The Honest Filmmaker
Are you about to leave Uni with a filmmaking degree? Or want to change careers and work in a creative industry? We want to give you the tools you need to enter the real world of production or freelancing. Honest and open career advice from people in the business.
We also talk to those in other creative industries to discuss their careers, the potential cross over with film production and practical tips for a successful and fulfilling career.
http://www.thehonestfilmmaker.co.uk
The Honest Filmmaker
How to Boost your Film's Exposure - proven strategies with Amy Guth
This week on the Podcast I talk to Filmmaker Amy Guth. Amy started out as a journalist and now works as a producer on short films and features. She's run a film fesitval as well as written several books on pitching and what she calls 'unapologetic visibility'.
We covered a number of topics in this chat, Amy talks to me about her career in journalism. She also talked about how to pitch to investors and how to get famous cast in your movie and she gave me some tips on how to get into film festivals.
Find out more about Amy and check out her books at https://www.amyguth.com/
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HONEST, OPEN ADVICE ABOUT YOUR FILMMAKING CAREER
Are you about to leave Uni with a filmmaking degree? Or want to change careers and work in a creative industry? We want to give you the tools you need to enter the real world of production or freelancing. Honest and open career advice from people in the business.
We also talk to those in other creative industries to discuss their careers, the potential cross over with film production and practical tips for a successful and fulfilling career.
Join the community: http://www.thehonestfilmmaker.co.uk
[Music] hi Jim here and you're listening to the honest filmmaker podcast career advice from people in the business this week I spoke to filmmaker Amy Goose Amy started out as a journalist and now works as a producer on short films and features she's run a film festival as well as written several books on pitching uh and also what she calls Unapologetic visibility we covered a number of Topics in this chat uh Amy talked to me about her career in journalism and how that informed her move into film making she also spoke about how to pitch to investors and also how to try and get cast famous cast into your movie and she also gave me some tips uh on how to get into film festivals enjoy so can you tell me how you got into the business so my I always kind of had that in my head like eventually I'm going to land here and get to this but I I was in journalism for a long time and they felt very intertwined to me it really felt like journalism was very much a part of you know because to me it's all just about storytelling the the platform is kind of secondary to me it's about the good stories so I was in journalism for a very long time and you know I think a lot of people might remember like hearing about the pivot to video in a lot of newsrooms and and dur it was like even before that I was I was thinking you know there are moments when you're interviewing a person where their pause is so powerful that that there's really not a way to describe that in print in a print story and so I became interested in just rolling a little bit of video as I was interviewing people and I was making audio docs and and little videos and things like that and and some editors that I was working with they like no one's going to you know no one's going to want that and then you know fast forward a couple of years later there's a pivot to video there's there's video interns right there in The Newsroom um and then I was also working in broadcast where I you know kind of got thrown into the deep end and had to learn a lot really quickly and really loved that and so documentary felt like a very natural extension of Journalism to me just in a longer form because I didn't really have to listen to commercial breaks and and Obey you know the time clock and all of that I could just sort of let this story be as long as it needed to be um and so that became kind of that extension in and of course it didn't take long before I was very interested in in scripted work and I realized that the skills that I had leaned on in journalism actually translated really wonderfully to screenwriting and and film making because you know you're you're writing very quickly well and accurately in chaos like I sat next to a police scanner for four years and you know right by my head and worked all kind of hours and I just sort of trained my brain to just sit down and go and I think journalis journalism also makes you kind of a natural structuralist you have to be able to kind of get all these pieces and pull them all together in a really cohesive story and so I think that just translated really well but the other piece of that I think is that in um in journalism you are often talking to somebody on the worst day of their life or the best day of their life right they've just won a big award you got to interview them or something Terrible's happened and You' got to interview them and I think that made me really approach dialogue and writing dialogue in a different way because I really felt very strongly you know and I read a ton of scripts as a producer that there's like a lot of kind of I call it throat clearing language that gets in the way in a lot of scripts before we just like get to the point because today is the day that big thing is going to happen and so it's been interesting to me to kind of connect those dots of things that I leaned on in journalism and how they've translated into the film world really well yeah that's really interesting and just before I move on to the film making obviously journalism's another creative career that people can get into yeah what would be your give me your bite size top tips if I'm leaving uni and I want to be a journalist what should I do well um first of all bless you do it we we need you know I feel like we need lots of journalists in the world um you know the job of it is to hold people in power accountable and that's that's what draw that's what drew me to it I I thought that was really interesting and and I have long thought oh if you put good information in front of people they will they will do good things with that information and and we've we've seen that that isn't necessarily true now and that people will