But in 2012, that project and my client who worked for Anchor Bay

'connected me with a prolific producer, Avi Federgreen,

'who I joined forces with to continue the development of my slate

"and help his distribution company IndieCan Entertainment.

'In 2013, I started working as a film festival programmer at Toronto After Dark

'and in various capacities for a bunch of distributors.

'I am really not anybody, you've probably never even heard of me.

'I'm one of thousands of people trying to do this,

"but I do think my experiences are a good jumping-off point

'to examine the business further, to try and understand it more,

"and figure out how to keep a career building in the modern film industry.

"But there's no point in going it alone, so I've gradually collected the opinions

'of dozens of knowledgeable figures from across the industry

'who've graciously given their time to offer collective insight

'into such a complicated business.'

To be successful as a filmmaker, you have to be a fucking masochist.

You have to be a little bit insane.

Independent film has never been something

that you go into to get rich.

I mean, I guess in a sense in the '90s,

when people were getting rich off the Sundance sales etc.,

it created this illusion

that there was this world out there that you could get rich making art.

You know, I think that was always kind of a bullshit assumption.

If you are entering this business in order to be rich and famous,

you're in the wrong place.

If you can get distribution, most of that comes after the fact

after you've made your movie.

I get so discouraged sometimes, I go, "I'm gonna quit", you know?

At least twice during the last months right before we're green-lit,

and it's so hard, and it's just not coming together,

and you get a piece, but you lose a piece, and you're... "Oh, my God."

To be honest, I don't think the situation in Japan is that great

for movies at the moment.

Compared to before,

I feel that the value of each movie Is steadily decreasing.

Fewer people are going to the cinema,

and young people are used to seeing them on the internet or on YouTube.

So they're losing the desire to actually watch movies.

The problem we now have is we have a tsunami of product.

We have much more product than it is possible to watch.

There are definitely more films made today than ever before,

completely saturated.

It just makes a job like mine a little harder,

because I have to weed through so much to find the gems.

Nobody complained when there were thousands of paintings and drawings

and comic book illustrations.

Why should anyone complain about too many movies?

The problem is there are too many great movies that nobody gets to see.

I mean, you can make a wonderful film, and it never gets seen.

That's the problem today.

I mean, that's happened to me several times, even with the studios.

I'm finding now if you're really active on social media,

getting a big following, that actually helps your chances.

It's all about money.

That's why you get the Aliens 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

Terminator 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

Fast and the Furious 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

It's very telling,

the fact that people now use the terms "content" and "pipeline"

to describe stories.

We need a content to feed our pipeline.

That's sewage language or oil language.