These types of books can be inspirational for up-n-coming filmmakers...BUT, they should come with a disclaimer to inform that for the thousands of people who try to make low-budget movies in order to begin a viable career, only a very very very scant few are successful at it. The rest either fall into a different "support" job in the industry or just leave it altogether for some other profession.... all still in debt from their ambitious endeavor.

By all means, anyone wishing to take the path of being an indie filmmaker in hopes of being "successful" should... BUT it should be undertaken with that awareness that failure does happen far more often than success. Embark on that path, but go about it wisely to enhance your chances of success or at least being able to fall back in the safest manner possible.

Brian Dzyak
Cameraman/Author
IATSE Local 600, SOC
http://www.whatireallywanttodo.com
http://www.realfilmcareer.com

quote:

---

Originally posted by bjdzyak

These types of books can be inspirational for up-n-coming filmmakers...

---

I include actual distributor statements and profit and loss for the movie so there is valuable information even for the seasoned pro.

Plus you get some entertaining words from Kevin Smith.

quote:

---

Originally posted by bjdzyak

...but go about it wisely to enhance your chances of success or at least being able to fall back in the safest manner possible.

---

Agreed. Information is king and increases our chances at success. When you really want to produce you need access to financials to assemble an indie budget. Any producer knows how hard it is to gather financials and comparables for an indie film budget, so I figured I would include those as well. There is also lots of great information on distribution, because when you really want your movie distributed, you'll need all the recon you can gather.

quote:

---

Originally posted by bjdzyak

BUT, they should come with a disclaimer to inform that for the thousands of people who try to make low-budget movies in order to begin a viable career, only a very very very scant few are successful at it.

---

Agreed. If you take a ?url="http://www.rebelwithoutadeal.com/book/preview.html"?free peek at the first 33 pages?/url? on the site you would have read on page 3 of ?url="https://www.createspace.com/3498509"?Rebel without a Deal?/url?:

quote:

---

SCENE 03 DIALOGUE INTRODUCTION FROM KEVIN
VINCE: When we first met what was your honest impression of me?

KEVIN: Nice guy, ambitious, to a degree. It was nice that you seemed to like film but you weren't one of these cats that are unrealistic about the whole thing.

In order to be an indie filmmaker you need a reasonable degree of unreasonability, because logic dictates that not everyone makes a movie and launches a career from it.

Anybody can make a movie, but not everyone can build something out of it beyond that one movie. So you meet a lot of cats who are unreasonable beyond a reasonable degree of unreasonability, who are like, "Well, I'm going to do this and then get really fucking famous!"

Even when we made Clerks, I thought, we'll go to the IFFM ?Independent Feature Film Market? and hopefully somebody will buy it and then we'll be off and running. It was never like and then I'm going to be world famous! All I wanted was somebody to pick it up, so I didn't have to pay for the next movie.

And I figured the next movie would be around a hundred grand or something around that. But now based on examples of people that have gone before, myself included, you know the younger generation of filmmakers feels like, "I'm going to make my first film and that's going to kick open the doors to me making three twenty, thirty, or forty million dollar movies." And you can't say that's impossible, because it has happened, but it's rare.

In any given year you can count on one hand the number of break out filmmakers that go from their first film to a more substantially budgeted second film. Those stories breed a lot of these cats that feel like, "I don't need to work. I don't need a job. I don't need a real world job, because everything is taken care of once the world sees how brilliant my movie is."

You had a much more head straight perspective of, "Look I'm doing this, I hope it works out, but I realize that I have a job and that is what affords me to be able to do this stuff." You weren't counting your chickens before they were hatched, so that's why it was easy then and still now to talk to you because you're not one of these cats that are just like, "Give me money to make my movie so I can be like you."

Where I think, dude, if it was that simple, I would sell that formula and become a very very very rich man. Because everybody wants that in this field! Even people that never before showed an interest in filmmaking. They see Clerks and they think, "If that idiot can do it, I can do it and I can be rich and famous too."

It's like, if I had planned for it, it never would have happened. It all grew organically out of a happy series of accidents that just happened to pan out with somebody being there at the right place at the right time. It was more serendipitous than anything else. But people don't want to hear serendipitous; they just want to hear the overnight aspect of the story.

Also I guess there's something kind of misleading about watching Clerks because you're thinking, people are just sitting around talking. I can do that. It's true, you can do people sitting around talking but will it be interesting? Will anybody want to see it? Is it going to be funny?

So I meet a lot of cats that are not realistic when it comes to the whole thing and you weren't one of those cats. That's why it's easy to talk to you, because you had your head on straight. You didn't really seem to have any confused perception about what you were owed. You know what I'm saying? You knew that, "I'd be lucky if our movie gets picked up."

VINCE: True.

KEVIN: A lot of cats don't feel that way.

---

?URL="http://www.rebelwithoutadeal.com"?Rebel without a Deal Book?/URL? - it's like a REMAKE, but a good one like Scarface.

Here's a 1 minute trailer I made for the book Rebel without a Deal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJ8cPRQG0Y0

Comments? Thoughts?
http://www.filmmaking.net/discussion/forums/go/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=10831

?URL="http://www.rebelwithoutadeal.com"?Rebel without a Deal Book?/URL? - it's like a REMAKE, but a good one like Scarface.