I've posted this before, about how an oscar winning screenwriter spent 7 years after his oscar trying to get a script produced and failing utterly.
Then he decided to stop trying to do his own stuff, and now he just works on other peoples projects and scripts and he directs for tom cruise.
Still after all these years in hollywood and all the prestige cannot make any of his own projects, can't get funding for them.
but he does work on big movies, they are other peoples big movies.
I get the point nate is trying ot make but the real question is - why are we working on our own stuff?
Nate why are you working on save point, why don't you find someone else and then spend all your time helping that person instead?
Isn't that what youre really asking in this thread? Why are we all doing our own projects instead of each others?
EDIT: I said super talented people without recognition are rare - you disagreed with me.
Therefore they aren't rare and you should be able to find one and then support them and join their team.
it's insanity to think people are gonna come along and join your team, people are interested in themselves, in their own ideas
so if you really want a team the easiest and most rational way would be to join someone elses initiative.
Now i'm not seriously suggesting you give up everything you're doing, what I mean is that I am holding up a mirror and pointing your own question back at you from this thread
I think there's a word for it, when you have no creative control and you spend your days trying to fulfill someone elses dream.. it's called having a job. lol.
I've finally recovered enough that I can start responding to all this. This post seems to have taken off in a number of directions.
For one thing, It's a matter of perspective but I personally think the guy in your example is getting screwed. Not "life is what you make it" not "life isn't fair and you better git busy livin or get busy dyin" Not, "Scorpios will meet an important stranger today", I think he just got screwed over, maybe didn't have enough of the right friends, or didn't push people around with his money as much as his competitors. I don't think it's fair to blow off what happened to this guy with cracker barrel slogans. Many business losses come down to empath vs sociopath, and empaths always loose, which is bad for everyone.
When you win an international award effort in a field, and dedicate your life to it, and then you're told to sit calmly and wait to see if Kendall Jenner will greenlight your script, that's bullshit. The world we created by making possession of money the primary metric of intelligence, is bullshit. By that metric everyone from the boomer generation is 10x as smart as modern kids that can hack the pentagon from a cell phone.
I understand how business work, but businesses don't really understand art. I think that may be because no one does, you might as well ask what shape a cloud should be. What I've seen in real life is mostly two things, either "what can we do that's very similar to what worked before" or "this person or idea is hot right now, and we can cash in". That mentality can often work for the bottom line, but it tends to create an unfair world for scriptwriters, because the better your script actually is, the less likely it is going to fit one of those criteria. I'd reference James Cameron's ad campaign for Dark Angel in the 90s. It's just a picture of Jessica Alba, and it says, "Have I got a girl for you" pretty bad really. The point is that no one was even thinking about script quality. They knew that they could monetize pictures of Jessica Alba, and if the story made sense, great, but it's an afterthought. Not every situation is like that, but many are, and you can see how being a great scriptwriter can actually backfire on you in a world that's quite shallow more often than not.
As far as what I've been trying to say here, It wasn't about me or one particular person, I just see a community where everyone is trying to solve this problem of breaking through in indie film, and virtually no one is trying even the most basic solves, such as strength in numbers. I feel like this comes from a limited view of the many metrics involved. I hear a lot of doomed filmmakers say "It's all about the story" and that's certainly true, AFTER I'm watching a funded film. I do not think that beating a path to a financial win is all about the story, and I don't think anyone will care about the story until After there is a financial win. I loved Law and Order, and it was good writing, in the early days, but if you had asked me to hack through the jungle with a machete to find an out of the way web posting because a guy wrote a story about cops that caught a suspect and then sat through the court proceedings to verdict, I wouldn't have. It took hundreds of millions of dollars to get Law and order to a point where I even saw it. And that show really was about good story structure.