kind of choose like kind of cherry-pick their own sets of information pick their own facts to support whatever uh whatever thought they have they'll kind of prove out their point so I think it's very important to that we have a lot of people in journal ISM I think right now is a fascinating moment in journalism that it's it has this opportunity to reboot because this there was kind of this swell of this anti-press sentiment that's come up in the last few years and so I think it's a moment actually it's an I know that kind of turned a lot of people off of Journalism but I think actually it's a moment for really smart sharp people to enter that space and say we have a moment to kind of reset this a little bit and there have been some Watchdog organizations that have put out kind of like um reporting guides around really big topics like climate change and about Refugee crisis the refugee crisis and things like that and I think both of those kind of kind of big topics like that and War and and you know big things like that really invites us to take a moment and unpack journalism and reassemble it in in a new way for these kind of dire issues um because I think it's a moment to redefine like what is down the- middle really mean right now if one side is not listening to science or if one side is just making up things and just kind of saying strange sound bites um certainly in this country anyway as we're you know in the US as we're uh moving towards a presidential election in November I think there's there's a lot of journalists asking asking themselves that question so the advice I would give is like be be dive into the topics that you are interested in and learn them backwards and forwards because that will help you develop a beat in a much smarter way and get a lot of by lines get a ton of by lines free I think freelancing is really really important and I think building your presence on platforms is really important I have long said that there will be a day where the person matters more than the more than the platform and and which is not to say the platforms aren't going to matter but the people will say you know this person I trust with this information I trust this person to to share right and share well so I'm going to follow them no matter where they go and so I think that's that's important um but I see sometime and this is like a tangent I could on for days but sometimes I see um I see journalists having like a especially like young career journalists early career having like a personal accountant a professional and and I I disagree with that because you can really step in a lot of problems that way but I think it's important to just just decide like this is how I'm going to present in the world and I'm going to build this presence and you can be human on there but decide you know this is the area you know science journalism or or politics or whatever that thing is um and really kind of Comm to that and commit to really learning that space and building those relationships because they will pay off throughout the recording yeah Amen to that and I think that's applicable I always say this to students for film making if you can pick uh some you're specializing in early become an expert on it you've got so much more capacity to learn in that area uh and in a way a master you know knowing a little bit about everything is good but you'll never really get that sort of uh extra knowledge that will cat in that career and the other thing to that is you can always change your mind if you don't like the thing that you've if you got into sound and you end up hating it you can always flip it and move into something else absolutely and I think it's important to follow those kind of passions to let them grow and develop and and and lead into what's interesting to you and and I think that will rarely steer anyone wrong yeah um so talking about the move into film making um the first films you made so the sort of people out there listening who are firsttime filmmakers um trying to raise Finance for a film talk me through that process for you where did you get the money from how did you get these films off the ground yeah well the first uh few things I did I I funded myself um I've experimented with a lot of different types of funding um you know what I think is most effective is to like assign yourself that project and decide I'm going to learn how to do that backwards and forwards because I think in the film world we have this idea it's this bothers me this this like keeps me up at night but kind of this like learned helplessness because we have this idea and I think it's like a hold over from the early Studio system that if you are just really darling and you are out there that someone's going to like pluck you out of obscurity and like quote unquote discover you and I have always found that so problematic because it feels so passive and it feels like why would you leave your whole career and ambition and dream up to like someone's whim that maybe doesn't even like you like who knows I think you can take a lot more control of that and the way you can do that is learn that business side and there's a lot of resources to do that and so that's just learning the basics of how to exploit grants how to apply for a grant how to write a grant well there's a ton of resources and learning on that uh and information available learning about Regional incentives of you know certain economically depressed areas if you film in them there's a there's a an incentive there there's the general state tax incentive just kind of learning the basics on that I think can really go very far because I think we kind of rely on people just kind of going hey I want to make my film you know do you want to invest in it and as a producer I get pitched a lot and and you know the the question is always why why why you what's the what's in it for me to in you know what happens if I back your film if I participate in your film and you have to answer those questions in that business plan and so it sounds daunting and you know and I think we're we're sometimes a bit precious about like no I'm the artist I don't do the business side I leave that to someone else but you need to learn that and I think the more that the barrier to entry on film making has dropped a bit because inform equipment is it's easier to get it's easier to get equipment it's easier to get information than ever we