Well, Saberfrog is finally for
sale at my website. I also need to somehow put the movie online
for sale somewhere, and also send out review screeners. All of which
I probably should have done ages ago, but I have a job and other
things to do with my time, which to me are major obstacles to being
any kind of social-media butterfly.
You've certainly heard by now about the
new Star Wars movies that have been announced. There's nothing
I can say about this that hasn't been well-said by online critic
Outlaw Vern (and, in the comments below, by his fellow Ain't It
Cool alum Mr. Majestyk). For better or worse, people now have even
more reason to keep voicing their thoughts about Star Wars.
The unending kvetching about that franchise and its creator gets me
down sometimes, because I think artists should be allowed to take
risks and make unexpected choices, even if the results are variable.
But people are possessive about Star
Wars in a way that they aren't about anything else. Also, in the
age of the Internet there's not really consensus anymore – while
some people have greater access to the media or go to greater lengths
to make their viewpoint known, almost nothing is universally
loved or hated. As Kevin Smith once observed, every movie is
someone's favorite movie.
Speaking
of whom, a friend and I went to see Kevin Smith perform in Buffalo a
few weeks ago. By chance, I got to ask him the first question of the
evening. I asked him about an
interview he'd given a
while back, in which he said that he was
tired of the online negativity he'd endured – not only criticisms
of his work, but personal attacks on himself and his family.
I
asked him how, in the face of such negativity, he maintained his
faith that there might still be an audience out there who was
receptive to his work.
Smith
said that, at age 42, he'd learned to overcome his fear. He talked
about how, when he was younger, he was always afraid of getting in
trouble, but now he realized that there was little as an adult that
he would do that would genuinely get him in trouble. He recited a
quote he'd learned: “Worry is interest paid in advance on a debt
that never comes due.”
More
than once over the years, Smith has expressed the philosophy that he
creates things and sends them out in the world, to find out if anyone
else gets it. That approach has worked for him. One might argue that
Smith's career began at a time when people were less obsessed with
franchises and more hungry for individual, personal versions. Over
the years, though, Smith has nurtured an audience and developed his
own brand, so he's in a position to be able to create more personal
work secure in the knowledge that there would be at least some
audience for it.
That's
the challenge facing most artists these days.
Before I set out on my Saberfrog
tour, I was asked “What did you learn about yourself making this
movie?” I didn't have a good answer to that, but I did learn some
important things from the trip itself.
You
have to know where your audience is, and how to reach them. That's
the lesson I've learned from making Saberfrog.
When I
was developing the movie, I was proud of the fact that it was a
hybrid of genres, and that it represented a particular viewpoint on
the world.
But
how do you market that, when there are so many entertainment options
that the only way for a consumer to filter it all is to limit
yourself to the stuff you know you'll like?
You
have to be a salesman. You have to make yourself and your project
seem appealing to people. That's another lesson I've learned.
During
my traveling showings of Saberfrog,
I interviewed some people that I met in the different cities that I
went to, asking their thoughts about why we make art and why it is
important. I did this so that I would have something to show for my
travels in case the screenings weren't well-attended, and also
because I myself was seeking answers to these questions.
I
showed a rough assembly of this interview footage at a Buffalo
Movie-Video Makers meeting, and one attendee said that this was a
measure of how “pure” I was as an artist – that this
was what I chose to do to promote my movie, rather than thinking like
a businessman. He didn't seem to mean it as a criticism, exactly, but
it was a valid point.
Because I'm an introvert at heart (or
because I grew up in a world where caring about something other than
sports was kind of frowned upon), I'm still getting used to the idea
of being able to share my creative passions with other people. My
nourishment was more solitary – it came from books and obscure
films and foreign TV shows, all of which seemed to come from a better
world than my own, where people were smarter and more inventive and
more thoughtful. There wasn't a social connection between artist and
fan, only a philosophical one. So I'm still adapting to the idea that
art is not solely a means of personal expression, but of
communication. And not just artist-to-audience communication, but
interaction.
Obviously the film scene has changed
unrecognizably in recent years.
This article
has really rammed home, more than anything else I've heard lately,
how film as we knew it really is on its way out – and that
well-known, widely released films that came out when I was in college
are already becoming unshowable in their original format.
We're only going to have digital copies
of varying quality (depending on how much money gets devoted to
transferring them) that may not even last very long. For lower-budget
filmmakers like myself, obviously a DVD or Blu-ray is going to be the
public screening format of choice most of the time. But to go to a
public screening of a Hollywood movie (including ones that aren't
even 20 years old) and basically be watching them on a big-screen TV
… what is the point? If it's basically what you could watch on your
entertainment center at home, why go to a theater?
To have a group experience, that's why.
That's the one thing that still matters. Having something to share,
and talk about, with other people.
That's what it's all about.
