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“Before you get someone to watch your movie, you’ll need to get their attention,” says Eugene Hernandez. “But everybody’s got so much coming at them on a given day, and you’re trying to get their attention for even 20 seconds.” 

That’s why, Eugene explains, you should put a lot of thought into your press kit. “Because that’s how people are going to remember your film, both before and after they see it,” adds Eugene. “It’s really important to — for lack of a better word — kind of agonize over it. Ask, ‘Does this image represent the film? Is this the image we want other people to remember when they think of our film?”

Eugene also advises filmmakers to take pictures while still on set. Many professionals agree. Eugene has been on and moderated many film festival panels over the past 25 years. “The most common piece of advice is to take good pictures on your set,” he points out. “It sounds logical when you’re not making the movie, but when you are, it’s the easiest thing to forget.”

Think ahead to when your film goes to festivals or distribution. When a company wants to buy your film, they’ll ask for photos. If you don’t have those photos, you can’t recreate your set and costumes from four years ago. As you film, make sure you capture the images that will represent your film in the future.

Some marketing and distribution panels recommend spending money on this process. “Hire a photographer,” says Eugene, “or if you have a friend who’s really good at that, invite them to your set. Have them take pictures while you’re shooting or rehearsing.” Eugene recommends taking some posed photos of the cast, too.

You may not use these photos for years, but they matter. “Those are the images that will fuel the materials you create,” advises Eugene. “Those are the images that you’re going to hand someone on your postcard three years later at a film festival. It’s essential.”

 “Lovebirds came together because I had read this really funny script. It was originally a little bit darker and a little bit edgier, but it was just a really fun script about a couple that could be anybody who was breaking up. They got involved in what they thought was a murder while they were breaking up, and had to deal with their relationship while they had to stay together,” says Tom Lassally. “It was a very funny script and maybe more on the independent side when we first started it. When you’re going for a pairing like this, you’re trying to think, what is a fresh way to pair two great people?”

“I worked with Kumail before on Silicon Valley, and he’s such a gifted comedian and actor,” Lassally continues. “At that point, you would not see him do something like this. Then looking at Issa Rae, who at that point had not done a role like this, and to pair them as a really interesting couple. It was a really special dynamic that made the whole thing come together in a very different way. It was an example of one and one making three. The approach to do a romantic comedy with a African-American woman and a Pakistani lead and not necessarily have to make it about that seemed like a really fresh way to do a movie.”

“We financed it with a terrific company called MRC, and then Paramount stepped in to become our partner to release it. We did a lot of development with them, we worked on it with them, and we went and shot the film in New Orleans. Netflix came in because they liked the movie, but, on a practical level, they had a movie that already had Paramount and MRC spending money on marketing to create awareness for something, and that would be a good thing for Netflix.”

“All of these movies are sitting there. One of the first to be bought by a streamer, maybe even the first, was Lovebirds because they really liked the movie. They loved the cast, but they also knew they had some awareness going into them doing their job, which helped. The movie seemed to have performed well for them. At least people got to see it even though we were disappointed that we didn’t get to see it in theaters.”

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“You know, it’s very easy to write one script and then talk about it for three years,” says filmmaker Judd Apatow. But according to Judd, successful writers don’t stop there. They stay consistent.

“The people who succeed are the people who write a script and then start the next one the second they’re done,” Judd continues. “When I was first starting up, a friend told me that he sold the tenth script he wrote.” That knowledge helped Judd, who learned that it takes a long time to sell a script. “I’m not supposed to become some famous rich person on the first script,” he realized. “You have to hope it happens early but be willing to write those ten scripts to make it.”

Filmmaker Caran Hartsfield agrees. “It’s an incredibly daunting process, even for professionals,” she says. “And it’s hard to settle in and just go step by step. The first step is to exhale and know that it’s going to be a roller coaster ride.”

Caran also points out that not every writing session comes easily. “There are going to be days when you are so excited that it’s coming together. And there are going to be days of ‘What was I thinking yesterday?’”

On some days, filmmaking and writing can feel out of reach, and writers can doubt themselves. Still Caran offers encouragement for writers. “I’ll tell you a secret,” she says. “A writer writes. If you write, you’re a writer. So just write a little bit more every day, and make that a habit.”

