Hollywood Is Not Dying; The US Independent Film Industry Is
(Part 2 of 2.)
Click here for: Hollywood Is Not Dying; The US Independent Film Industry Is (Part 1 of 2.)
(NOTE: This essay on Independent Filmmaking was written on November 14, 2019, so before COVID-19, but the message stands even stronger now. It will be published in April, 2020. All Rights Reserved)
The Auteur: An Independent Filmmakers Publication
The Auteur: An Independent Filmmakers Publication, to be launched shortly on Medium at medium.com/@theauteur, will be a Film Theory & Film Criticism Publication by Film Organization The Auteur.
The investigation into the State of Independent Filmmaking, and the fact that it is still relevant as an Art Form today, is the main reason why I am launching my Film Publication The Auteur.
I’d like to contribute a few potential solutions to ensure its’ survival.
Hollywood is not dead, nor dying for that matter, as long as there are the masses that make up its’ audiences, but it’s independent filmmaking in particular that is in dire straights, particularly because independent film funding and independent film exhibition have dried up, and not because the audiences aren’t there or can’t be cultivated but because that would actually take some sort of care and vision and passion for filmmaking, which most industry people lack on any genuine level.
The inadvertent downside of the advent of digital technology sometime in the mid-90s, besides the creation of a surveillance state, is that it spend things up too much, as is usually the case with technological advances.
Us aspiring filmmakers growing up during the digital revolution of the mid-1990s could not wait to get our hands on film equipment that was actually affordable, besides easier to use.
But somewhere along the way the art of storytelling starting getting lost. Very gradually, somewhere in between the inventions of digital cameras and smartphones, the whole layout, of storytelling that is, of Aristotle’s Poetics, of the three-act structure, of McKee’s Story, of “the elements of dramatic screenwriting,” to borrow from a must-have textbook of that decade, by Lagos Egri, of Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey, got lost on the next generations of filmmakers, who just figured out the layout of their iPhones instead.
And somewhere along the way the internet also democratized the filmmaking process further, initially very simply through search engines providing information, (which was hard to get by for the film school generations of filmmakers, hence film school, access to film information and film equipment,) and through websites, which became all the rage for a filmmaker to have, and then on to Social Media, MySpace first, then everybody switched Facebook, and on to endless others, and video sharing networks like YouTube and Vimeo, opening up the possibilities endlessly. The internet seemed to be able to provide a much cheaper and more encompassing exhibition alternative to theatrical release, as we young filmmakers of the time envisioned it, and which became increasingly okay to accept as well, the idea that as an independent filmmaker you maybe didn’t a red carpet premiere, or anymore, and that it was actually much more effective to build an audience online.
But the internet also pulverized the independent filmmaking industry as well, into an endless stream of individual channels run by individual people, who put their contents out to the world on some big tech developer’s server, who is in turn sponsored through ad revenue.
No smart distribution strategies were really developed online, until Netflix came along and swallowed everything up that is, no hubs of exhibition where quality independently created media could find a home, something akin to when IFC launched on TV in the 90s, and you knew that was the single channel on all of television to finally purchase Cable for.
Somewhere along the line Film School, and with it Media Literacy, however limited and often by omission, (that is, almost exclusively reflective of the experience of white, heterosexual, patriarchy,) was pitted against the DIY approach, when digital equipment made that more of a financial reality by the mid-90s, and made to feel a thing of the past and a gross waste of money.
The DIY aesthetic took over, which often tends to skip the principles and mechanics of Storytelling altogether, or worse yet, confuses it for a youthful, rebellious contempt of principled and structured storytelling, resulting in poorly conceived films with a lot of shaky camerawork and very little actual content.
Filmmaking by the late 90s had gotten so cheap everyone was basically experimenting with every button and function they could find on their cameras but didn’t always necessarily have something meaningful to say, and as a result the low-budget filmmaking sector became heavily saturated with fairly mediocre content, the way straight-to-video content had been made once videotape became available,) but a truly high quality and provocative film movement such as the 1970s had produced was not exactly happening again.
The politics of the 1990s hadn’t lent themselves to the same explosive creative reaction as in the late 1960s and early 1970s with music and film reflecting the civil rights and counterculture social movements then. The internet followed quickly on the heels of digital cameras, and what was supposed to make things even cheaper and so simpler, also made it endlessly more complex as we moved into the age of social media.
Somewhere along the line writers and directors and filmmakers became content creators, and influencers, and branders and particularly young people became accustomed to digesting short form content, (like the Gen X-ers only ever had had with music videos on MTV,) and moreover with actually interacting with media content, which Gen X-ers never really had, making a mix tape of your your favorite songs and then listening to it with your neighborhood friends in your bedroom being the closest thing to that.
I think the “should you go to film school or not” argument is pretty redundant, about as redundant as the “should you go to college” argument, as one should have both formal, or theoretical, Education and real Experience, education meaning Film Education here specifically of course but not limited to, and basically Life Experience.
And if not actual film school, at least one should get a film education through film viewing, and be self-taught in the principles of actual storytelling, not just camera techniques.
I think that the question of the necessity of school arises from a wrong motivation to go to school to begin with, for if you are there to truly learn, and you are actually learning, then it is never a waste.
