I’ve finally found a new apartment with the girlfriend, and we’re hoping to move in this weekend. It hasn’t been confirmed yet, but with both our incomes we should truly not have much of an issue gaining acceptance.
This is the main reason I haven’t been blogging, writing, directing, or creating in general. Sometimes life is more important – I could easily spend the rest of my days trying to produce something incredible and never make it there… I realize these two items show no real world correlation, so I’ll state it in a different way. As soon as I begin production on a new short film it will consume all my time, energy, and focus. I made an agreement with myself that I would not involve myself in a new project until my living situation was figured out.
In the past few weeks, I’ve been working a ton of overtime at work. This makes a huge difference in income, and should allow me some financial liberty in the near future. 1 overtime shift for me earns me an extra $350. The cool thing about my work is overtime shift are available in abundance.
I figure if I work 1 additional overtime shift per month, strictly for film, I can improve my production. Say I need 4 actors for the film involving a 1 day shoot. I can easily afford to shell out $50 for the day. The reason that is significant is because I can post the roles on major casting websites. Here, actors sift through roles searching for different criteria. By offering $50 the role has much more appeal and values their work (in comparison to the numerous unpaid roles). I’m going to take a wild guess that I can get 5-10 submissions for that kind of rate of pay. And if I need only 1-2 actors, I’ll be able to pay $150, which is much more legitimate.
Somewhere in the near future I’d like to start looking for advertisers/financing – but before I will feel comfortable pitching to small businesses I’d like to grow my channel’s audience. I truly believe that having the balls to approach individuals & corporations (small and big) who may find value in supporting your work ultimately separates the amateur from the professional.
Imagine Mountain Cult has an episode that focuses on the main character hiking through the mountains. He uses a compass to navigate his way. Let’s pretend my episodes average 10-50k views. Well if you’ve developed a new compass and have the opportunity to reach that size of an audience, wouldn’t you be interested, and willing to shell out some marketing money to have your compass featured? That’s my rudimentary understanding of how this would work, at least. What I DON’T want to do is receive any financial support from individuals who are interested in supporting my works because I’ve appealed to their emotional side (this is my dream and passion, please help make it possible!). I don’t have any problem with people who do it, and I understand why one would, that’s just not the route I’d like to start down.
My approach to becoming a successful producer is simple, albeit idealistic – If you can create content that people are naturally drawn to watch, investors will follow, leading to greater production value, resulting in even more views, and the cycle repeats exponentially. That’s capitalism for you – as unfair as it may be when you’re working your way up from the bottom.
In summary, this post was one big exercise in random brainstorming. I’m loosely plotting my future because I’m finally close to being able to prepare to film again. I’m very excited and will be sure to have more updates when I’ve returned to film mode. In the meantime, here’s some hungover footage Kelly and I got attempting to record crows eating bread crumbs.
Thomas M. Watt 