SHORT FORM FEATURE
As long as humankind has been around, there have always been storytellers either verbally or all the way back to cave drawings. But nowadays one of the biggest forms of storytelling is filmmaking. It is an ever-evolving media with the times, but it is usually one of the most successful forms of storytelling. It is also one of the hardest ones to get into for many reasons. One of the reasons is it is not cheap to make a movie and then distribute it to movie theaters or sell it somewhere. It is even harder to make a good movie. A big chunk of that is it’s a who you know more than a what you know business. There are also so many different avenues to become a filmmaker. No filmmaker has had the exact same journey to get to where they are today. Yes, maybe there are some similarities but not many.
Look at Christopher Nolan who never went to film school but has been touted as one the best storytellers/filmmakers of our generation from how much money his films have generated to how both critics and audiences have received them. His most recent movie Oppenheimer just won a whole bunch of awards over the previous award season, but it swept at the Oscars including its win for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Cinematography, etc. Nolan has been nominated in the past for Oscars, but he never won an award for Best Picture or Best Director till this year. His movies have won Oscars in the past but never the big two that every filmmaker imagines winning since they first pick up a camera.
Then there is Danny and Michael Philippou, two Australian brothers who just had their smashing directorial debut last year, Talk To Me. The two brothers started out making YouTube videos for years before they took a break from YouTube to write and direct Talk To Me. Talk To Me is a horror movie about a group of friends who discover how to conjure spirits using an embalmed hand but when they become hooked on the high they take it too far. The two brothers were shot down by every studio they talked to. They thought they finally found one, but the studio was making them change too many things in their script, so they backed out. They managed to find help to produce the movie from a film company in Australia which allowed them to make the film how they wanted to. About a year later they finished their movie, and they submitted it to Sundance which is one of the biggest film festivals with one of the slimmest chances of getting in. But they did, their movie ended up becoming one of the most talked about films from the festival which led to a bidding war for the movie. A24, a studio whose movie Everything Everywhere All At Once was nominated to win Best Picture at the 2023 Oscars, also became their first film to gross over $100 million at the box office. This little movie which was independently funded with a budget of $4 million ended up grossing a little over $90 million at the worldwide box office. The movie was a smash hit with both critics and audiences. This is one of the examples you are starting to see in Hollywood of first-time directors/writers making their debut with horror, no matter if they have a YouTube channel or not.
Horror has become an easy avenue for newcomers because you can make them for extremely cheap and then get a huge return on your investment. You are starting to see stories that normally wouldn’t be made get made. At the end of the day, people don’t care who tells the story if it is a good story. This allows unique stories from voices that aren’t usually heard to bring their vision to life.
Even though they do make horror movies A24 makes a lot of unique stories that usually score high with both audiences and critics. Not every A24 movie is for everyone but there is no doubt they make they have acquired and made a diverse and unique movie library of any movie studio today. The studio name practically sells the movie, that you are in for one bizarre but probably good ride. Just go to their website or watch any of their films and you will see exactly what I am talking about. They also aren’t slowing down anytime soon. A24 just released their biggest movie yet Civil War, usually their movies don’t cost too much, then they have a slow rollout so word of mouth can spread. But not Civil War it had a budget of $50 million and the studio’s widest release for any movie releasing into 2,000 plus theaters domestically alone. It was also the studio’s first movie to debut at #1 at the box office. A24 is making movies that you would never think would be made everything is experimental and unique no movie is alike.
More original movies are being made today than ever before which is providing storytellers in the movie industry to flourish and make their names known, but people don’t go see them as much as they do compared to movies with titles they recognize. If look at the box office at the end of every year you will notice that the top-grossing movies are movies that are from recognizable IPS. You are also starting to see more diversity on the screen big and small. From people of different colors to people of different genders. The world of movies is changing with the times, and the next generation of movie makers from all walks of life are starting to have the ability to create stories and begin to make the biggest impact in the movie business both big and small.
