12 Rules For First-Time Filmmakers

Understanding Where to Start and How To Make It Good!

The following article was written as the first part of a series for https://FilmThreat.com, so please do me a favor and CLICK HERE to read it on their website and leave a comment.

Every time I see an interview with a filmmaker, the question comes up, “Do you have any advice for beginning filmmakers.” Some don’t have an answer or shoot off one or two things that come to mind, but I believe it’s a serious question deserving more than offhanded responses. Since I have made a movie before; it’s called The Quantum Terror, which made it to VOD and even won Film Threat’s ‘Award This’ for 2023’s Best Indie Horror Movie, think I might be qualified to give some of that advice. I’ve come up with twelve well-thought-out answers that I think provide a foundation for any aspiring filmmaker’s start.

Rule 1: The Medium Comes First, Not the Story.

Writing used to be a basic skill taught in school and now it’s treated like some mystical talent. We could talk about three act structures, how to build tension and release it, what makes a good character, and these are all important things to know how to do but they all fall apart if you don’t have an appreciation for the medium you’re working in. Go to any comic book convention and you’ll find an aspiring screenwriter talking about how he’s turning his screenplay into a “graphic novel” so he can make it a proven IP and sell it to a studio but when you ask him what his favorite comic book story is, he’ll confess that he doesn’t read them. The result is a bad comic that no one will ever read, especially a studio executive, because the writer didn’t care about the medium he was writing in, he didn’t know how to play to its strengths and weaknesses, and he certainly didn’t feel any passion for the end result that would end up in the hands of the reader.

Imagine how underwhelming The Nightmare Before Christmas would have felt if it had been a stock standard cartoon. Think about how silly Toy Story as a live action movie with actors playing the toys would have been. How many books that you loved have been turned into bad movies that miss the point of everything that made you excited to see it on the big screen.

My favorite TV show Samurai Jack only works because the people making it are super passionate about hand drawn animation and wanted to push the limits of what it could do, so they wrote stories that let them do just that. The Dark Crystal mini-series worked so well because puppeteers got together and asked themselves how they could make the most spectacular puppet show imaginable. Silence of the Lambs is so engrossing because it’s an actor’s movie and everything that happens in that movie is designed to enhance their stellar performances.

You’re going to be spending a lot of time working on your movie so you’d better make sure it’s a medium you love because if you don’t, the audience sure as hell isn’t going to love it. Show them why what they’re seeing is special and how clever you can be with the materials you’re working with. Anything else is wasting yours and their time.

Rule 2: Good Scripts Come From Living Life and Reading From Those Who Have Lived.

There’s a lot out there about writing a good script but most of it is bad and it shows in the kinds of movies we’re getting these days. Best selling paperback authors will bloviate about their greatest hits while trying to pass their lazy plot contrivances and story killing stream of consciousness tangents as hallmarks of their success, all the while ignoring that their last really good release was before they had the brand recognition to pull rank on their editor. The latest how-to-write books were written by people who learned by reading those authors’ how-to-write books and the people reading those books are getting their ideas from what they watched on Netflix the night before, while drinking wine and petting their cat.

I can’t stress enough how far removed in quality this is making modern writing from the stories of even fifty years ago, let alone those of William Shakespeare, William Blake, Oscar Wilde, Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, or even Edgar Rice Burroughs, for that matter. Their stories stir the soul because they had no choice but to confront life head on, far removed from what to them would have been unimaginable comforts and distractions. Reading the works they produced will change you in ways you can’t imagine and if you peel yourself off the couch and get out into the world, it will change you even more and your writing will become meaningful. Learn a trade, work with your hands, talk to people you would normally never think to talk to. As a result, the world around you will become richer for you and those who watch your movies.

You owe it to yourself and society not to produce worthless drivel. That means getting outside of your comfort zone.

Rule 3: It’s Not Enough To Be Entertaining. Your Story Must Be Useful.

