Movies are But a Dream

To get the most out of researching a movie, directors should treat films as the equivalent of revelatory dreams. 

Let me explain. 

For all you vivid dreamers out there, think about the process of analyzing your dreams. First, you write down the dream as a story. Then, you list out the component images in the dream and relate them to dynamics in your own life. If there are new figures in your dream, you explore what complexes, repressed memories or hidden drives may be surfacing. It’s all an exciting code. Cracking it means that you understand yourself – or a difficult situation – that much better. 

For filmmakers, watching films is an encounter with someone else’s dream that helps you decode your own. After all, a movie is a dreamlike encounter with the director’s emerging shadow, longing to be integrated. Some of the imagery used in the work of others may resonate or rhyme with the internal dynamics you’re facing. Catching onto the reason why performance, shotmaking, and symbols combine to affect you clues you into the hard wiring of the code filmmakers create and crack each time they step behind a camera. So there’s a duel deep-dive going on: exploring the symbols and landscape of our human nature AND figuring out the ways that movies communicate. 

That’s why I encourage others to fully embrace their own subjectivity as they research films, but also push them to use their left-brained capacity for reason to decide, clarify and understand what moments, shots, and performances work the best for them…and why. Forcing yourself to write it down sharpens your insight into yourself at the same time it empowers you to accumulate crucial practical knowledge about how to build a story.

That’s why when watching a film, I force myself to jot down my favorite scene, shot, moment, character, and line of dialogue. They’re clues to the internal conflicts I’m carrying and signposts for how to ladle that inner work into a compelling story for an audience.

While my answers are of limited usefulness to you, you can apply the same method to your own research and you may find new ideas and approaches suited to the types of stories you’re called to tell. Perhaps comparing our answers will challenge your assumptions and encourage you to watch the next film with an even more open mind of the available take-aways. 

You can watch samples of how I identify salient elements for the following list of films on our Patreon page, which loom large in my imagination as the new feature develops. Bonus: The “Favorite Shot” category will generate a shortlist of some pretty cool shots to consider for your new project! 

Hope you will keep watching, learning the language of film, and making great movies!

There are a lot of really difficult parts of making a movie, where the rubber hit the road, like raising the money and depositing it into an escrow account. So, it’s time to introduce you to my own Personal Badass that’s gonna do the Shit I Don’t Want to Do.

I’d like to take a minute to describe my very own personal badass.  We’re talking a sophisticated but very tough creature of Hollywood with social graces acquired from an aristocratic upbringing, and a great wardrobe.  This badass has a massive network and the sparkling wit to charm them at virtual cocktail parties. Their raison d’etre is…to do all the shit that I don’t want to do. Mainly, that means, to raise the funds for this project and introduce me to celebrities and consequential movers and shakers in our industry who might want to get on board. But there are other things, too, like reviewing all the legal contracts, taking care of any super awkward conversations that I might want to avoid, stuff like that. My time is better spent elsewhere.  I’m enjoying the rewrites, the character mindmaps, and I’m excited to cast the movie, develop the shotlists, and get back on set. But I want my Personal Badass who loves me and maintains 100% loyalty to go out and secure the investors and do all that business-type shit. Actually, they don’t have to love me, just greatly admire me above all filmmakers and actors, past and present. While they may not love me personally….they do love the script and believe in my unique voice and want to celebrate it and bring it to the world. 

Ah, I’m so happy just thinking about this Personal Badass. It brings me inner peace and joy to know that all the shit that I don’t want to do will be taken care of by this highly qualified and motivated individual, who will work for a percentage of the profits that are sure to come, eventually. And I won’t even really need to watch them or pay attention. That’s because my own Personal Badass is 100% trustworthy.

Yeah, right.

