Success Today

• Be prolific – we all have a studio in our pockets today – our cellphones. There’s no excuse to not be making creative work, constantly. And work begets work. You build an audience by being prolific, and that doesn’t mean you have to be rich. But it does mean you have to…
• Be relentless, and sweat the small stuff. Have a passion, a vision and stick to it. Stories were flying around the interwebs this past week about how Sean Baker was obsessed with getting each of his films made, including his multi-award winner, Anora. Or the extremes Brady Corbet went to in order to make The Brutalist. But I was also reminded this reading about the 20^th Anniversary of YouTube this week in Variety, as YT ceo Neal Mohan talked about the successful creators he meets, saying “They’re amazing, creative people,” he says. “What’s always impressive to me is how they sweat every single detail. It’s inspiring.” If you aren’t that relentless – get someone on your team who is (more on this below), but also, respect those team members and don’t be so relentless as to be exasperating – it’s a fine line. Land on the side of collaborating relentlessly for the best project.
• Focus on the audience. As I’ve said here before, today’s culture is participatory and audience-centric. Everyone I know who is succeeding is laser-focused on solving for the audience. That doesn’t mean pandering to an audience, or that you should give up on your creative vision. If you focus right now on building something that a sizable niche audience is not getting from the system, you will succeed. I also look to artists like Patrick Smith, who are auteurs, but who include the audience in their creative process, and tailor their work to reach bigger audiences – without compromise. Or you can look at how Gary Hustwit is going direct to his audience with ENO – while also embracing new technologies like AI at the same time – and finding huge success (for more on this, see below) It also means for a business, focusing on what makes the audience’s lives better – things they don’t even know they can’t live without, instead of focusing on solving for an industry problem.
• Build Your Plan A First – everything else is a Plan B. I say this often when thinking about distribution, but it also applies to production and to many other things in life. Figure out what you can do with your existing resources to get your project made/distributed. Your resources are not just money, but also your time, your connections, your friends, your favors, your knowledge, your sweat-equity, your creativity. If no one else comes to the rescue – no big investor puts equity into your film, or you don’t premiere at Sundance and sell to Netflix for millions, how will you make your film and get it to an audience. That’s your plan A. It’s what you are going to do. Now, when anyone else comes along with an offer for equity, or a distribution offer, or a festival acceptance letter, you have a place to negotiate from because you know your Plan A. Their offering is a Plan B. Is it better than your plan A? If not, negotiate and build a Plan C that is a hybrid of what they’re offering and your original Plan A. But if you’ve never built your Plan A, you will be stuck just accepting their Plan B because… you have no other plan. 
• Build your Team. You can’t do this stuff alone (usually not, heck, even Sean Baker has some other team-members). For me, three people is the perfect number for your core team, but you need to figure out your skill set, what’s missing, and fill those gaps. Most successful people I know really have a core team behind them – or alongside them – making it all work. As many of you know, I’m part of the Future Film Coalition – that’s a volunteer team of nine people, and it takes all of us to keep it moving, and we need more. But even there, there’s really a core team of about three holding it all together. A film takes a village, but there’s usually two or three people keeping things on track with the core vision.
• Embrace Disruption and Change. As I said in this older post – you have to embrace disruption. Now to be clear, I am not arguing to copy the current administration and just toss out everything without any plan. But instead, realize that everything has already been disrupted, and disruption is the name of the game. The best way to thrive is to embrace the disruption and figure out what new models can be built because of it, and where are the new opportunities. What walls can be torn down? What old systems just don’t work anymore anyway, so instead of rebuilding them, what are the new, disruptive changes we can embrace to thrive? Asking those questions, and figuring out the new questions, should be your daily mission.

Stuff We're Reading

ENO Case Study:

A Filmmaker’s Guide To The Library: Filmmaker and cofounder of the Slamdance Film Festival Dan Mirvish published a really great piece for Filmmaker Magazine on how independent filmmakers can harness the power of the Public and Academic Library to push their film out into the world. And he’s writing from experience — Dan spent all of last summer investigating how films wind up in libraries and into the hands of their patrons, and in the end, was rewarded: Public libraries accounted for a whopping 75% of all DVD sales of his most recent film, now available to watch on Kanopy. If you’re an indie filmmaker who hasn’t considered the power of the library to get your work seen, give this piece a read. Dan guides readers through key differences between public libraries and academic libraries, how to work with both, and how to measure your success if/when you’ve gotten your film in the door.  (GSH)

