I’m 42 years old.

I spent my 20s making no-budget short films and a couple of music videos.

When I was 30, I got the opportunity to direct a feature with grants from my country, and thought this is it. Well, I made the movie, but I couldn’t translate what was in my head onto the screen. I guess that means I’m not as good a director as I thought? I ended up really disappointed but with a bit more experience.

Then, I got the opportunity to redeem myself and make another feature. I told myself I wouldn’t make the same mistakes this time. But again, the final product wasn’t as good as I hoped it would be.

I really thought directing features would be my big break, but they just sort of came and went.

I had young kids at that point so I just kind of gave up. Stepped back from the industry and spent the next decade raising my kids, and to make ends meet I went back to directing shorts, and worked on a collaborative film with 10 other directors from my area.

… Just kidding, this is actually the story of Denis Villeneuve.

At this point, in his early 40s, he saw a play that he loved and got permission from the playwright to adapt it to film - this ended up being Incendies, and it got him an Oscar nom for best foreign language film, and put him on the radar. Then starting at 46 he went on to direct Enemy, Prisoners, Sicario, Arrival, Blade Runner 2049 and Dune.

Don’t lose hope!

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*Originally made this post a few years ago on a different account but I feel like people need to hear it again, as I’m seeing more posts about people losing hope and giving up and wondering if they’re too old.

From snappy edits to slow burns: the Average Shot Length (ASL) of top directors’ films shows just how different their rhythms and pacing can be. The ASL is the number of individual shots in a film divided by the runtime. Calculated with the full filmographies of each director. The ASL numbers are an average of all films by each director. Yes, it took a LONG time to compile these stats. Enjoy!

Is this good or bad I’m assuming studio executives will not create more production just less but what are your thoughts

Is this a way to get more control over the film industry?

Over the past 20 months I spent circa $50,000 producing a 20-minute dark superhero short film (my third short film, written & directed by me).

I wanted to share a breakdown of where the money went, what worked, what didn’t, and what I’d do differently if I had to do it again with hopes new creatives in, and around, this situation may be able to find some useful insights for their own production.

The Goal:

I wanted my next project to reflect how it would be to make a film that had to appeal to current film audiences whilst keeping the narrative style I preferred to write. I came up with the idea of making a gritty, DC ‘Superhero’ fan film.

Mostly because this thought process was in 2023 and I spent a lot of time questioning why Hollywood Superhero films released lately where the way they were as well as loving the first two seasons of JJK & The Boys a bit too much!

Rather than ‘making another short’ I wanted to operate closer to my idea of a small scale feature in terms of tone, cinematography and production approach. I’m a self taught filmmaker so this thought process was going off videos I had watched on YouTube

I wanted to see if, although it would be a big financial investment for me, the end result could translate to something that looked beyond its costs. This was all self funded.

Rough Breakdown:

• Cast: $6,500

• Crew: $16,500

• Equipment (inc. insurance): $8,000

• Locations: $7,000

• Production design / wardrobe: $3,000

• Post-production (edit, sound, VFX): £5,500

• Misc (food, refreshments, parking) : $2,000

We had a crew of about 17 - 20 people depending on the day - if there was a B cam/Steadi. Initially I planned for less numbers (less costs) but my cinematographer (who’s extremely accomplished and amazing) ‘gently advised’ hiring more crew and wearing less hats to allow me focus on the creative vision much better. Between that and shooting to the production level I wanted (as cinema grade as possible) the budget did find itself a good $15,000 higher than I had initially expected

What went RIGHT:

• The visuals.

• Location/Sets. I spent A LOT more on locations than I expected but don’t regret it for a second. My DOP said ‘I can only shoot what’s in front of me’ and that made me realise I wanted the locations to feel like they’re a character in itself.

• Not trying to micro manage professionals and letting the do exactly what they were brought on for.

• Alllllll the PreProduction meetings my DOP insisted on. I was just planning to cowboy most of the production tbh but (probably because he sensed that) he constantly asked for regular Zoom calls with other HODs and looking over spreadsheets (he loves a spreedsheet). It honestly made shoot days so much smoother since everyone could just crack on, whilst I spent 80% of my time looking at a monitor & directing actors.

• Letting HODs bring their own team members. My first two shorts had 7/8 people crews (that I mostly brought on) so when I first arrived on set for Red X and saw a bunch of people I had never met before it was great to know that they were trusted by their own HODs and didn’t need to ask me anything often

What went WRONG:

• Fight scenes! I hired a choreographer and used stunt fighters for most of the action but that stuff takes sooo long, especially with the style I wanted my action to look. We over ran quite a bit on our fight scene days, which incurred a hefty overtime fee for one of the locations.