Think of any movie that has endured in your library of personal favorites and I promise you that if you consider it for long enough, you’ll realize that there’s something within its contents that has been useful to you. I’m not talking about a message or a lesson but rather something about a character or scenario that gave you some context for your own life. A situation or attitude that you role-played in your own imagination and as a result benefited from in the development of your own character.

This is why, whether they know it or not, people are attracted to horror movies. Without any risk of personal harm they can sit for a spell and watch a surrogate stumble into extreme and unknown danger, activating thought processes and endorphins in a shared exercise on survival and pain, maybe even death. When the experience is over they get to walk away unharmed, maybe a little bit more cautious from that point on or maybe just feeling some catharsis from an opportunity to laugh in the face of chaos, albeit from a safe distance.

The same goes for comedies. We can laugh at a foolish situation because we’ve encountered something similar or maybe just observe a fool so we can later avoid their sorry situation and the humiliation of being laughed at like them.

Heroes can set examples of how to get hit and get back up. Dramas can caution us against our own mortal flaws. A fairy tale can offer the young and old alike metaphors for the human condition.

More importantly, for you as a filmmaker, they can give you a foundation for building your narrative in a way that won’t be boring.

Rule 4: Your Tools, Cast and Crew Are Only As Good As Your Vision

Okay, so you know your medium and you have something useful to say, now it’s time to set your destination, or rather to get those moving pictures on the screen. At some point you’re going to have a crew and actors standing in front of you waiting for your instructions, so you’d better know what to tell them. Be ready to get ahead of their questions by asking them of yourself, beforehand.

What camera, lights, or microphones to use will be answered as you go along your journey, or you’ll find people who can answer them for you. What matters more than any of that is in your mind’s eye. There are scenes, moments, lines of dialog, shots that are in your imagination that got you excited enough to want to make a movie in the first place. How do you now brute force them into existence?

What is in the frame? What is the mood? Who are the characters and what do they want?

You have to be able to visualize and quantify it so that the people working with you can help you get it. Speak plainly and also be ready to listen and adjust. Every situation will have obstacles but often will also offer you new opportunities and ideas. It’s daydreaming on a schedule but you have to communicate it in real time, as you do. The movie can be abstract but on set you need to be precise.

“Hey, when you say that line, on the last word I want to hear a note of regret.” Actors can use that far easier than telling them to think of when their favorite pet died. They trained to perform regret. They don’t need you to tell them how to do their job.

“Those rocks are made of cardboard and I can tell when I look through the camera. Let’s bring the lights down a bit and soften the focus.” Don’t ask what to do unless you don’t know the answer. You see it in your head. It’s your job to know the answer. Describe it so your crew can give it to you.

I draw storyboards showing my shots and how I want them framed. If you can’t draw you can get some action figures and photograph them. Some directors are just really good at pointing.

Communicate your vision or die.

Rule 5: Shoot For The Edit

This is a very simple one. Once all of your footage is “in the can” it has to cut together in a way that flows. You have to know where one shot ends and the next picks up, in order for you to edit it together seamlessly. If you do it right, the audience will forget that they’re watching a movie and it becomes an experience.

To do this I have a couple of rules I follow. When you hit the record button, start the scene early. Tell your actors to wait a few moments after you call action and let themselves ease into the moment. Then when the scene is done, let the camera keep rolling.

I call this arriving early and leaving late.

I do the opposite when editing. I cut so that the audience is coming in late and ending the shot before it has a chance to get boring because having those extra bits that aren’t in the scene give them the impression that the action isn’t starting and stopping with each cut. It gives you the freedom to find a rhythm that works for you and the audience.

However, this is an art. Editing is knowing what’s unnecessary to a scene and what’s giving a moment room to breathe.

Rule 6: Use What’s Available To You, Not What People Tell You Should Use. AND THAT INCLUDES AI!

As far as I can tell, art is born out of three defining attributes. The first is the ability to identify subjects and scenarios which the artist can then learn to produce representations of that can then be mixed into new and transformative ideas. The second is the ability to advance those ideas into new situations through experience plus imagination. This is more commonly known as daydreaming. The third is to imbue them with emotional resonance so that the viewer can reference an empathetic and evocative connection to the work. At its base we refer to this as being relatable but if we’re really rocking we can call it being transcendent.

