Most Important Question A Filmmaker Has To Ask Themselves by Kenneth Castillo
Film Courage: People who wait for a filmmaking career will never have one? Without of course naming any names, can you think of some people in your life who are very talented but who are waiting? Maybe this frustrates you? Maybe you see the opportunity in front of them but they won’t take it for whatever reason?
Kenneth Castillo, Filmmaker: Yes, mostly colleagues. I won’t even say friends, just people that you run into. What I’ve come to realize is that (particularly those filmmakers who’ve come out of film school) you are not going to have a crew of 30 on your next film. They come out with these great thesis films and they want to get their feature made. But in this age of independent filmmaking, no one is going to give you a million dollars to do your thesis film.
And when I don’t see them working or trying to kind of start from scratch whether it’s a short film (whatever it is) to continue to do the craft until you get that. I’m not saying it’s not possible but I’m really blown away by filmmakers I know that have a great thesis film from film school and are waiting to make their feature film. I’m like “Why aren’t you doing something now?” “I don’t want to film something on my phone. I don’t want to shoot something with a three-person crew.” I’m like “What are you waiting for?”
It’s not something I can tell people. You’ve got to figure that out on your own. But if you’ve been 10 years now (and I know filmmakers that are 10 years out of film school) still thinking they are going to get 3 million dollars to produce their first film based off of their thesis.
Film Courage: Why do you think this is? Do you think they feel they’re at a different status level? They don’t want people…they want to have investors?
Kenneth: I think it’s a combination of that and people in this industry. I think everyone looks at their trajectory going like this [consistent upward line] and it doesn’t. You started with a thesis and you have a crew of thirty and all of this millions of dollars worth of equipment that the school provides for you. You get out, do you really want to film your short movie on an iPhone? The ones that work do. Because that’s ego. In my experience having done as much as I’ve done what I’ve found is there are certain film schools (and I’ve hired certain film school students)…but I won’t say the ones where they have the least discipline but the ones with the MOST discipline have come from the Los Angeles Film School. They have come with the discipline to work. It didn’t matter how good their thesis film was. If my crew was small or whatever, they wanted to work, they wanted to learn and they wanted to produce.
Film Courage: I know there’s a lot of backlash on Millennials that they don’t want to work and things like that. I haven’t always seen this. I’ve seen work ethics differ across many generations (even in Generation X I’ve seen varied work ethics). Do you think it’s generational or a mindset?
Kenneth: It’s definitely a mindset, I don’t find it generational at all. If this is what you want to do, you’re going to do it and you’re going to do it as often as you possibly can. The thing I say to people who want to be writers, you have to be writing everyday. If you want to…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
See Film Courage’s collection of Writing and Filmmaking and Acting videos on Youtube.
New videos 5:00 p.m. daily! Subscribe to the main Film Courage Youtube channeland our second Film Courage Youtube channel here…