Caran has a friend who commits to writing every day, even if it’s just one sentence. “I think that’s a really good practice,” Caran says, “and it’s something that I have personally incorporated into my own practice. I find that it creates momentum.”

When it comes to developing a screenplay, film director and screenwriter David Irving points to one simple industry expression: “You cannot make a good film without a good script. You can certainly make a bad film from a good script. But to repeat, you cannot make a good film from a bad script.”

Everybody’s looking for a good script. And good scripts are few and far between.

There are different elements to a successful screenplay, as Irving notes. A good script has to be a certain length, proper format, and it has to have a beginning, middle, and an end. It’s a blueprint for the actual film.

It takes a very special person to be able to read through a script and see the movie. A director who reads through the script is putting a lot of brain effort into it — How can I make this happen? How can I realize this particular film?

At the same time, you’re reading through a script to find an emotional arc and connection. Will this be a film that I want to work on for a very long time? Will this film entertain and engage an audience? Will it be of some value to put all that effort into the screenplay? The screenplay is first and foremost the document you need in order to be able to proceed with a film.

While a screenplay may attract a lot of people to a motion picture, it goes through a lot of transitions along the way. You have a first draft, second draft, third draft, polished draft, shooting draft — there are lots of changes that scripts go through to get to the first day of principal photography.

Even during principal photography, that script will change. In post production, that script will continue to change. That’s why you must have a very solid screenplay upfront, and it takes a real professional to be able to read it and see what that movie might be.

”It’s really important to pay attention to the things that are around you, to the people you know, that are happening in your community, that you’re watching on the news, or anything that’s coming into your life, and realizing that those are the kernels, the nuggets of gold for you,” says Caran Hartsfield.

You probably have that uncle, grandfather, auntie, sister, or whoever who was an incredible character. That often gets overlooked. The real people in our lives that are great characters, or those real moments that happen between two friends on a Tuesday. Write those things down. Use those little golden nuggets to create great scenes.

“It’s so much easier to use real people than to make this Frankensteinian, made-up person that you’re really basing on other films that you’ve seen. You have the luck of knowing the people that probably only you know.” Hartsfield explains. “I don’t know them; most screenwriters don’t know them. You know them. I don’t have the life experiences you have. Most screenwriters don’t have the life experience you have. That’s what’s so exciting. We all have the stories that only we can bring.”

“The world is not monolithic. The world is not homogeneous. Art has always reflected life to a certain extent. The notion that it should not be diverse is insane,” says Seith Mann. “I think that there are so many different and wonderful stories out there, and the more diverse the talent base telling those stories is, the more different, interesting stories that you will have.”

We all benefit from hearing stories from multiple voices. From gaining insight from characters and worlds that have a lived experience that is not necessarily our own. Then, at the same time, it’s important for people to see themselves and stories. If you have a marketplace that doesn’t reflect anything but a particular demographic, that makes it harder for different people to identify with those characters. It’s difficult for them to be truly invested in those stories, which is, ultimately, what is behind all the human need that we have for this illumination that comes from storytelling.

In Hollywood, there’s a profit motive. Hollywood’s going to make more money if it draws in a greater audience, and part of the way you do that is to have diverse storytellers telling different stories. It isn’t rocket science.

”You have these very early experiments with drawings that move. You have these ideas of taking characters that were either in a comic, or in the newspaper and turning those into animated shorts,” Says Kimson Albert. “For example, Gertie the Dinosaur with Winsor McCay was an early version of animation.”

He had a Gorgo act where he actually interacted with an animated version of Gertie the Dinosaur. Behind him, he would throw grid an apple and all these interactive things. It was very new. It was kind of a novelty thing at that time.

You have the early Disney shorts, and you have early Fritz the Cat shorts. Everything is a mouse or some sort of animal that’s cute or mischievous or any of these things.

Steamboat Willie is a short that’s the first sound short animated short. Before then, you wouldn’t have sound synced to the action, which is a Disney film. This turns everything around. Now that the cartoon has sound to it, we’re in a whole of the universe essentially. Film goes from like a Dark Age and then after one film into this incredibly new territory of sound. Then there’s time to adjust that.