There are varying degrees which these three parts may have in any particular work of art that may help us to determine if it is good or bad and taste will always come into play but overall, those seem to me to be the requirements.

How you get a movie to the point of being “real art” is irrelevant beyond those factors but people have been trying to come up with their own criteria to hamstring their contemporaries with, for the sake of exclusivity within any given hierarchy for as long as history has recorded. It behooves you to keep in mind that the greatest figures in history are usually the ones who broke out of these arbitrary constraints and whose legacies endure much longer than their critics’.

If you’re truly talented then most of these people will not be qualified to judge your work in the first place. Only posterity can do that.

All this to say that it doesn’t matter what you use to get your shot. The audience can’t reach into the screen and touch what they see, nor can they peek around the edges to see the crew standing just outside of the shot.

If you can afford to build the set or get the location, that’s fine but if you have to build it out of stuff you found dumpster diving, or you learn a new 3D program, or use AI, then that’s fine, too.

If there’s an aspect of your medium that drives why you’re making your movie, you need to pinpoint where to pour your focus, those techniques and moments that deserve maximum impact. Then, figure out how to efficiently handle the rest, the parts that don’t matter as much. AI is one tool that could be perfect for that: when used cleverly for the small stuff like filling in gaps where budget or resources fall short, it can blend seamlessly when done well. The audience won’t notice what’s missing in production value, leaving the key scenes that reflect who you are as a filmmaker to shine.

As long as the end result is true to the vision you set out to create, it’s all fine. Film making is the creation of illusions at twenty-four frames a second. It doesn’t matter if your crew helped you or if a gadget did the heavy lifting. The fact that you can make it meaningful for someone beyond the sum-total of its parts is where the true miracle is happening.

Rule 7: Be So Good They Can’t Ignore You.

This was comedian Steve Martin’s advice when he was asked on The Charlie Rose Show what the best way to break into show business is. I think about that answer a lot. He explained that instead of chasing shortcuts like networking or gimmicks, aspiring performers should focus on mastering their craft to such a degree that their talent becomes undeniable. Yes, I said in the last rule to use whatever you can get your hands on to realize your vision but the best and most expensive ingredients in the hands of someone who can’t cook will still end in an inedible mess that no one will want to eat, let alone pay good money for.

This is a problem I see with a lot of filmmakers who want the independent film sphere to overtake Hollywood. We have everything we need at our disposal to make movies just as good or even better than the mainstream but most of us are still offering an inferior product in the form of either deliberately low quality farces or safe and unambitious genera flicks that shine a spotlight on their own limitations. This is only continuing the stigma and stereotype of indie films being a glut of VOD trash.

Now, you can be offended by that, you can point to exceptions, you can argue that everyone has got to start somewhere, and I’m not going to tell you that you’re wrong. All I’m saying is that the barrier to entry is mostly gone for everyone and that means standing out in a crowd is harder than ever in a world where there is a finite amount of viewers with narrowing tastes and limited time.

Your days are numbered, too, so do yourself a favor and ask yourself if another found footage, slasher, ironic comedy, about trauma is the best you have to offer, or if maybe there’s something about you that could really be special in a way that people are going to remember.

Yes, it’s a risk but to paraphrase Star Trek’s Captain Kirk, “If risk isn’t your business then get the hell off of this star-ship.”

Rule 8: Ideas Are Cheap. Originality Is Impossible. It’s Your Unique Point-Of-View That Makes It Special

I’ll keep this one short. I’ve had a hundred people come up to me offering ideas for movies that will make a million dollars and when I do listen, they’re almost exactly the same. Every idea has already been done and most likely a thousand years before we were born, only to be forgotten and re-thought of. They may look different on the surface because of the times but they’re not new. I never let that discourage me and nor should you.

