It’s hard to make an independent film. With limited resources, indie filmmakers often have to resort to using only a handful of locations (or just one), which can make a film seem static. Actors are frequently unpaid, or paid less-than-union wages, and in terms of quality performances, you often get exactly what you paid for. And your deeply “personal” story isn’t going to get any studio “interference” (i.e., outside input and guidance), so if you’re not careful, you may only be “personally” enjoying your movie, while the rest of the audience catches up on some sleep. This is why most low-budget indie films ultimately wind up being little more than big-budget home movies for the filmmaker. Fortunately, despite all the hurdles of indie filmmaking, there are some writer-directors who’ve gotten the art form down to a science.
Take Azazel Jacobs, for example. His latest film, Momma’s Man, has all the elements and constraints of your standard indie. It takes place predominately in a single apartment location. It has a small, unrecognizable cast—nearly half of whom are related to the filmmaker. It has a story so personal, it even features the appearance of an actual “I f*cking hate you” letter that a high-school ex once wrote to the filmmaker. And yet Momma’s Man has already been well-received at Sundance, has been picked up for limited distribution in America and is the best film that this critic has seen at CineVegas so far. It skillfully avoids most of the common pitfalls of indie filmmaking, such as …
LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION
If you have to resort to one location, make it an interesting one. The loft apartment featured in Momma’s Man is a character in itself. It’s filled with clutter and curious nooks and crannies that are visually interesting. And because the layout is unusual, it forces some unusual shot choices (and not unusual for the sake of being unusual because of pretentious impulses). The space also has its own distinct personality. The floor creaks, and the door makes a distinctive sound when opened or closed. But if you do manage to secure an interesting location, be conscious of how your camera captures it early on, so that the audience gets an idea of the geography.
WE’RE GONNA SPEND 90 MINUTES WITH THESE PEOPLE
Make your characters likable! It’s not uncommon for aspiring filmmakers to want to shirk Hollywood formula and storytelling tradition by casting an antihero in the lead. But don’t expect your audience to relate to your protagonist through antipathy alone. It doesn’t work. No one wants to spend an hour and a half watching a character, just in the hope that he gets his in the end. Without sympathy, you lose any possible emotional resonance. The stakes are always low because it doesn’t matter what happens to this character. That doesn’t mean you can’t work with a flawed individual. The hero of Momma’s Man is a grown man who mooches off his parents and ignores his wife and their newborn baby. But we don’t hate this guy because we can sympathize with his internal struggle. Plus, he’s funny. Humor is a great way to warm an audience to a challenging character.
CUT THE FAT, OR BETTER YET, DON’T GET FAT IN THE FIRST PLACE
My one criticism of Momma’s Man is a couple of scenes set in LA rather than New York that check in on the activities of the protagonist’s wife and their neighbor. These scenes take away from the intimacy of the New York apartment setting, but even worse, they’re pointless. It’s not that they don’t forward the plot (Momma’s Man barely even has a plot)—it’s that they don’t do anything. Every scene should add something to the movie. Just as a film that’s plot-driven should omit any scene that doesn’t drive the plot, a film that’s character-driven should omit any scene that doesn’t add to character. The exception to this rule has to do with entertainment. It’s okay to waste time if you’re doing so in an entertaining way. But the more time you waste, the more entertaining the scene has to be, so get a second opinion, and eventually, a 50th opinion. A lot of indie films have their running times padded with scenes that should’ve hit the cutting-room floor, or even better, should have perished under the backspace button at a much earlier stage.
THE ENTERTAINMENT DOLLAR
“People are murdered every day. There’s genocide, war, corruption. Every f*cking day, somewhere in the world, somebody sacrifices his life to save someone else. Every f*cking day, someone, somewhere, makes a conscious decision to destroy someone else. People find love; people lose it. For Christ’s sake, a child watches her mother beaten to death on the steps of a church. Someone goes hungry. Someone else betrays his best friend for a woman. If you can’t find that stuff in life, then you, my friend, don’t know crap about life! And why the F*CK are you wasting my two precious hours with your movie?!” When Brian Cox as Robert McKee delivered this diatribe to Adaptation’s writer’s-blocked protagonist, the enemies of dull, pretentious art films worldwide cheered. The real Robert McKee, of course, is something of an extremist, and his book on screenwriting (Story) advocates a strict adherence to the rigid rules of the Hollywood formula. I’m not saying that indie filmmakers should stifle their creative freedom. By all means, break the rules. But always keep in mind that everyone in your audience should LOVE your movie. If you have a wide audience, then your movie should have widespread appeal. If you have a small cult audience, then your film should have cult appeal. And if you seem to be the only person who really “gets” your movie, then you should be the only person watching it. Why waste two hours of someone else’s time if you have no interest in providing them with quality entertainment? Learn to kill your darlings. Learn to cut your favorite shot. Remember that you automatically have affection for your characters because you created them, but these characters have to EARN the audience’s affection, so make sure they’re doing that. If a film isn’t engaging, or entertaining, or thought-provoking, or interesting, it can still be art. But it’s bad art.
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