If I had to point out a single person in that chain that was responsible for me following this series, it would be the syndication manager. AFTER it went into syndication, I saw it and learned to really appreciate the acting, and directing, writing, etc. I'm sure it wouldn't have made it so far if those things weren't there in the first place, and obviously they are critical. Still, I didn't appreciate any of it until over 500 people had become involved in aspects of the project. That's what it took to actually DELIVER the project to me, out on the edge of the world
I addressed this in my other post, but I think I can make it a bit more clear. I would absolutely have joined someone's project, if anyone had built one designed to allow me agency. The reason I designed SP the way I did was specifically because I had been looking for something similar to join for a decade, and couldn't find anything. I started out with no resources, no mentors, no one on my side, no synergy, no advantages and about a million disadvantages. I tried for years just to figure out simple things, like why do people talk so much about motion blur. I couldn't get any resources, and I did what many amateurs do, and just cobbled together patchwork media from the internet or games. With absolutely zero support, it took me years to get to a level a person working inside the system could be at in one year.
I didn't even understand the problems I was having until years later. Everything I did looked cheap and terrible, and it was mainly because I was comparing my straw and Styrofoam constructions against the bank buildings across the street. Once I was able to start using steel beams and plate glass instead, my constructions got much better. So I thought lets build a free use library where beginners can use steel beams, and build up knowledge and confidence with someone on their side. Problem is, it's illegal to freely share digital assets you buy, and the workaround is to incorporate a company, have people join it, and then share resources within a closed network. 20th century fox builds one kitchen set, and then 20 sitcoms use it over the years with different curtains and camera angles. Indie's with .1 percent of the funding have to rebuild that kitchen each time. A double disadvantage for the people that can afford it the least.
So I saw how corporations amortized costs for resources across dozens of projects, realized that outsiders couldn't compete effectively against such force multipliers, and engineered a way for disenfranchised people to have some of the advantages their corporate competitors had. It worked, and now I'm sitting here with over 1000 film sets, and getting turned down by people that still leave the greenscreen as the background for their videos. If you built a gravitron, yeah, you can ride it alone, but it really defeats the purpose. I could have built something that was all about me me me, but value comes from rarity, and in todays world, a myopic self focus is the single most common thing out there.
People don't understand my motives. They still think I'm pushing group tactics and an umbrella organization either as some virtue signaling thing or to become the center of attention. That's not why. Others can't seem to get past the idea that this proposed org is about me getting everything done my way, because selfishness is the only pattern you recognize, it's all you've ever seen. That's not why either. I'm trying to build something that is about unselfish cooperation because ------ the other way is just so fucking common. I can't throw a goddamn rock without hitting some cult of personality or group gathered around some unremarkable inheritance king. I just want to try another way. Not your project, not my project, but our project, The math side is dramatically better also. Why should 10 of us buy a Red to shoot one month a year? Why should I rent a camera for 15% of it's purchase price? Collective bargaining power, that's what this is about. Simple.
I know you won't join, but here's what would happen if you did. You know how you said you planned to put some money into driving some traffic to your channel? Well I do also, and buddy does too, and I'm sure others do. We could each put 500 on our channels, and people would come. But what happens if all three post to one channel and put 1500 in advertising on that? Sure some people will only watch one video, but at the end, each of us would likely get about 800 dollars worth of advertising out of our 500 input, in terms of views. I think that's pretty much what the Dust channel is.
Even this idea isn't new at all. I'm just copy pasting how real film studios created internal synergy, and finding a way to make such a system self sustaining for indies. Sorry it's cg based, I know that ruins the dream for a lot of people, but many unfunded indies are not jet setters, if you take my meaning. Travel and hosting alone is a death knell for many indie film budgets,
You ask me to hold this up to a mirror? I designed this thing looking in that mirror.
I understand that you aren't insulting me, but it does come across that way sometimes. I'd be more insulted if anyone was attacking what I'm actually doing, as opposed to what they think I'm doing.
Me - "let's start a carpool so we don't all have to drive our kids to school each day"
Them - "You think your car is so much better than mine? screw you, every man for himself"
Me - "Jesus Christ, sigh"
To avoid confusion, in this post I actually am talking about Save Point.