With Disney, he was able to experiment with these shorts, prove the kind of ideas, and prove the experiments that they were working on with movement and character in the shorts. They would do all these incredible things with camera. They would test out things with the facts and everything like that.

Then when it came time to do his first feature, which was Snow White, he takes all of this knowledge and his best animators and effects people and throws them on this incredible project that transforms the entire film industry period. It is the biggest thing at the time. Snow White is the definitive mother of invention when it comes to animated film. If you do your research, you will know that the DNA of all animated film features comes from Snow White and character animation.

The evolution of the animated feature is basically the evolution of the Disney studio. They were the ones who were rolling out the Cadillacs of animation. They were the highest level of quality in terms of character animation, in terms of backgrounds, and in terms of camera.

David K. Irving believes that documentary is an exciting form of filmmaking. One of the most exciting things about documentary is that it’s about the truth, and he thinks that’s important. The truth can be very scary. Getting personal and close to the truth is a very rewarding experience for any filmmaker, in David’s view.
The major difference between documentary film and narrative film is that documentary films are usually built during post-production. You do a series of interviews. You come up with a script. You find all the images that you want. But ultimately, it’s based on what images, stories, and interviews you do have in the editing room. David thinks that the documentary often takes shape in the post-production phase.
He says this is very different from a narrative film. Much preproduction can be done in terms of identifying what the shape of the film will be the better. In post-production, it’s a question of realizing that vision. Documentaries are very exciting because they all happen in the moment.
David personally feels there are many different kinds of documentaries. “Cinéma verité, for instance, is a wonderful form of documentary,” says David. He thinks Ken Burns did a terrific job covering the Civil War and baseball to introduce this kind of documentary into the mainstream in American cinema. He thinks it’s become a very popular format for people to enjoy films.
And for David, the major point of documentary film is the same as narrative film. Both types of film have to tell a story.
He’s seen many documentaries that were just a series of interviews and images where there was no edification. There was no climax. The better documentaries are the ones where when you finished watching it, it feels like it’s the end of the story.
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KIMBERLY ALEAH: As a content creator, data is one of the most powerful tools that you have at your disposal. Ultimately, when you make something, you want to make sure that you’re getting it out in front of as many different eyes as possible. What I do when making a piece of content from a creative standpoint, is always start with the fact that we need a hook. We need something that’s going to add something different to the larger cultural conversation. This is because when you’re on the internet, there’s unfortunately a lot of other stuff to compete with.

Once I have that hook that we’ve used from pre production, production, editing, all the way through the development process, we have to figure out where we’re going to put it. This is when data comes into play, because data allows you to profile your audiences. That can look like a number of things.

For one, you want to find out when people are consuming content. Are people consuming content on Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays at noon? Are people consuming content on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 6:00 PM?

Another thing you want to ask yourself is – what is my target audience? Am I going for school age children? In which case, maybe I want to publish stuff before the school day starts at 8:00 or after the school day is over at 3:00? Is my audience younger professionals? In that case I might want to wait until they get off from work. Is my audience more based in New York than LA? What does that day look like for them?

Just asking all the different questions about who an audience is, what type of content they want to consume, when they want to consume it, and then lastly, on what device, is important to effectively reaching them.

Are they consuming content on a smartphone? Are they consuming the content on a desktop computer?

Across different age demographics, you’ll find that for the 13 to 18 window, a lot of that is vertical video. When you’re a creator, it might incline you to consider shaping your piece so that it plays a little bit more aesthetically for a phone.

It’s just thinking about all the different questions of who the audience is, what time they consume their content, where they are consuming their content, and lastly the ideal duration. Duration is one of the most powerful aspects of data because it lets you know that not only is an audience engaging with content, but they’re sticking with it. They’re watching for more than three to five minutes. They’re watching the full 12 to 15 minutes.

This is where you find your strongest audiences, because you’ve made something that they find interesting. If you’re already starting with something on your phone, and you’re doing it with a group of diverse individuals, and throwing it into this larger ecosystem, it’s not only going to inspire other people to share your work, but it’s also going to inspire you to create new things that you didn’t think of originally.

