What a Startup Can Learn from Indie Filmmaking
The San Francisco Film Society hosted a talk this month between Edward Burns (Actor and Independent Filmmaker) and Sunil Rajaraman (CEO of Scripped.com) that dissected the making of Nice Guy Johnny. Burns is a big actor starring in Saving Private Ryan and makes guest appearances on Entourage. But his passion has always been indie movies. Nice Guy Johnny was shot in 12 days with a budget of $25,000 and went straight to iTunes, cable-on-demand, and DVD the same day. With big studio movie budgets ranging from $2M to $100M, $25K is the definition of bootstrapping.
As I was listening to the talk, I couldn’t help but see the parallels between independent filmmaking and creating your own tech startup. I ran through my notes from the event and put together a list of lessons for startups, but explained through the lens of filmmaking.
Lesson 1: Industries are Always Changing
The cost to get a movie shot, edited, and produced has dramatically dropped. In 1995 making a movie meant dealing with film. Film is bulky, cameras are expensive, processing is expensive, and editing isn’t cheap. Welcome to the present, where shooting film-quality digital has become cheaper and more accessible. Nice Guy Johnny was shot on the RED Camera and edited on Final Cut Pro.
Windows of distribution have changed. Previously, small flicks needed to find a studio to back it and take it to theaters. The studios demanded full rights and the promise of a paycheck was always faint. Now movies can be distributed to iTunes, Hulu, Netflix, and On-Demand within days after the movie is complete. (See services like New Video).
Lesson 2: Engage with Customers
For Nice Guy Johnny, Burns is spreading the word every way he can. He’s tweeting, attending film festivals, speaking at events, and even selling the screenplay on Amazon. He’s not afraid to admit it either, he tweeted this earlier:
edward_burns: if u want me to stop the hard sell, Im sorry, were trying 2 keep the DIY indiefilm thing crankin & earning Screenplay? http://amzn.to/dfo4Xm
He’s connecting with the people that matter most: those who watch his movies and talk about his movies.
Lesson 3: All Hands on your Key Features
When preparing for Nice Guy Johnny, Burns and his team went through the 90-page script and picked the 10 key-money-put-all-effort-into scenes. They only had 12 days to shoot, so they had to spend their time carefully. They planned much of the movie around those pivotal moments. Those were the scenes where time was allocated for retakes and getting the perfect shot.
Lesson 4: Compromise is Inevitable
With only 12 days, 3 crew and $25K, there were going to be areas of the movie that weren’t going to be perfect. Burns and his team knew that some scenes would have continuity issues, poor lighting, or not enough coverage. But if they focused on the 10 key-scenes and did their best on the rest, the story would shine through.
Lesson 5: Be the Curator of your Final Product
The average movie is 120-pages of script, 3 acts, and a series of scenes. The final product is the collective creation that plays for 2 hours. As a Director, you need to decide what goes in, what needs to be pulled out, what needs to be tweaked to make the story flow.
Lesson 6: Being Small Means You’re Agile
Large budget movies are massive armies. Pulling off a scene requires the coordination of the actors, lighting, sound, grips, and the rest of the crew. Making a drastic last minute change or moving that many people quickly is close to impossible.
With Burns’s 3 person crew, they were able to make changes to the story in the moment. They were able to pull off shots that would not be possible if there were 20-30 crew standing in the background.
Lesson 7: Embrace your Talent
Burns mentioned as he matured as a Director, he started to listen more and embrace the talented people around him. He asked his actors to take the script he conceived and to make it their own. He wanted them to bring their voices and experiences to the role.
As a Director, he learned it was more about bringing the right people into the room, rather than “directing” them in their scenes.
Lesson 8: “It’s impossible to work that quickly when you have money”
This one was simple. Don’t fall in love with a big budget crew. It’ll only slow you down.
To Close
The people behind independent filmmaking and tech startup are strikingly similar. They both do it because they want to work with people that are motivated by the same thing they are: independence, ideas, and people.
If you want to catch a video of the event the guys at Scripped uploaded part of it to Vimeo. Also check out Nice Guy Johnny on iTunes. I did and I really enjoyed it.