To be fair, a few creative types really do find a kind of Personal Badass. Sometimes, it’s an agent or manager or a lawyer. Sometimes, it’s a bodyguard who moonlights as a drug dealer to the elite. Even for those lucky few who find a Personal Badass, beware. Badasses have a habit of not being motivated by benevolence or even by artistic merit. Usually, there’s something else going on, too. But more often, I’ve seen quality screenwriters and filmmakers cling to an adolescent hope that a Personal Badass is gonna come along to knock out all the worldly tasks so that “the artist” can exist in a state of pure creativity. I’ve been one of the people deceived by the seductive mirage of a Personal Badass. From experience, I can tell you that while that illusion feeds my ego, it stunts my growth into becoming a responsible, middle-aged adult. In the end, I believe seeing and facing your own challenges – as they are – makes for a more insightful filmmaker than attempting to build a cocoon and pass your glasses to a guy in a sharp suit whose underpaid interns set up Zoom meetings.

At this stage of my life, I don’t have time to entertain illusions. I need to get my movie made. So as for the Personal Badass, you’re looking at him. And here’s the thing. Even if my wardrobe needs updating and I don’t have the email address of the biggest venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, as I shoulder the ultimate responsibility for this film, I get to integrate 10 or 11 or 12% of that personal badass energy into myself. Then, others – who really are way more badass than I am – they start to see that. It’s kind of like a psychic lure that brings them closer. Maybe we will have a virtual cocktail and I’ll report that I’ve raised a portion of the funds and gotten partway down the track. A few of these Badasses might want to join up. Granted, at that point, they’re more like Fellow Badasses than the Personal Badass of my fantasy. Even so, we can chill, throw back a cappuccino and find some money to make movies together. 

To view a video version of this essay, please consider joining our Patreon page.

If you are an indie film investor – or a filmmaker seeking to understand how to finance your film, you’ll need to learn the concept of: The Waterfall. Top film finance companies create significant leverage for themselves by capitalizing on this concept in a more strategic way than the creative community that delivers the content. While your most important job remains to create top quality content, it’s wise to time to get a better grounding of the film finance terms that will make a different in your financial life – and ability to gain financing for your next project.

 Here are three takeaways from our brief tutorial on film finance.

1. Pay attention to how much you offer to cover expenses for your distributors and sales agents. 

2. Educate your stakeholders on their placement within The Waterfall to make sure there are no misunderstandings or hurt feelings when the checks (finally) start to arrive.

3. Make sure to run a sample Waterfall on your project before you get started to get a realistic sense of how much each stakeholder stands to gain. And remember, our example doesn’t even include film loans or taxes!

 Need more than those three takeaways? Check out the full eight-minute tutorial on The Waterfall/Film Finance below.

Carl Jung’s favorite classic myth called THE WATER OF LIFE inspires an indie filmmaker to change his approach to Hollywood…and life. In our latest video, Hunter re-tells the myth and also explains how it applies to our journey of making an independent feature film. 

Carl Jung had a profound impact on artists in his own time and his relevance has only grown in recent years, with his writings on dreams and archetypes holding relevant revelations for creative types diving into their own personal unconscious and exploring, knowingly or unknowingly, the collective unconscious that surrounds them. But this simple story doesn’t just provide fuel for an individual character or symbolic image, but supplies a kind of code for how an artist might approach his entire life’s work.

Some essential lessons to draw from the “Water of Life” story for independent filmmakers.

1. Go with Intrinsic Interest, Not Public Interest. Where the powers-that-be and the public-at-large may be interesting from a sociological point of view, but creativity is an internal process that requires you to dive within yourself. By doing so, you may anticipate where the crowd might go in the future.

2. Systems Decay and Die for a Reason. No singular approach or creative movement can last forever with the integrity and curiosity with which it began. It’s only human that, after a while, the material rewards for a job well done start to corrupt and stagnate what once was a flowering notion. Don’t be too attached. 

3. Keep Searching. The water of life – symbolic for the transcendent, life-giving force that none of us can fully understand – is ONLY to be found in unexpected places. So keep searching. Don’t ignore territory that’s out of fashion or overlooked. In fact, those are precisely the areas that may contain a hidden reservoir of the water of life.

Jung’s story of “The Water of Life” brings up an essential question for every filmmaker facing choices on how to approach their project. Will you be a seeker or a supplicant? Watch Hunter talk about the story and its importance in the Video Essays members-only section of our Patreon page.