FREE Film School: Week Two

Last week I wrote a post FREE Film School How To Teach Yourself Pro Filmmaking. Initially it was going to be a single post, then I realised there was too much to say. Plus I thought it would be a good idea to set weekly tasks – like a film school. But for free…

When we are starting out thinking about being a filmmaker, we often hear about filmmakers who never went to film school. The advice is to just pick up a camera and go and shoot your masterpiece.

But although many filmmakers didn’t go to film school, they didn’t spontaneously become master filmmakers. They often went through some kind of learning process before directing their first feature.

Although, for example, Orson Welles had never shot a film before making Citizen Kane, he was a master of theatre and radio drama. Plus, as I mentioned last week, he watched Stagecoach 40 times.

Not only that, but Welles signed a 5 picture deal with a big studio, so his first ever film was shot with a team of highly experienced professionals. Even today, very few novice filmmakers find themselves working with so many experienced filmmakers.

So, a lot of the critical success of Citizen Kane was more down to Orson Welles’ deal making skills than his filmmaking skills.

Give yourself time

So the point of this free film school is to begin the journey. I will give you ideas how you can teach yourself to become a filmmaker without going to film school. Some organisations will offer to make you into a pro filmmaker if you just “do their 3 day film course”.

I will tell you now that that is BS. The problem with this lie (a lie which is to separate you from your hard earned cash) is that if you do one of these courses it will probably have a negative effect.

If you believe their sales pitch, when it doesn’t happen (trust me, it won’t) you then end up feeling like a failure. And that fear of failure is what stopped you from teaching yourself in the first place. So you end up in a worse mental space than before spending your cash.

Successful filmmakers are generally obsessive types. To become a filmmaker, you need to think like a filmmaker. To think like a filmmaker, you need to be filled with film.

Did you watch one film every day?

Last week’s task was to watch one film every day for a week and make notes. If you did that, you’ve studied a film – so congrats on finishing your first week of free film school!

Whatever film you chose to watch will look a bit different now than it did last week. So, by doing this simple task, you have entered a different world to most other film watchers. You have begun your journey.

But if you didn’t, don’t beat yourself up about it. Finding the time is not always easy.

When I did my after film Q&A at the IMAX in 2013, someone asked how I made space in my life to spend 3 years making a feature film. And since it seems one of the most common reasons I hear from aspiring filmmakers is they “haven’t had time” to do what they want to do.

When I made my feature, I was at a point where I was better able to make the time, for various reasons. But I don’t believe that’s the real reason why I made my film when most others just dream about it.

I was a guy in his 40s, with minimal income, working in a cinema for about £8 per hour. Many people would have told themselves, “I can’t afford to spend 3 years making a film. I need to get a proper job and make myself secure first.”

Thing is, I’d had this voice in my head telling me “not yet” for 35 years. I realised it would never be the right time. So I made sure I would do nothing else for 3 years except make this film.

The advantage of film school

I think this is why a lot of people go to film school. It makes it legitimate in their heads somehow.

Once enrolled it’s official, so you can go and tell your family and friends. And film school is expecting you to show up, too. They give you a schedule and a structure. They tell you where you need to be, when and for how long.

Attending a film school forces you to make space in your life to learn how to be a filmmaker. So there’s much less need for self-motivation.

Teaching yourself to be a filmmaker requires a lot of self-motivation. As does shooting a feature film in your spare time over 3 years.

I can’t teach you to be self-motivated. But I can tell you how I went from telling myself I would be a filmmaker “another day” and finally setting my mind to just do it. I mentally removed the fear of failure, which is the real reason why we don’t do things.

We say to ourselves, “What if I spend 3 years making a film and it’s not very good?” What I realised was I had spent 35 years not making a film and that was the real failure. If I made a film, whatever happened I would have gained 3 years filmmaking experience.

To do is success, to avoid doing is failure

No matter what the result, if you give yourself the time to do this, you WILL gain something. I can’t guarantee that you’ll have the instant glory of Orson Welles or Quentin Tarantino, but I can guarantee you will have moved forward. You will have developed as a filmmaker.

So the first rule of Free Film School is: nobody achieves anything by doing nothing.

Free Film School: Task 2

This week’s task is to read a screenplay of a film you haven’t seen, then watch the film. There’s a ton of free screenplays out there to download and read, written by successful professional screenwriters.

A screenplay is a blueprint for a film. If your film were a house, the screenplay represents the architect’s drawings. Would you try to build a house without understanding how an architect draws up the plans?

Reading screenplays helps you to develop your understanding of film language. The thing is, screenwriters write differently to novelists. The best ones write in a kind of cinematic language.

Reading a screenplay is like lifting up the hood of a car to see how the engine works. You remove all the distracting stuff like cool shots, lens flares and actors’ performances.

Because as aspiring filmmakers we often want to emulate certain things we see in films, we get sidetracked by the surface stuff. Like trying to design a Lamborghini from lusting over the body design.

To become a serious filmmaker, you’re going to have to get past a movie fan’s way of seeing movies. You’re going to have to lift up the hood and get involved in the stuff most other people don’t care about: the nuts and bolts of filmmaking.

Do you have the desire to lay under a car getting covered in oil, cutting your fingers on sharp metal and breathing in exhaust fumes? No, neither do I. That’s why I’m pretty sure neither of us will ever be car mechanics.

To be a professional filmmaker you have to do the filmmaking equivalent. Not only do it, but love it. You have to obsess over it.

One of my favourite films is Duel (1971) directed by Steven Spielberg before he was famous. You can now read the screenplay then watch the full movie (for free).

Time to get serious

The link has 50 screenplays. That’s one a week for the next year. Imagine if you read them all. You would have a very different mind to the one you have now. You would be thinking even more like a filmmaker.

50 OF THE BEST SCREENPLAYS TO READ AND DOWNLOAD IN EVERY GENRE

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