NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS FOR FILMMAKERS | ximike2089's Blog

Are you short a New Year’s resolution? Feel free to borrow one of the ones below.

1. Amplify your voice. You have a voice. Make it bigger in 2011. Spread it wider and connect it to more people. If you are working within your own little crew, spread out. If you’ve gotten into a pattern of relying on the same agents or producers or colleagues, enlarge the perimeter of that circle. If face-to-face is your preferred medium, get out more. Do you email or text too much? Call people more. (This Gucci outlet one was suggested by Ira Deutchman via Twitter.) If you’re an online presence, define the ways you’ll be able to reach more people and do them.

2. Improve your social. Review your online practices and make them better. Do you blog? Blog more. Or blog less, but more meaningfully when you do. Is your online voice scattered and diffuse? Make it Gucci outlet online laser-sharp and specific. Or, are you repetitive and one-note? If so, mix it up. Does your Twitter voice “work”? If not, make it better. Is your posting frivolous? Figure out how to make it a bit more pragmatic and effective. Too dry? Loosen it up.

3. See the Essential 100. Great films are nourishing. There are treasures for the present in the past. Don’t get caught up with only the newest — make 2011 the year you fill in the cracks of your cinephilia. An easy way to do this is to watch all the films in the Toronto International Film Festival group’s “Essential 100.” It’s a list of classics selected by critics, curators and audiences published alongside the opening of its new Bell Asics Shoes Lightbox facility. For most readers of this blog, I’d imagine committing to what you have’t seen on this list would mean adding less than one film a week. The top ten: The Passion of Joan of Arc (pictured), Citizen Kane, L’Avventura, The Godfather, Pickpocket, Seven Samurai, Pather Panchali, Casablanca, Man with a Movie Camera, The Bicycle Thief.

4. Work for a friend. Take a page from Lucas McNelly and his Kickstarter project Gucci sunglasses — don’t just obsess about your own work, make yourself crew for someone you know. UPM, do locations, cast, take sound for a project of someone other than yourself. Commit to the level of your free time. If you’re not working and can manage it, work on a no-budget feature. Or, perhaps just do a weekend short. You’ll not only help another project make it out into the world, but you’ll also re-ground yourself in filmmaking basics while meeting new people who might assist you out at some point. (And while you decide who you’ll work for, consider supporting McNelly at Kickstarter in its final six days. He’s raising $12,000 to support himself while he spends a year working on other people’s projects. In his own words: “So my plan is to spend a year on the road, traveling around the country Gucci shoes and working on indie film projects. I’ll explore the idea of mobility in a creative professional. Just how mobile does our digital lifestyle make us? Does it even matter where we live anymore? How can a creative professional thrive outside of NYC and LA?”

5. Make more than you did last year. I’m talking about work, not money. How much did you make last year? One film? Make two. Six shorts? Make seven. Don’t worry about format. If you made one feature last year and it looks like it will be two years of development before the next, make two shorts instead. Commit to just shipping.

6. Make one piece in a different form. Have you only made features? Make a webisode. Are you Gucci men boots a narrative filmmaker? Make a doc. Do you only do long-form? Make a short doc or web video instead. Get out of your comfort zone for at least one piece.

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