Ideas are worthless unless they’re brought out from our imaginations and into reality through starting and not stopping until it’s out there for everyone to experience. Originality is an elusive specter that vanishes when you chase it and causing creative paralysis when it’s no where in sight but if you are authentic to your perspective and true to your values, then it will come and stand over your shoulder while you’re too engrossed to notice, but other people will.

Rule 9: Don’t Give Up Your IP For Any Less Than It’s Worth

Unfortunately, when presented with a piece of art that is good, most people don’t care to truly consider its value. That often includes the person who made it but in an industry that has grown more cynical than I ever thought possible, that can include the person who wants to buy or distribute your intellectual property (IP), as well. A movie might be a masterpiece, the packaging polished to perfection, the test audiences jumping out of their seats, yet once handed off to an out of touch and unenthusiastic distributor, looking to bundle a bunch of cheap movies for a quick buck, you may find all of your hard work quickly forgotten, with you shut out and unable to have any say in what happens to it, ever again.

You no longer own or control it and your chances of making any money have just gone down to zero, while people who didn’t do any work are profiting off of your blood, sweat, and tears.

If someone is going to buy something you made, make sure the price reflects what it’s worth to you, not just in cash but in the freedom to keep telling your stories. There’s more to life than what’s in your bank account.

Rule 10: Distribution Is Changing and So Should You

Piggybacking off of the last rule, let’s take a look at what the solution to that dilemma is.

There’s no reason to sign your life’s work away, anymore. The resources to get your movie out in front of an audience while still owning 100% of your rights are growing in number every day.

Filmhub offers a sales platform for getting your movie to video-on-demand services like Netflix, Amazon, Tubi, Apple TV, and many others. There’s a company called CineRoadShow that books independent movies into theaters without a distributor because Hollywood is failing to provide them with enough content to satisfy their audiences. Animators are forming their own companies and creating properties like The Amazing Digital Circus, placing them on YouTube, and turning them into merchandising juggernauts.

They own 100% of it. They’re not limited by old systems. They call the shots. So can you.

Start small, if you don’t know where to begin. Book a local space, like an HOA clubhouse or bar for a night and screen your movie for the community, if only to make people aware of you and get feedback. This is really a time to be thinking on grassroots terms. We might have to build a whole new market from scratch.

Rule: 11: Think About The Catalog, Not The Blockbuster

Hollywood’s obsessed with the next big hit, but indie filmmakers should play a longer game. One blockbuster might get you a paycheck, but a catalog of five, ten, or twenty films can become an investment that builds a life. Every project you finish adds to your body of work, your voice, your footprint. It may not make you rich but it could set you up to do what you love for the rest of your life. Think of John Carpenter: Halloween made him famous, but it’s The Thing, Big Trouble in Little China, and the rest that keep him legendary. Don’t burn out chasing one perfect shot at glory. Make films you love, stack them up, and let them grow an audience over time. A catalog gives you leverage that you can sell, license, or just bask in the fact that you’ve got something real to show for your years. It’s not about blowing up overnight; it’s about sticking around.

Rule 12: Be Grateful To God For Every Small Success

Film making’s a brutal slog that’s filled with years of no gratification before something happens. You’ll want to quit a hundred times, and some days you’ll wonder why you even started. That’s when you pause and give thanks. Not just for the big wins but the small stuff: the actor who nailed a line, the sunrise you caught on camera, the stranger who says your film stuck with them. I believe there’s a higher hand guiding this chaos, and every step forward’s a gift, not to mention the thousands of years that our ancestors suffered through to get us to here, where we sit in temperature-controlled rooms of artificial light and fresh food within arm’s reach. Gratitude keeps you grounded when we start to take what we have for granted. Look at Tarkovsky: he made Andrei Rublev under Soviet censorship and still thanked God for the chance to create. You don’t have to be a believer like me, I suppose, but acknowledging something bigger than you fuels the soul to keep going.

And that’s it. It’s not my masterclass. I have a lot to learn, still, myself. A lot of thoughts on how it is we do what we do, but I think these twelve are a good foundation to start you off with.

This is the thing we can’t help but do, so remember, it has value because you have value. Treat both accordingly and you’ll do okay.

Break a leg.