Brief Interviews — Indie Filmmaker Liam Billingham

The cost of making an independent film has been rapidly decreasing. It’s great news for indie filmmakers who are making shorts or their first feature. However, this trend has also led to a flood indie films, filmmakers, and distribution channels — Netflix, Amazon, Vimeo, VHX, Facebook, YouTube, as well as the traditional festival and studio route. As an emerging director, how do you cut through the noise and build an audience for your work?

“The sad thing is all I want is for it to be about the art, but it’s important that the art be more than just the piece of art,” explained independent filmmaker Liam Billingham in his Brief Interview. “The stuff you make has to be intensely personal or people won’t care. You really have to put yourself out there and combine the work with your personality. It’s almost as if you sell the personality, and then sneak the show in on the side.”

Billingham refers to comedians (Aziz Ansari, Marc Maron, Margaret Cho) who have built up followings through their own force of personality — ”they can’t escape themselves,” he says. These brands bring audiences no matter the distribution channel.

Liam is working on it, but “the tricky thing is to know what to say and who to talk to when and connecting with the zeitgeist.”

Watch our interview and you’ll see Liam has plenty to say, and the story about how his late father got him into film is indeed intensely personal.

At Brief, we’re happy to help him get the story out there and know who to talk to when.