How To Prevent a Hollywood Production Exodus: Julie Plec and Sarah Adina Smith are “deeply worried about the livelihoods of Los Angeles area cast and crew… [and] the countless small businesses suffering from production moving out of state or overseas,” and rightfully so. That’s why they drew up the “Stay in LA” petition  and subsequently wrote an article for THR outlining 10 actionable ideas to keep film and TV projects in California. Just a few that stood out are: (1) “Lift restrictions on shooting outside and in public spaces in L.A. (emulating NYC’s successful program) and offer a temporary reduction in permit fees…”; (2) “Neighborhood councils can create film-friendly corridors and residential zones. The county can offer discounted property taxes for all who participate.”; (3) “Perhaps most crucially, studios and streamers must do their part by pledging to shoot more in L.A. County, demonstrating a commitment to rebuilding after the fires.”; (4) “Support Gov. Gavin Newsom’s $750 million budget cap raise on the incentive and urge him to temporarily uncap the incentive for three years in L.A. County as part of efforts to rebuild after the fires.” (GSH)

How To Defend And Support Public Media: Worried about the state of public media right now? Me too- but people are working on it, and there's ways to get involved - such as Protect My Public Media. There are two easy actions we can all take to support and protect public media. (1) Join your local public media station at whatever level works for you; and (2) Join the Protect My Public Media mailing list (it takes 10 seconds). PMPM provides a comprehensive list of actions you can take to make your voice heard. Feel free to share this far and wide and encourage your circles to join and write to their representatives too. (GSH)

First Frames, from WePresent Out Now: WeTransfer’s art platform, WePresent launched a short film called “First Frames” on February 25, a short film by Ilie Mitaru. Mitaru came across Serbest Sali’s Instagram account, which documents Sali teaching photography to displaced and overlooked communities of children across Turkey, and decided to tell that story. He does so from the perspective of the children: “[I wanted] to embrace the weird, quirky, magical nature of their thinking and portray them not as passive subjects of their often-difficult circumstances, but as playful, resilient and complex individuals.” Hit this link to learn more and watch the film. Sub-Genre is happy to be working on a number of projects with WeTransfer’s film arm… more on that soon! (GSH)

The Risks Associated With Brand Films: Last Sunday “Emilia Pérez,” a film created by luxury fashion brand Saint Laurent and their film arm, Saint Laurent Productions was big news at the Oscars -  it was nominated for 13 Oscars and won 2, and more importantly its star, Karla Sofía Gascón,  made history as the first openly trans woman to be nominated for best actress. In addition to “Emilia Pérez,” Saint Laurent Productions also funded, and their creative director Anthony Vaccarello was credited as the costume director of David Cronenberg’s “The Shrouds” and Pedro Almodóvar’s “Strange Way of Life," and several other movies (that have come out and/or are coming out soon). Unfortunately, there was a Tweet crisis (learn about Karla Sofía Gascón’s racist and islamophobic tweets here) which as The New York Times’ Vanessa Friedman writes, is an “example of the risks that can accrue to a brand when it gets too close to a (fallable) star.” Saint Laurent’s crisis consultant points out that human risk is almost impossible to avoid, but from here on out, we can expect (or at least hope that) brands in film will more thoroughly investigate the digital footprint of their talent before inking a deal. Find Friedman’s piece for The New York Times here.  (GSH)

The Debate On AI Art Continued At Christie’s Auction House: Christie’s just held its first show of its kind called “Augmented Intelligence,” dedicated solely to works created with AI. Critics were quick to point out that many generative AI tools for art were trained on other artists’ works without their permission, and in the weeks leading up to the show, a petition to cancel the auction gained over 6k signatures. A Christie’s spokesperson commented, “The artists represented in this sale all have strong, existing multidisciplinary art practices, some recognized in leading museum collections… the works in this auction are using artificial intelligence to enhance their bodies of work and in most cases, AI is being employed in a controlled manner, with data trained on the artists’ own inputs.” You can check out Christie’s promo video here to learn more about their stance. (GSH)

Turning Tools For Surveillance into Stories: The Mumbai-based collaborative studio CAMP uses surveillance, TV networks, and digital archives to tell stories, runs a rooftop cinema in Mumbai, and maintains several online video archives, including the largest digital archive of Indian film. CAMP’s first major US museum exhibition is on view now at the Museum of Modern Art in New York through July 20th and includes projects that span two decades of work. These films “repurposed private television sets into interactive neighborhood portrayals, collected cellphone footage recorded by sailors navigating the Indian Ocean, and reimagined how a CCTV camera could be utilized for exploration rather than control.” Kristen Radtke for The Verge interviewed two of CAMP’s founders, Shaina Anand and Ashok Sukumaran, “about the importance of maintaining an open digital archive, the slippery definition of piracy, and how footage that never makes it into a finished film is often the most illuminating.” Check out that interview here. (GSH)