have the opportunity to know more and to do more and I'm not saying it's ideal to wear a bunch of different hats you shouldn't because that's going to reduce the quality of your work but you should know you should absolutely know if nothing else just to protect yourself from you know people that are predatory but to know about that can really get you very far because who believes in your project more than you nobody nobody will ever believe in your project more than you do so to learn how to exploit those kinds of incentives I think the ideal formula for um for a feature film is only about 25% of that money is what you need to go raise the rest of that you can accomplish with grants and tax incentives and you've kind of securitized all of that that and and learning that you know you have to kind of dive in and do it but I think that is so very very important to learn that kind of thing um because it really just sort of puts you in the driver's seat and takes you out of this idea of like someone's going to discover me if I'm nice you know and that's that's just not I just don't think that's practical anymore yeah definitely and I'd spent the first couple of years we went to the can film festival I think we had that naive impression that someone was going to watch our film and go hey here's $2 million go and turn it into something else and it just doesn't work like that and let you say that business side learning that stuff will protect you from being screwed over and ab obiously that's the main thing that happens um so the the thing I want to talk you about on your website there two terms you use which I've written down compounding visibility and an apologetic visibility can you tell me what that means yeah I mean I with compounding visibility I think that that we as filmmakers we kind of go well I put my work out there and nothing happened oh well I'll have to do another one and we kind of keep starting from scratch and I think investing in your networks is so very very important the the idea of networking kind of has this like bad connotation that it's sleazy it's only sleazy if you don't mean it if you're actually just talking to people that are interesting to you and having conversations of Interest with people who have things in common with you you will build those networks but I I can't tell you how many times I have seen filmmakers either Never follow up with someone that they met at a film festival I know I've certainly written to people and they'll go you know hi yeah I remember you and then they just kind of Trail off and they they don't ever follow up um and they've been people I really you know wanted to work with as a producer and they've just kind of fallen off and I think there's some self- sabotage there but I think there's this idea that we you know somehow being visible is like bragging when you're just saying the facts like like I made a feature film and we won this award it's the truth it's it's real and I know there's like cultural nuances there that doesn't translate into every part of the world but for the most part I think if we set that up right and well and if we do really good press Outreach for every single Festival stop we're compounding that so that we don't have to start from scratch over and over and where I kind of got that idea was for a while I was brought in to kind of reboot a film festival in Chicago and did that for about a year and a half and in that time I saw all these filmmakers with really stunning films that just had done such a great job and I was so proud to screen those films at the festival and then I would see them again after their next film and and I was like why did that film not do anything and I think people don't realize that delivering a finished wonderful film is only the first half of the piece of it you have to know what to do after that and you have to be able to talk about your film and so often I I find film makers and I say tell me what your film's about and the log Line's right there you know just tell me what the log line is but instead I'll kind of get this like you know shuffling the feet hands in the pocket oh well it's I guess it's like sort of a romcom you know it's it's fun I don't know it's it's sort of my life I guess I don't know whatever you know and they're kind of dismissive about it and and and it's like I'm not I don't want people to to come in and be like I have the best film in the world get excited but there's this middle ground that we don't talk about right I think we're so afraid of looking like brags that we do ourselves this this disservice and we're afraid to promote it or talk about it or really invest in learning how to talk about it and and how to network and and building our networks and all of that and I think just being in that middle space of saying the truth of a thing made this film it took this this amount of time this was the budget here's who I worked with and these are the awards that we won we're very excited about it I think just being very straightforward about your work does a lot and that that builds that and so I'm kind of obsessed with the word visibility because I've seen so many filmmakers that's the only thing standing in their way they're so talented they're connected they're getting really talented people in their films they're they might even get distribution a little bit but it's only they they kind of will say oh it was luck or oh I knew a person like invest in that nurture that relationship and keep building so that every with each new film you're not starting from scratch so that you're kind of building on hey I met this person when I was on the festival Circuit of my last film and now they're doing this and that person would be a great person to partner with or that director I met a couple of years ago would be perfect for this next project and I think that's how you build that and and you can be strategic about that without being you know an opportunist or sleazy about it if you are just connecting with the people that that you're connecting with you know when you talk with someone you get a feeling like this is an interesting person and I want to stay in touch with them and I think nourishing that goes a very very long way yeah absolutely and there's two things I was going to pick up from there I've said this before or British people we're terrible about bragging we get embarrassed we don't like doing it you know it