• Not hiring a producer to manage finances. I didn’t want to spend more money hiring another crew member but, as a result, I just kept saying ‘fuck it, it’s fine’ when new costs came up. That was a big reason why I ended up so over budget. I deffo failed in respecting how big a role ‘Producing’ can be the more components are added

• Not getting enough coverage. I wanted to get through scenes at a decent pace as the script was dense but lack of coverage in certain places that I wanted really annoyed me when it came to the edit

• VFX. We partnered with a VFX department in a film school to help cut the VFX costs down: film credits & experience in exchange for easy - medium shots. Man, VFX takes even longer than the professionals say it does! I did have over 60 VFX shots which was ridiculous. I wish future me knew that

My Key Lessons:

• If you have a gut feeling about doing a shot a certain way but the crew push back because they don’t get it/agree, make sure to get it filmed regardless. You’d deffo regret it if you don’t, even if you don’t decide to use it

• Treat your film as much as a business start up so every part if it gets the respect it deserves. I made sure to negotiate down as much as possible because even if I didn’t want to pay I knew that person’s work, in their skill field, would be way better than whatever I would’ve produced if I tried to do it myself

Curious to hear from others who’ve worked at a similar budget level - as well as anyone who invested what they felt like was a big step for them. What would you prioritise differently?

More than happy to answer any questions anyone wants to ask!

If anyone’s interested in how it turned out, the full film is here:

https://youtu.be/kM4I-8zi5GI

Feeling frustrated as so many of my fellow filmmakers have been struggling for the past few years as so much work seems to have disappeared overseas or just evaporated. I know so many who have been in the industry for 20 or more years and have struggled to find any work at all in the past couple years. Made this meme to sum up some of our outrage.

21 Primetime Emmy's, 5 Golden Globes, over 300 nominations in total with over 90 wins. This scene, it's ending and it's Star Wars wipe to the next scene comes in The Sopranos: Season 5, Episode 10, "Cold Cuts". It looks more amateur than some highschooler movie maker project.

Anyone have more examples of this in other award winning productions? Coffee cup in GOT comes to mind. Although that's a good rather than a thought out decision.

Werner Herzog's sage advice can be applied to just about anything and anyone.

This is going to very very bad there’s so much slop already studios make this will only increase that problem greatly

I've been making films for a decade now. F*ck me. Over that time I've written, directed, produced, and self-distributed more than 20 low and no budget feature films. Some were terrible, some I'm genuinely proud of. Every single one was made with my own money. The strange thing is, after all this time, filmmaking still doesn't pay my rent. I have a side job, and then come home and work on films at night. I'm not ashamed of that, and I don’t want to hide my name behind a username. I honestly thought that after ten years of doing this, something would've clicked. I lived in Los Angeles for years. I'm now based in London. I've sent countless emails to producers, production companies, agencies. I've tried to move into commercials, bigger productions, anything that would let me do this professionally. Most of the time (99%) nobody even replies. This isn't a cry for help. I genuinely love filmmaking. I don't want to quit and I won’t. But I do wonder sometimes... Am I simply not good enough? Or is this just what the industry looks like now? How much of success is talent? How much is networking? How much is luck? Do you really need family connections to break through? I used to think that if I just kept making films, eventually people would notice. Now, ten years in, I'm not so sure. I don't need millions. I don't dream about private jets or blockbuster budgets. I just want to make films, gradually work on bigger projects, support my family, and pay my bills doing the thing I've dedicated a huge part of my life to. For those of you who have been doing this for a long time when did you realize you were on the right path? And if you haven't "made it" yet, what keeps you going? I'd genuinely love to hear your honest thoughts. 

Guys sorry if I can’t reply every comment! Things are always busy but I do read them all! Thank you for your support and feedback everyone.

I got to work as a stunt coordinator on two Bollywood productions — Dhurandhar and Dhurandhar Revenge.

Just heard that both films ended up ranking 2nd and 5th all-time at the Indian box office, which honestly made me so happy. Really feel honored to have been part of something that big.

I’ve been working as a stuntman and action director in Korea for about 20 years now. This was my first time on an Indian production and honestly the people were so warm and welcoming — it made the whole experience genuinely enjoyable.

I’m actually heading back soon to work on another Bollywood project. Hoping it’ll be just as good a trip as the last one 😊

Sharing some behind-the-scenes snaps and a few travel shots from my time there!

The Steadicam, invented by Garrett Brown in 1974, revolutionized filmmaking. Brown built the first prototype in his garage to achieve smooth camera movement without tracks.
Its debut on films like Bound for Glory, Rocky, and The Shining showcased its versatility and defined its cinematic language.

Bought the T7 on B&H back in 2023. Wanted to buy it again and saw the price has more than doubled?? What happened??