And so for me, I love smartphones, which are very on brand for millennials. It really is one of those things that you have as a tool in your pocket to tell stories instantaneously. When we talk about these larger social movements that are happening, there’s a reason that a lot of the stimulus, a lot of the incidents that start those movements were recorded on phones.

They’re so much more accessible. They just let everyone have an immediate voice that doesn’t have to be mitigated by a traditional development room, a traditional studio process. A lot of the bureaucracy gets skipped, and a lot of the content making gets put first.

What does the future of cinema hold? I have often been beaten up over the last 10 years. Therefore, I’ll be very shy to say what I ought to say. You know my guess. I can tell you what I hope it will be, because we’re witnessing a television take over, streaming services take over the theater business unless you’re a big tent-pole movie.
We need to think about what we want for the theater industry in the future. The streaming television industry is booming because they produce great and digestible content, a user-friendly format, great funding, and plenty of resources. These factors negatively impact the film and television industry, which makes it difficult for traditional theaters to sustain their industry in the future.
I believe in the theater. I believe in human nature working as a society. However, we must employ the mentality of a ritualistic temple to maintain human nature in society. I refer to it as a temple because many of us don’t attend a physical church or a temple anymore.
We need to go to the movie theater. I’m not hallucinating. We, as a group, go to a place, preferably a dark house. We’ll speak freely, a heart-to-heart communication so that we enter an abstract world, forgetting reality. But you get down to the truth. I think that’s something. When you walk out, life is different. You are inspired.
It’s more than entertainment—it’s spiritual as well. I don’t see how you can get the same effect sitting at home watching television, going to the bathroom, and resume watching. It’s different. I think of the ritualistic event presented in a black box, where you’re sitting as a group, as a congregation. I think from day one in the cave; the cavemen spoke of how to hunt lions over a campfire. People become absorbed into storytelling and togetherness.
I still believe in the theater. However, I think it needs an upgrade. It’s hard to compete with television. If you want people to schlep into a big place, but have safety issues, then at some point it will cease to be. I don’t know how much theater can survive. Everybody’s going through a difficult time.
My thoughts are immersive, so we can experience with a group of people. You’re inside a movie instead of watching it from outside. The movie has its own language, 2D film, whatever, but it’s something bigger than life, with fine quality. Like when I was young, and I’d see a Hollywood make a movie.
No matter what they do, we go see it. You have a choice in this. Those days are probably harder to get back. It’ll be taken away by television, and unfortunately, sometimes iPhones. But in theater, you must make something good, very special. And some of them will be immersive.

“When talking about film history, you have to begin to think about what cinema is at its core. Cinema or motion pictures is an image that moves,” Alrick Brown explains.”
“As soon as man could see, he started interpreting stories, looking at the stars, differentiating shapes of objects, naming constellations. As soon as a kid could, they probably were drawing images with sticks and dirt.”
Early cave dwellers used image paintings in caves to communicate. Later, the Egyptians used hieroglyphics to tell their stories and preserve histories.
Those symbols and images were a prelude to film’s beginnings.
Over a century ago, the Lumiere brothers and Thomas Edison’s company, experimented and found ways to make images move, creating motion pictures.
Gomez-Rejon’s film tells how film history and Edison, others are joined by history
“I made a film recently called The Current War: The Director’s Cut. I wanted to show how filmmaking and electricity were invented at the same time,” comments Alfonso Gomez-Rejon.
It started in the 1870s with beautiful studies in film motion by Eadweard Muybridge. They were done, I think, with twelve cameras. That evolved into William Dixon and Edison working together on the kinetograph and kinetoscope.
Next came, the Black Maria, Edison’s film production, considered to be the first film company. Remember, at this time in history film was still a novelty. But then we see it progress. The Lumiere brothers (Auguste and Louis Lumière) have the first kind of commercial film screening.
Georges Méliès starts doing narrative storytelling, but it’s still very theatrical with a fixed camera.
“Everything evolves again with Edwin S. Porter’s, The Great Train Robbery. This film, with its illusion of uninterrupted time caused by innovative (for the time) camera cuts and pans, is like the beginning of modern film language, or film vocabulary,” states Gomez-Rejon.
It’s fascinating to see their work and how it’s been interpreted by film industry types throughout the ages. Certainly, these films spoke to me.
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