makes us cringe but you're right you've got to talk about your project you've got to get other people to care about it um and the other thing I was going to say was if you've got a film out there now and it's on a platform and it's maybe um getting you're getting revenue from it from advertisers then you need to just keep talking about it and if you're talking about it online chances are the same people aren't going to see you continually talk about it because of the way they algorithm works so don't be frightened to keep promoting um yeah so you touched upon film festivals there what's been your experience of film festivals and having run one are are there any tips for getting into a film festival um I have so many tips about getting into a film festival but um you know I think you cannot be discouraged by a rejection because sometimes it really does come down to I have to program this and and it has to fit in 38 minutes to leave time for the talk back at the end and this film is eight minutes too long it really can come down to things like that sometimes and that's that's disheartening because you know your film should be as long as it needs to be and as short as it possibly can be and sometimes like you just get a weird film like it's 17 minutes that's hard to program so you can't take things like that too personally um I think the cover letter is so overlooked I used to get all these submissions and maybe only maybe not even half no way maybe a third of them Had cover letters and of the cover letters they acted like they were terrified of me and I think with anything that you pitch you have to think you have to reframe the way you think of the gatekeeper that you're pitching nobody I know who is working as an editor in journalism or who is running a film festival or who is gatekeeping any kind of portal that we might need to get through in a creative career is ever like licking their chops and just waiting to be evil and mean to a creator a Creator will solve your problem if if it's a dynamite film that's a slam dunk you have just filled a pro a programming block that's exciting for me if you pitch an editor something you've written and it's amazing you've just done them a huge service because now they know what they're going to print that day or publish on the website or whatever and and I think as creatives we have got to reframe that and and and not treat our Gatekeepers like like they're they're these evil people ready to just strike us down and D destroy us we have to just kind of say hey here's this film here's what it's about and let me know what like what's in it for my audience and and sometimes we just kind of go like scatter and just enter every Film Festival we think of I think it is very important to be very strategic about what film festivals we enter and why I have a spreadsheet that I make for every single film and it doesn't vary too much but I will copy it and and kind of tweak it for each project and it is it's ranked by priority and then um uh submission date or notification dates or screening dates because there's premere requirements and you don't want to find out that you got into say you know Toronto or a big Festival like that when you just said like okay sure to this Regional one that's in some dude's backyard right no no offense to that dude in his backyard I'm sure it's a great Festival but you want to be strategic and say okay I think I have a shot at these bigger festivals or you know maybe a little bit smaller than than that kind of figure out what's my North Star here what am I aiming at look at the premiere requirements and if there is a premere requirement prioritize that and kind of plan around it and plan for a long kind of a long run on that because I'll see people go like okay I want all of it to happen in the month of June and they'll just like throw in all these and they'll end up kind of their premere will be somewhere weird where they don't have a connection um you know talk to your cast and find out where's your cast from there might be like a really big Hometown party that someone's just like waiting to throw because you're leading you know leading man or your leading lady is is from a town where there's a film festival that can that can pay off hugely um so I think be being strategic about where you're applying not only will that save you a lot of Heartache but it will save you a lot of money because you're not just kind of throwing it out everywhere and but then when you approach approach that festival and you know if there's a connection to it say so say hey the lead of this film is from that area grew up there has you know went to college there whatever or say I I mean I've said myself in film festival on Film Festival cover letters I've said I'm from there and I would love to pack the house with kind of Hometown friends that I've known my whole life and and I think that kind of goes that that goes a long way because it takes a there's a lot of things that factor in and sometimes like this filmmaker doesn't have any connection to this these two films are both really good this person has no connection to this and hasn't premiered anywhere we don't know know anything about them they didn't write a cover letter and then this person look they're from here they clearly know about this Festival they have a plan for some press Outreach while they're there that seems more intriguing to me as a programmer so I might kind of tilt the Tilt the scale in their favor great tips to remember those um another thing I noticed on your site was you've got a bunch of books so it's uh amig.com so there's books you can get on there that are really useful and one of them is called the real talk pitch guide for pitching so I was thinking what would be your tips for pitching a movie who are you pitching to a producer or a film festival I'm oh God what do I want do I want money I tell you what how about this I'm we've covered investment a little bit so say I'm pitching to get someone a name in my film how can I convince them to be in it yeah um that's always kind of a fun thing right because it's very specific to the person um and it can be if it's like a person who hasn't worked in a while that's going to be a different kind of pitch of like why you want to draw them out into your film versus if it's somebody who's very busy and you know it's going to be hard to get so I think first you need to do your research