The following text pertains mostly to the non-creative aspects of independent filmmaking.  Sure, there's an art to getting punched in the face repeatedly - but my creativity less often ends up on the screen than on a budget top-sheet.  Or credit card statement.  Or police report.  Whatever.  If you want to rap about film theory, ask my Director or DP; I'll be across the street donating bone marrow. I don't presume to be a source of any artistic or even logistical revelations, of any poignant advice you couldn't better obtain from somebody more accomplished, articulate or whose skeleton can still make new blood cells.

I am in the middle of producing my first feature, and despite a steady (albeit stereotyped) diet of coffee, cigarettes and leftover craft service snacks, my body is still a functioning machine that converts phone calls into cinema.  Some cliches are rooted in truth. I know a handful of other producers likewise struggling: folding towels at the gym for $6 an hour to turn around and pay their sound designer $25.  And it's true: independent filmmaking is simply a time-consuming and expensive way of proving Murphy's Law.    Everything that can explode, will explode--and embed unattractive bits of metal in your face.  Here's the saddest truth: your first feature is a definitive, unfailing method of filtering your MySpace friends from your reality friends, of learning who you can really count on.  Nine times out of ten, it's one out of a hundred.  So, if you do the math...Uh...Basically you're screwed.

But they are there.  They're the ones who raid their cupboards and send you the canned goods, volunteer grips who travel cross-country to sleep on a different floor every week of production and especially the ones brave enough to tell you when and how you're fucking up.

Assholes.

Their unexpected kindness is often as baffling as the sinister position the universe adopts against you during production. All of the sudden you're a lightning rod for disaster.  And lightning.  You have to surround yourself with friends just to give the bastard in the clock tower something else to shoot at.

Our film is in the middle of post-production.  We raised enough cash, supplemented by a little credit, to get through our four-week production schedule last summer.  Since then, my strategy for paying the bills has been to zero my living costs by couch-surfing and funnelling income from my various freelance jobs back into the movie. I'm a decent motion designer/animator, and it pays okay when I can get the work.  I can't really cry poverty; I'm a white kid from the suburbs and were I truly on the brink of starvation, the folks would FedEx me some granola.  But the amount of aid you can accept from your parents, your friends, is determined by an ongoing battle between malnourishment and pride.  You should be a little starved. It's supposed to be difficult. That's what you signed up for.  If living your dreams were easy, there'd be nobody to unclog toilets. Except me --for a couple bucks?  I really need it.

We have to stop bitching about the hard-lived horrors of production and post - we asked for it, begged for it.  It's like making your girlfriend eat a shit sandwich then complaining about her breath. Savor the shit-breath.  Love it.  Breathe deep your dream.

So all bitching aside, here are the lessons I've learned in making a feature for about $100,000.

Nobody wants to help you.  If they say they do, assume they are lying.  And possibly a shape-shifter.  Also assume that any resource you haven't already exchanged a newborn child for will not materialize as scheduled.  Despite all enthusiastic assurances, all previously-avowed excitement about simply participating - in the end you only get what you pay for, make yourself or obtain at shiv-point.

Cutting corners often costs you more money in the end.  At some point you exhaust all creativity, and it's simply going to cost what it costs.  I know that's broad advice, but it's beyond the scope of this text to illustrate how you determine that point.  It's probably still beyond the scope of my experience as well, but if I stumble upon a concise flowchart or something I'll sell you it for like eight dollars.

The number one question I'm always asked is also the first I would ask of others.  Where do you get the money?  There are volumes out there about this.  It's mostly garbage.  If you've got less than a million, no big name and you're not making a horror movie or a porno, it'll be next to impossible to convince anybody that your movie will make any money. Sure, there are the flukes that disprove the rule, but going up to people and telling them you're the next Kevin Smith, Robert Rodriguez or Wes Anderson only sells shares in the fact that you're a moron.  This is not a successful moneymaking strategy, as the billion or so indignant shareholders in my stupidity will venomously confirm.  At this level, you stand a better chance if you can convince people you're going to make wicked art instead of wicked bank.  That is actually appealing to a portion of the population, but that very propensity has greatly hindered this group's ability to accumulate any disposable money at all.

More proof that the universe is set up to hate-fuck your dreams.

But it's possible.  That's the most important thing you learn.  If you stand and are true in the moment and your friends are with you, it can be done.  I know it sounds silly, especially in punctuating the rest of this cynical text, but I know no other way of putting it, and no lesson that is more emboldening.  I've lost a lot of weight, but I'm still here.  I've alienated a lot of people, and no doubt let down more people than have let me down.  But I still find a couch to sleep on every night.

Some days it feels like you're winning.