The Martini

Regular readers and new submitters to Dances With Films might have taken notice that I haven't posted any blogs this season. There are many reasons for this. The long and the short of is, that I'm putting this blog to bed.

The last three or four years (out of the six that I've been working on this), I've been faced with writing the same thing over and over again:

Finish your script before you do anything else.

Finish your sound.

Use a bounce board.

Respect the art. Don't try to make a good feature script into a short film, it will ruin both.

Get a real composer.

Objective and Obstacle.

A good shot of bad acting is a bad shot.

If you've written a character of a different gender than yours, listen to the actor/actress playing the part. If they have problems, make changes.

You're not out of the running for the festival until you get your official pass letter.

Just because you don't get into Dances With Films, doesn't mean your movie isn't good. A lot of factors go into the decision-making process.

And so on.

If you want to know what's happening at the festival in March, go back to past years of this blog and read everything written in March, or January, February … you get the idea.

One of the things I've loved about doing this blog is that I'm one of the few bloggers who actually gets to meet my readers. Every year at orientation and the opening night party, I get a kick out of people coming up to say they enjoy the blog. Thank you all for that. I hope that will continue.

My participation in the festival will also be greatly diminished this year. Why? Suffice to say that I only have so much creative space in my brain, and this year it's being taken up with other projects. That's a good thing. When I watch your movies, I'm really just thinking about my novels, and that's a bad thing.

The blog will stay up here until the Army of the Twelve Monkeys finds a good use for it. Until then, I hope you'll point your fellow filmmakers in this direction so they might learn something from my babblings.

Since I've spent six years here giving advice to filmmakers, I'd like to leave you – especially those of you just starting out – with this bit of insight:

You might love the movie business, but understand this – the movie business will never love you back.  It's a business, not a person. Don't confuse the love you've gotten from the people you've met along your journey in the industry with love from the industry. An industry cannot love you. A business cannot love you. A camera cannot love you. 

So while you might enjoy making movies and watching them, don't waist you time loving them. Love the people who make them. Love the people who watch them. Love the people who have nothing to do with them, but for some reason have come into your life.

Because, after all, people are what films are all about.

Thanks for reading.