A Quote by Yahoo Serious
Making your first feature film is actually impossible.
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I first started making films - this is my first feature, but I was making shorts - I was actually freelancing as a day job at The New York Times as an art director. I actually worked with Bill Cunningham and really soon after I met him, I thought, "Oh my God, he's a perfect subject for a documentary."
I made a lot of short films before making a feature film. Actually, I learnt film-making by making short films.
I think that too often we, film directors, think that a big epic novel and feature film are the same. It's a lie. A feature film is much closer to a short story actually.
Whenever I'm making a feature film, I wish I were filming a documentary, because making feature films is so stressful. It happens every time.
When I said that something was going to cost a certain amount of money, I actually knew what I was talking about. The biggest problem that we were having on the financing front was people with lots of money saying "you need more money to make this film [Moon]," and us saying "no this is the first feature film we want to do it at a budget where we sort of prove ourselves at the starting end of making feature films; we can do this for $5 million." That is where the convincing part between me and Stuart came, we had to convince people with money that we could do it for that budget.
After you've done the first feature, then you have heck of a difficult time getting your second film off the ground. They look at your first film and they say, "Oh well, we don't want you anymore."
I think what's so great about making your first feature film is that you're so naive in some ways; you don't know what to expect, and you don't question things as much because you're just trying to figure it out as you go.
I fell in love with movies as a kid. I had been making shorts and making TV and making commercials and it's such a difficult, weird process of trying to wing your first feature, especially if you're not going to go and just have a Kickstarter and do it on your own.
By the way, today with digital cameras and editing on your laptop, and things like that, you can make a feature film, a narrative feature film easily for $10,000.
I think the power of the short film is incredibly underrated. It is way easier to get someone to watch a 15-minute film then a full-length feature. In those 15 minutes you have the opportunity to express your voice as an artist and hopefully connect with your audience. If you are trying to be a first time feature director then a short film that demonstrates you have a grasp on the themes and concepts of the movie you want to direct is a no-brainer. Whether they are collaborators or potential investors, filmmaking is a visual art form so you obviously need visuals to show them!
I think making shorts is really about giving yourself the opportunity to learn what your strengths and weaknesses are. That's really important to know before getting to your first feature. In many ways you can't afford to make too many mistakes while on that feature.
It proved to be pretty impossible to get funds for a feature film in Finland. It's still small, but the film industry was miniscule at that point in the early '80s.
I just know that making 'Beast' was an amazing experience. It was my first feature, it was the director's first feature, and every day, you're just trying to do good work and learn.
Most people look at a feature film and say, "It's just a movie." For me there is no border or wall between fiction and documentary filmmaking. In documentaries, you have to deal with real people and their real feelings - you are working with real laughter, happiness, sadness. To try to reflect the reality is not the same as reality itself. That's why I think that making a good documentary is much harder than making a good feature film.
Robert Rodriguez, makes a feature film in 35mm celluloid one and a half hours long, and nobody believed him, I think he wrote a book about it and gave all the details of how he spent the money, even making a 35mm celluloid feature film was possible, at least for Rodriguez.
I had originally written 'Pariah' as a feature, and we shot the first act as a short film, and then we used the short as a marketing tool to fundraise for the feature.
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