you can there's a lot of tools for that IMDb Pro can get you pretty far to just figure out who are they represented by who are they connected to see first is that agent representing anybody I know that'll go pretty far you know you can sometimes get a recommendation that way um see if they're connected to anybody on your uh on your LinkedIn see if they're like oh this agent knows my agent okay we can make this work or they went to college where I went to college okay we can figure that out look for those kind of connections and if it makes sense use them um if not I think again just like approaching like a human being and not this big scary gatekeeper assuming you're going to get a no approach with like here's why this role would be so great for your client will go really far because I think we have a tendency when we pitch to list out what's in it for me and not what's in it for you who who I am pitching and that's so important and that can go so very very far that can go for anything anything asking somebody for a favor or for some information the like the dreaded pick your brain get coffee email like you can get a very different response if you frame it around what's in it for them so I think definitely framing it in terms of like here is why your client would be great and if and like if the answer is they're just famous and I want a famous person in my film I think I would encourage you to maybe like think through that a little bit and just think about are they the best person or I'm am I just kind of trying to cast a wide net and get a big name in it because that can get tricky and that can get disappointing and discouraging and you can sink a lot of time in that and you can also exhaust your investors because there's this this moment in investing when you kind of you'll talk to some investors and they'll go okay if you can get so and so who you're thinking for this I will commit and then you go to that person's age agent and they're like oh interesting okay maybe let's talk about it and then they're like okay if you can if you can make sure that you've raised you know 50% or 75% of your funding will give you a letter of intent so you then go back to your investors and say okay they're in if and you're going back and forth to all of these people your investors or your potential investors can get fatigued if you keep coming back to them and saying okay no it's not going to be Brad Pit it's gonna be Tom Cruz okay no it's not gonna be Tom Cruz it's gonna be this guy and you keep doing that they're going to they're not going to feel like you're organized they're not going to feel like you have a Clear Vision they're just going to feel like you're just kind of grabbing grabbing for names to try to get whoever so I think that's really the the the big two right is like be clear on who you're pitching and why who you want to get there and keep it a short list you know you don't I mean you you might get a bunch of Nos and have to keep going further down your list but um be clear and frame it in terms of what's in it for that client like hey I have heard your client is trying toch out of Comedy into dramatic roles this is one there's also an opportunity they could be a prod you know they could be an executive producer on this and that's like music to a lot of actor's years sometimes they're like oh yes I want to be taken more seriously I would love a producer credit and I would love this dramatic role okay done so you have to kind of do a little research on those people and see like what do they want and then speak to that yeah absolutely and coming from a micro lowbudget side horror I would say that there's total value in going for a cult star someone who's been in something maybe they like you say they've not worked for a while or they've not ever sort of stepped out of that one role they're famous for but they've got a fan base who are you know committed and will go and see that person um AB that's a really good one especially if they've got kind of international Rec you know recognized internationally again that means when you're trying to sell it to different territories you're going to get uh going to get more interest from Distributors yeah um absolutely so taking you right back we're going back in time now and I'm asking the young Amy I'm going to tell the young Amy what she should know before she starts her career so what do you wish you'd know before you started wow um you know what's funny is I I think like where some kids like play house or play you know demestic kind of things I always played work I played film set and I played newspaper room and I like I was playing in The Newsroom and I had a little newspaper that I did I like I was always doing this so people when people say like why did you pick the you know this career path I'm like it kind of picked me it was kind of there I sort of woke up with it um but that said um I was raised in a fairly traditional environment in terms of gender roles and so I was probably a teenager before I ever really like saw women being very assertive and straightforward so there was a little bit of unlearning there and luckily that's just kind of who I am and so what used to feel like friction when I was was growing up because I was a little bit too straightforward and too unfiltered um has served me well but I wish I just got to it sooner I wish I just kind of had that backbone a little bit earlier in my career and I wish I would have trusted myself sooner because the the like at the end of the day everything is figureoutable and you can find a person that can answer it if you can if you absolutely cannot figure it out you can find a person there are Facebook groups for everything there's somebody that knows the answer to that if you really just can't figure this out out and I wish I would have just kind of trusted myself sooner that like hey it's figureoutable everything is and you you can do that you're a smart person and you can figure it out and uh you know because I think there's just so many messages especially for women um that you know you don't know you need to be polite you need to be liked like no you just need to get your work done actually I hope you enjoyed this week's episode if you want more advice from industry professionals who are out there at the moment working or or you just want to listen to some cool stories from film sets from around the world then please do subscribe
