Bust The Myth Of Filmmaking.

Here are the 9 most common filmmaking myths busted:

1. The most talented people are the ones that make it.
No they aren’t. The people that make it are the ones that understand the business side. Talented people are regularly elbowed out by their less talented colleagues who simply out-hustle them.
Bust this myth: Get good at self-promotion.

2. Only the best scripts get made.
No they don’t. The scripts that get made are the ones that get financed. Often the financiers finance the wrong script!
Bust this myth: Learn how to get a business plan together, a plan that a financier will find irresistible.

3. You need a lot of money to make a movie.
No you don’t. Many features playing at Raindance Film Festival are made for less than the money need to buy a London cab.
Bust this myth: Learn how micro budget films are made. You will need to spend some time studying micro budget films.

4. You need to go to film school to become a filmmaker.
No you don’t! Some of the very best filmmakers never went to film school. What successful filmmakers share in common is they all watch and study movies, and become familiar with film making grammar.
BUST THIS MYTH: Film school is a great place to meet fellow filmmakers and form collaborative partnerships. There are many skills they don’t teach at film school. Want to surprise yourself?

5. You need to attend countless audition before you hit stardom.
No you don’t. You need not waste all your resources and energy jumping from one casting to the other. With the little jobs you have done, find a good writer in the media to run a good publicity for you especially on the social network platform and try to do your own thing.
Bust this myth: The best way to get acting work is to hype your achievements online and find a screenwriter who can write a great part for you, be it a short film or micro budget feature. Then get a director and a producer who know how to make the movie. Once it’s made release it and continue with the hype.

6. Shooting on digital is cheaper than film
No it isn’t (necessarily) Sure, if all you have is a bit of money, digital is cheaper. And for the last 5 years I have been preaching the virtues of shooting digital. Then I made a feature using a RED camera, and last week I found out that if I had taken the RED camera hire (plus the costly and time consuming repair I had to make, added in the cost of the laptop and hard drives on the set I could have probably used Super16mm instead and had a much better looking film.
BUST THIS MYTH: Get real here. Have a good hard look at your shooting ratios, and if you can shoot 6:1 or less, ncd if you budget is more than £60,000 ($85,000) I will bet you will be as cheap if not cheaper shooting on film. Call your lab and start getting some quotes. And remember, many of them will do a telecine as well. And a DCP.

7. Filmmakers can ignore social media
No you can’t! That is where the world lives now. Everybody is there so they must know of your presence.
BUST THIS MYTH: Look, I’m not talking to dinosaurs here–I am talking to communicators using a visual medium. In other words, filmmakers, no matter how shy, are born social media communicators. Follow some interesting profiles on the web. Watch. Listen Learn. Build up a circle of followers eager to admire your work.

8. The trick is to get tons of people at your premiere.
No it isn’t. If your dream is to be papped by throngs of well-wishers at your first red carpet premiere then you are likely doomed as a filmmaker. The papparazzi can’t help you. The only people that can help you are the people who buy movies, the people who decide what gets on TV and the people who decide which movies get selected and programmed at film festivals. In other words, acquisitions executives, commissioning editors and festival programmers. These few people are the only ones that can help you and they are few in number. They are the ones that you want to see your movie.
BUST THIS MYTH: To attract the attention of these three groups of people you will need: a poster; a trailer and a press kit. Make sure you understand how to make these and do it well.

9. You need a sales agent to sell your film.
No you don’t: Sales agents represent your film at film markets and approach distributors based on their experience of what a distributor might be interested in. for that they charge you a commission, plus the marketing expenses incurred
BUST THIS MYTH: You can build up a list of distributors and approach them directly. If that fails–wait a minute–let’s put it this way: An alternative strategy would be to self distribute your movie yourself, utilising the large crowd of followers you amassed when you busted Myth Number 7 (above).

Have I missed any myths? Just stick them into the comments box below.

By Elliot Grove, founder, Raindance Film Festival UK.