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I'll give a few simple words of advice to all you future John Carpenters out there and I'm pretty sure it will likely be an unpopular suggestion:
Get out there and be a PA on a film.
If you look on craigslist in your area under gigs and then under crew, you will easily find listings there. Everybody wants to be a director and make movies and it's terrific that technology is reasonably priced to do so. However not everybody SHOULD make movies. It's like being the president of a company because your dad was the founder and you don't have a clue of how to manage things because you never bothered to work there. Yes, being a PA sucks most of the time since you're running around and assisting some department in setting up or tearing down. In all likelihood you're not going to get paid and at best you'll have your name listed in the credits of a finished movie. If you're lucky you might even score a free lunch on the deal. None of this sounds very appealing and I would know because I still do it every chance I get. Why ? Because I make movies. Why not get a free education along the way on someone else's set ? It's cheaper and easier in the long run to have experience in so many departments. Any problems you might face, you've learned how to take care of on someone else's movie before while they were paying for it. It's more efficient to be able to show someone once how you want something done rather than standing around clueless because you can't explain how it can be done.
The two things that can kill your film in production are 1) Not being prepared for eventual problems and 2) Not knowing how to solve unforeseeable problems. There will always be problems on set and people are going to look to you. I guarantee this. If you can't take care of the situation and say "ah, no big deal", your cast and crew (if you're lucky to have one) will most likely pick up that same attitude. If it's your film and you can't be bothered, why should they ? People will screw around, walk off, and do other things at this point, but it won't be your movie. Can you blame them ? You wouldn't enjoy wasting your time and now you're wasting theirs. How many of those people do you think are going to show up next weekend at that rate ? You now have no crew, no movie, and still have no idea what went wrong.
Do yourself a favor. Be a PA and learn the ropes a bit before declaring yourself a director. You can't do a good job if it's just handed to you. Look at George W. Bush and tell me I'm wrong :D
CK
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