I got an email a while back from a filmmaker in New Jersey, and I was woefully tardy in responding. Now that I have, though, I thought I would put some of the more general information here, in hopes it will help anyone else who is thinking about forming their own filmmaking collective similar to SoCal Film Group.
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"Right now, it's just me. Is Wordplay the place to start to seek participants? Or is there an alternative?"SCFG started off of
Wordplay, so that's as good a place to start as any. I wouldn't limit yourself to it, though - if you don't already, check out other filmmaking websites to see if any of the regular posters strike you as being particularly talented, intelligent, perceptive, funny, etc.
See if you can go to face-to-face get togethers to see if their real life personalities match their online personas. A little bit of recon at this step will save you a lot of heartache later - you don't want to invite people who are prima donnas or trolls or flakes in real life, no matter what they seem like online.
Above all else, what you DON'T want to do is go to a dozen filmmaking fora (forums? forii?) and post random requests for group members. Not only is that rude to the people who run the websites, it's likely to blow up in your face when you actually try working with the kind of people who are likely to respond to that kind of "throw requests against the wall to see what sticks" approach. It's far better to hang out at the sites and participate in the discussions, until you have a pretty good idea of the people the most likely to be useful assets to the group. Then send those people private emails, and go from there.
"If members have no experience in filmmaking, what then? Since we're in New Jersey, I don't see participants having equipment or lots of skills. Did you solicit people with these skills?"We've had mixed results soliciting people with specific skills. Some of them mesh well with the mutual-assistance nature of the group, while others come with the attitude that they're doing us a favor by showing up. Starting from the ground up like you are, I would suggest focusing on storytelling skills and cinematographic talent first, and worry about formal education and cool equipment later. You can do some outstanding stuff with a cheap handicam and some work lights if you have imagination and talent (see La Jetee for an example); but a hundred film school graduates and millions of dollars of equipment is wasted if you don't have a good storyteller at the helm (see everything that Uwe Boll has directed, for example).
With that said, one of the things that works well for us (and is probably the primary reason why we haven't imploded yet) is that we don't judge the quality of each other's work. We used to have formal critique sessions, but they did more damage than good. Some of our members have drastically different ideas of what a "good" film is like, and they're not going to change each other's mind. But, since our group is about helping each other make a lot of different kind of movies, we all seem willing to work on *any* SCFG movie, because we know that the people making that movie will help us make our own movies in the future. If someone wants to make a depressing arty short about a bi-polar lesbian in a wheelchair who pulls out her eyeballs with a spoon, I'll work on it. If someone wants to make a stupid genre film full of poorly-rendered CGI helicopters which randomly explode, I'll work on it. In doing so, I will have built up 'sweat equity' with the makers of those two films, and I know they help me make my brilliant film about a wheelchair-bound lesbian who can make helicopters explode with the power of her magic spoon... :)
"We also don't have the proximity to Hollywood for meetings and networking. Is that a real hindrance?" I think you'll find that while Hollywood is still a great place to meet people and network, it's not the *only* place anymore. You can find filmmakers everywhere these days, especially since the cost of the equipment has dropped so much in the last 10 years. I bet there's some dude who makes his living producing corporate industrials in South Jersey, who would love to do something creative on film. I bet there are some budding Kevin Smiths who are great with dialogue but need some help with camera and lighting technique. I bet there are a dozen film majors who would like to get more hands-on experience than they're getting at school. You won't know until you try.
Labels: film makers, film making, filmmakers, filmmaking, SoCal Film Group