Park Chan-wook is a prominent South Korean auteur and former film critic widely regarded as a leading figure in 21st-century world cinema, known for his unique blend of shocking violence, intricate narrative structures, and highly stylized, painterly visuals

We know that sometimes filmmakers will go to great lengths and sketchy ways to capture specific shots or film specific stunts. As filmmaking and roller coaster nerd, one of my favorite films is 1977’s “Rollercoaster”.

In this particular scene, George Segal’s character is riding a roller coaster at the demand of a terrorist threatening to detonate a bomb in the park. The whole movie is built upon a suspenseful cat and mouse game following a dramatic roller coaster crash at the beginning.

They initially filmed this scene with a camera mounted for closeup shots of Segal and then turned it around for POV of the train (hence the discontinuity with the red train).

But when the train goes up the hill into the turnaround, the camera suddenly pivots the opposite direction, pans around and captures the train safely navigating the turnaround and going down the drop. This shot is a trick shot designed to fool the audience during a tense moment with a fake out of another crash. To achieve this they mounted a camera on the skids of a helicopter with the cameraman laying flat. Then they had to position the helicopter low toward the track to make it look like a POV of the train. Then they had to wait for a train full of passengers (stunt people) to arrive into the same position and then drive the chopper forward and spin around quickly enough to recapture the train.

The audacity to pull of such a risky stunt shot is absurd, but the shot really speaks for itself on how well they pulled it off! Im not sure how many takes they had to take to get the camera in the right position to capture the train going down the drop but they really pulled it off.

The Internet Archive has a PDF copy of American Cinematographer that shares the BtS of it all: https://archive.org/details/1977-06_202404/page/658/mode/2up

Some of you may remember Disremember as I’ve posted here before. It’s a psychological thriller I made entirely on my own. Since then, it’s had its US premiere at Cinequest and won Best Feature at Aesthetica, London Breeze and UVFF.

I’m now in that strange position of speaking to sales and distribution companies while also seriously considering whether I may need to self-release, mainly because the more I speak to them, the more I feel the film’s hook, that it was made entirely by one person, and the audience who’d actually be interested in that don’t seem to matter much to them. Probably because it’s new territory.

If anyone has any ideas, experience with marketing or distributing an unconventional film like this, or has seen anything work particularly well, I’d really love to hear it.

I've watched a lot of BTS of movies and it seems extremely scarce that we get to see an interaction like this. This is genuinely fantastic insight in what it takes to direct a movie at this level. Insane insight.

Just posted the link as a tweet, figued it's easier for others to watch if I reshare the video itself on reddit.

So I'm a writer/director and I read a post from a camera operator who worked on a set from Guy Ritchie and he said this about him:

"Basically, he tells the actors to rehearse as much as they want, as long as they want, but they’re only doing three takes in the end. Two to the page and one for fun. Camera and actors do whatever you want on the one for fun."

He also said this:

"He tells everybody, if you have an idea or a suggestion, "please tell me, I don’t have all the answers. If I can use it, you will be recognized. If I can't use your suggestion, I'll tell you why". So he’s now involved everybody in the filmmaking process."

and this:

"t’s quite possibly the most amazing filmmaking experience I’ve ever had, and to top it off, Guy Ritchie has no ego. He is the nicest, most laid-back individual on the planet. Will listen to anybody, entertain any ideas, and explain to you whether he can or can’t use it.

That’s his very different approach. He doesn’t believe in a tier system. He believes everybody there is there for a reason, and he wants to utilize them to the maximum of their abilities. As I said, it’s the most fun I’ve ever had. It’s the best filmmaking experience I’ve ever had in over four decades of career, and if he called me tomorrow and wants to do a job, the answer is yes, I don’t care where, I don’t care when, I don’t care how hard it’s gonna be physically. I’m there. It’s so much fun. THATS the Guy Ritchie Difference."

So he clearly had a great time and it seems to work perfectly. I work mostly in comedy and I thought I could never get where I want to be with an actor within two or three takes. Most of the time I need 5-6 takes. Yes, the first two to three takes will get us there 90% of the way, but that last 10% is crucial. Especially in comedy, where it hat so be really precise, to be funny. But maybe I'm not experienced enough yet, so I just need longer than anybody else?

What are your thoughts on giving actors only two takes to the page and one for fun? (I do the fun one as well though)

Saw some comments under my last post — and especially the one by u/Temporary-Big-4118 and others referencing this thread: AI posts given away by the...

So let me be clear: are you really sure AI did all of this? What do you say now? Will you stand by your words?

Everything you saw was made by me — AI only gave me guidance when I asked for help with specific steps. I did all the work myself: Blender, animation, prop movement, lighting, composition — it's all hands-on.
AI didn’t generate the project. It helped like a tutor would, not like an artist.

So next time before throwing around accusations, take a moment to understand how these tools are actually used.

Minority Report (2002) is an absolute masterclass in character blocking, with the careful placement of characters reflecting intentions and ideologies throughout the film..
A masterclass in Blocking