Some friends of mine are prolific filmmakers. They really know how to crank \u2018em out\u2014shorts, features, web series\u2014and a lot of the movies they make are programmed at festivals like Tribeca and Sundance.<\/p>\n
But they\u2019re going for volume, not perfection: throw a bunch of people into a room with a camera and a microphone and see what happens. After a couple of takes, move on. They\u2019re not precious about the material. The process is more like riffing on an idea. You\u2019re just going with the flow, letting instinct instead of intellect point the way. Sometimes this produces moments of honesty and truth, while others…<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s just say that a film dies many deaths on its journey from the page to the screen, and a filmmaker feels the pain of each one. \u201cMaking movies is hard, but it\u2019s better than feeling fucked up inside all the time,\u201d an actor-director friend once told me. But what do you do when the thing that\u2019s supposed to keep you from feeling fucked up all the time is one of the things that fucks you up?<\/p>\n
Art allows us to communicate feelings through abstraction, symbolism, and subtext, providing just enough information to the audience and in ways that trigger emotional responses. Rarely is the audience excluded from the author\u2019s perspective, even if it\u2019s an audience of one, of the artist alone. In some small way the things you make, you make for yourself.<\/p>\n
On the opposite end of the productivity spectrum, another one of my friends spent almost a decade working on a single film. It remains to be seen if another will follow. I had a hand in producing this film, and worked on the set. One day, in the middle of our shoot schedule, after we\u2019d driven hundreds of miles, lost a shipment of props, fought and made up, and risked deportation and extreme dehydration, I asked my director friend what kept him going all these years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really just want to see this movie,\u201d he replied. That nails it.<\/p>\n
Making my last project\u2014a short film\u2014was one of the hardest things I\u2019d ever done, mentally and emotionally. My films are personal tests where I push myself to the limits of my abilities, so I can see what my strengths and weaknesses are. The fear of failure, the revelation of weakness, is a major motivating force in getting through the hard times.<\/p>\n
That personal audience of one can be your harshest critic. Validation is never guaranteed. Success is hard to hold on to, and doesn\u2019t always come in the expected forms. I\u2019ve watched filmmakers risk everything, succeed, seize their moment, and throttle out every last drop; I\u2019ve seen others sacrifice their big opportunities at the altar of something better that might never happen.<\/p>\n
For the former, success can be incredibly validating, but for the latter, validation comes through the work itself. Almost anyone can make a movie these days, and a lot of people are in fact, making films. Some people want to record a thought or a feeling to prove in some small way that something happened, others just want to see the pictures in their head up on a big screen, and still others need to unpack an idea and it doesn\u2019t matter if no one else even cares.<\/p>\n
Either way these people, myself included, don\u2019t have any choice. When I make a film and the dust settles, I know where I stand. Not making anything would be much worse.<\/p>\n
I believe that great art doesn’t come without a fight. The sardonic line about writing often attributed to Hemingway\u2014but can actually be traced to 20th century sports writer Red Smith\u2014comes to mind: \u201cYou simply sit down at the typewriter, open your veins, and bleed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Spilled blood reminds us that we\u2019re fragile and for all our differences very much alike. The aware artist recognizes how these qualities can be nurtured or exploited. It\u2019s what Aristotle meant by catharsis, a great release of emotion. Catharsis can be powerful, depending on the emotions the author wants to impart and how much blood they\u2019re willing to spill.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a little medieval, in that sense: in the process of curing what ails you, you put your own life on the line.<\/p>\n
Joni Mitchell said: \u201cThe most important thing is to write in your own blood. I bare intimate feelings because people should know how other people feel.” Maybe it\u2019s the sight of our own blood and viscera on the page or on the screen that makes the process worthwhile. This is one of the reasons why people struggling with depression\u2014those who feel \u201cfucked up inside all the time\u201d\u2014sometimes turn to drugs, alcohol, or other forms of self-harm. Or self-expression. If it hurts or zaps you in the head, then at least you\u2019re feeling something.<\/p>\n
The danger is in feeling too much, putting all of yourself — your dreams, fears, and desires\u2014into your work and bleeding out. That\u2019s the trick to bloodletting: knowing how much is too much, or too little; the way between life and death, between good and bad art. You want your audience to feel compassion\u2014literally the Latin for \u201csuffer with\u201d\u2014but how far are you willing to go to get them to empathize? If you\u2019re serious about it, you go all the way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Why is filmmaking so hard? In the process of curing what ails you, you put your own life on the line.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2223,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[30,27,29,26,28],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2198"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2198"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2522,"href":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2198\/revisions\/2522"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}