And so besides the internet, (through both streaming and social media,) as well as digital equipment, (as in technology exclusively,) having taken the place of film education itself, as in actual storytelling principles alongside the usage of technology, and with most of the independent funders, small distribution companies and exhibition venues, such as art houses primarily but also film festivals, having shut their doors over the last two decades, the independent filmmaking industry in the US, the actual art and creative process of the narrative feature film on a modest budget, made entirely outside the Hollywood Studio System, is mostly a thing of the past.
The creative film revolution of the 1970s, which so inspired me to become a filmmaker myself when I was growing up in the 1980s, was never repeated again.
I waited for it in Hollywood myself in the 1990, while going to film school, and as I watched plenty of great contemporary films at my work at an art house movie theater chain, but the string of classics the way I had envisioned would happen with the advent of digital technology never quite materialized.
The 1990s mostly glided along until the rude awakening of 9/11 and two wars initiated by the US afterwards, and then all of a sudden the world seemed changed, and I waited for creativity to reflect it.
Rapidly advancing technology should have sped the artistic reaction to all this political turmoil up but as with all technological advances it was used for bad more than for good, by tech giants with money but also by the people who fall for all things consumerism, and so instead of a bunch of people making meaningful art a lot of people became obsessed with being famous for basically nothing instead, for being popular.
As the internet gave them a way to achieve mass popularity, social media turned the internet into a popularity contest, with the internet’s algorithms supporting this whole system and regurgitating personalized news feeds of information overload to everyone still logged on.
And so we crave, usually online, for offline spaces. I wonder if or when people will start craving for independent films again, or if or when they’ll even realize this whole creative industry has evaporated right in front of them.
Great things certainly have come out of the internet, and I can honestly say that as an LGBTQ person, and so a marginalized person with previously limited access to crucial information necessary to my own happiness and survival, the internet has actually done more good than harm for me.
(Just like many people can cite privacy concerns, and rightly so, to dissuade internet usage, I cannot begin to describe the convenience of online shopping for clothes, as a trans-masculine person who also looks androgynous, and gets followed into the dressing room by security guards more often than not. Their suspicion also never seems to truly be about theft concerns, but rather about the entirely different concern over my possible gender, whenever I’d walk into the women’s changing rooms with clothes I pulled from the men’s department.)
One of the greatest “creative inventions” of the internet, besides social media itself, which I actually think can be pretty creatively stimulating, is the short form “testimonial” video.
I think that the testimonial video, often created by minorities or on specialty subjects, in order to explain complex matters in a fairly simple and familial way, and often filmed on an iPhone and just put on YouTube, are truly an art form unique to the invention of the internet.
I think that the diary-like quality of confessional and testimonial type of experimental films have been around as long as film itself but because of the unique place in time and history of extremely cheap and simple film equipment, a smart phone basically nowadays, and instant, worldwide viewership online, YouTube basically, it has elevated this format into its’ own viewing pleasure entirely.
I find that I can be just as emotionally moved and intellectually enlightened by a personal, short video by a completely unknown person, who just uses very basic equipment and techniques but gets very personal and often vulnerable about something in their life, as I can be by a two hour feature narrative, and in my opinion that means that the personal, short testimonial video has succeeded as an art form.
In fact, the rise of short video content and personal storytelling online, in combination with a lack of a solid independent feature narrative film industry, made way for a new creative revolution altogether, one long overdue and highly anticipated by more intellectual types, the documentary.
It is actually very telling that the independent narrative feature film industry is dwindling, while the documentary film industry is booming like never before, and with no slowing down in sight.
One could even say that documentary in a sense is the new independent filmmaking, which creatively speaking is not a bad thing at all but it would be a real shame if the two forms cannot co-exist, as they complement each other rather nicely.
Both, if well done, can be enormously rewarding, and I don’t see any real reason that independent filmmaking should be on its’ way out.
I also sense that the divide that existed between higher end independent films and lower end ones, will also become a thing in documentary film, which will favor higher end, universal concept documentaries over lower budget, more personalized ones.
There are however two real dangers to letting the independent film industry die, and that is that number one we will lose another avenue to explore critical thinking and emotional and mental understanding of larger format media, just like people don’t read books anymore and the results are disastrous.
And number two, we are allowing ourselves to get financially squeezed out of a very inspiring and lucrative industry, one that has been around for as long as film has been around and should be nurtured and kept alive, just as book writing and book reading should be nurtured and kept alive.
If anyone complains that independent filmmaking is expensive and therefore necessarily on its’ way out, I can counter that book writing is extremely cheap and found its’ death either way.
It’s not filmmaking itself that’s so terribly expensive anymore and hasn’t been in a long time but the Los Angeles rents are through the roof these days, and the Los Angeles independent, creative community would do really well to invest in itself mentally and financially, or else we’re going to all have to become internet marketers or move to Arizona real soon.
If people say that young people’s tastes have just changed, and therefore independent filmmaking is a thing of the past, I find the argument limited because young people cannot know if they truly like something if they are not exposed to it.
People have always needed their emotions stimulated, and therefore it always seems people’s tastes change but emotions themselves are universal and don’t ever really go out of style.
Every art form is repackaging the same range of emotions anyway.
But the real danger is that the tools to build critical thinking skills are being thrown out when people are not exposed to complex, longer format storytelling, and that is actually dangerous, as people become susceptible to mind control that way.
Thank you for reading,
The Auteur: An Independent Filmmakers Publication
The Auteur will launch shortly as a Los Angeles-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit Film Organization (2020)
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