Behind the Scenes: Unsane (2018)

Steven Soderbergh has just premiered his second feature film shot on an iPhone at the Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.

High Flying Bird was shot in just two weeks (!) and picked up for distribution by Netflix.

What’s interesting, apart from all of the above — is that Soderbergh first dived into the foray of smartphone filmmaking when making psychological horror ‘Unsane’ in 2018. Intriguingly, he has decided he is comfortable enough to move past the low budget horror elements that a smartphone film production encompasses and apply them to a taut, sports drama not filmed in the vain of a psuedo-doc, yet instead blocked and filmed like a straight-up drama.

This is game-changing.

This means that a handheld tool, accessible to almost everyone on the planet can be applied to a story for a large audience.

Soderbergh, always the innovator, has sold the film to Netflix — and why not? He’s an Oscar winner, after all, so we can hardly fault his financial incentives for monetizing his passion, even if it means Netflix will ignore anything either you or I touch on a smartphone.

However, as an innovator — I believe that Steven Soderbergh would distribute this on to a free YouTube account if he needed to. There is nothing more important than getting your work out there to an audience eager to accept it — by whatever means.

This is the core message I want you to take away from this — by whatever means.

YouTube is a distribution platform worth exploring for your films — even if there isn’t a large core audience, to begin with.

This is because, if Soderbergh can produce a film on an iPhone in two weeks — how many could you produce with your friends and family in a given year and distribute them online?

The more you make, the more you perfect your craft — the more you build a small audience to eventually find the smallest viable audience.

A viable audience is your door to a career in film production. A viable audience will reward you for your efforts and await your next production. A viable audience is one that can sustain you.

Learning how to build 1000 true fans is core to finding the smallest viable audience — read Kevin Kelly’s famous article here: https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/

Build the smallest most sustainable, viable audience.

All you need is patience… and a phone.