Are You A Filmmaker? - Jason Eric Perlman

Do you believe that anyone can be a filmmaker? — I think it's easier now than it has been. I mean, in so far as the technology makes it available for anybody to virtually shoot something on an iPhone or a an iPad. So, there's a distinction between being a filmmaker in sort of an ontological way and then being just a tech technical filmmaker. I think in the being of a filmmaker that requires a certain artistry and training and something to say and you know I think everybody has that innately it's just if it's cultivated and if they can you know sort of figure out how to articulate their vision through moving image then sure but I you know I I think some have a better initial aptitude perhaps for the moving image and how to pair it with story. Um, but I guess technically nowadays a lot easier for almost anybody to pick up the craft than it was certainly in the film era. I mean, to get your hands on a film camera and go shoot something was almost impossible. But with digital, it's a lot more open playing field than it ever has been. [snorts] — What about fortitude? What about stick tuitiveness? Uh, the ability to take rejection. Yeah. That is something you can't teach. That is something that is just how your stone takes the chisel blows. You know how hard you are really. Um fortitude is the word for it because it takes a tremendous amount of time. I think in most cases for most filmmakers, it takes a long time to get noticed, to put something out there that uh gets you traction in the business or even in the audience sphere. Um, and that also because of the time it takes to cultivate your craft and your statement and your individuality as an artist of what you're trying to express. You take a lot of rejection, you know, people saying nasty things about your work and part of that is instructive and you pivot and part of it you take with a grain of salt and say, "Well, all right, you didn't like it, but I still said what I had to say. " So, you know, salt to taste. So fortitude and a resilience and a true understanding of the amount of time you may need to invest to come out of that gauntlet with a body of work and with a career that you can really kind of lean into for a a life [snorts] avocation is it's difficult. It's one of the more difficult things I think someone can try to do, — right? Similar to the music industry, I'm sure in some ways. What about the unknowns like the lack of guarantee or when one job, one fabulous job wraps? — Yeah. — Maybe never working for years. — Yeah. Well, you know, there's a lot of paths, life paths, degree paths, things like that are much more guaranteed arithmetic of outcome, right? If you get a certain degree in law or medicine or what have you, you can kind of go into that field and practice with a an expectation of salary and of increments of sort of how you progress. With film, there's zero of that. And that's true that's true in any of the arts to a degree. The interesting thing that's a little different I think in film and it might be a little bit more resonant with the music industry is at least there's sort of tow holds you can get at different crew levels and if you want to learn the craft by way of starting to learn camera and cinematography or you come through the back end of the pipe as an editor which is I spent a lot of time editing which I thought years ago taught me quite a bit about directing. Um there's different ways to be a filmmaker without necessarily just writing and directing and producing, you know, everything that you do. But having [snorts] a kaleidoscopic knowledge of the craft can allow you to work and be paid to work even as you're moving towards, you know, your ultimate goal of whatever it is in film making you want to do. Do you want to direct? produce? Do you want to do all of it? You know, what have you. So there's there's places you can land and still be working towards you know whatever your endgame really is. — What about film making at the highest levels? What do you think that takes? What does someone need? It's a different probably mindset and skill set than just hey I'm going to DIY this.

you need I think there's a I think there's an intersection of two very valuable things there. There's what we talked about earlier with just the fortitude and the conviction in your own merit and statement as an artist. You need that because you need to be able to go into, you know, highlevel film making with those stakes, with those responsibilities, with those potential pitfalls and feel confident and authorized of what you're doing. You're you're helming the ship, right? But I think what makes it harder and at the same time easier at that level is you do have you have the resource of let's say a studio or a larger production company that is bringing in finance. It's bringing in creative buffers to you and your work by way of a builtout crew and resources when there's a problem. So when you say the higher level of film making if you're talking about large you know industry higher budget movies as opposed to smaller DIY independents and things like that in a way I there's an easier aspect to it because you do have all that resource and armature around you that can help if there's a problem. you have you have shoulders for the weight and if you're doing an indie that is a bare knuckle barebones crew and it's like just you versus the elements and you know runand gun shooting style what have you. There's a lot more Murphy's law that you're exposed to. There's a lot more that can go wrong and there's a lot more you can't do about it because you don't have the finance. you don't have all the other people around you that can wear a hat and go put out this fire while you're trying to start another one. You know, it's so it can go both ways. Uh but I think to be at the highest level obviously not necess I mean there's no offense to anybody but there's certainly people who work at the highest level of the film business that I don't think are particularly talented especially as directors and so forth. They may be technicians, but you know, are they visionaries? Who knows? Um [clears throat] I think people who have a statement and something they're very decisive about saying in their art have an easier time of it doing it an independent film because that gets filtered through quite a bit at the industry, you know, broad audience level. Um but the tradeoff is you have some resource, you have some buffer which you don't have in independent. — Sure. And just wrapping up, there would probably be pressure at the highest levels to keep everyone happy, whereas when you're quote indie, you can kind of uh be sort of this um you know, sort of have a punk rock attitude that won't serve you in a Hollywood studio. — Yeah. Well, I think I think in the Hollywood studios, especially nowadays, because they're just part of a corporate pie, right? They're just one of the industries that these large multinational corporations have under their umbrella that the metrics of success are are largely financial, right? Did the movie perform well? Did it make its budget back? How much did it make back? Are they going to hire you again because you did well? If the movie tanked, are you ever going to get another job? So those stakes, you know, when they're only looking at success through kind of the metric of a consumer product, uh, is very different than in indie where indie often the metric of success is not necessarily even seeing any money back from a movie, but did you create the statement and put the piece into the world that you stand by and that is its own reward in that space, I What minimum skill set do you think people need to be a filmmaker? — I think the most important skill set, the sort of bedrock skill set for a filmmaker and why it stands alone as such a unique art form is how can you articulate story visually? How can you create a mood through visuals and paired with music often to create an overarching mood? Because the other art forms, whether you're a novelist or you're a painter or so forth, you're dealing with very narrow facets. You know, you're not dealing with this whole prismatic approach to telling a story with sound, with image, with editing. So the bedrock minimum I think is you have to have a visual

to you have to have a visual mindset towards story because you know if you have a very literal and very wordbased even though of course screenplay and dialogue they all play in but if you're a very kind of word associative thinker you might have a better aptit itude in something like writing novels because it is a visual medium and so often the most valuable scenes in any given film are the ones that are articulating almost all of their story through visual and through the feeling that comes from the visual. So I think the the sort of bedrock prerequisite of a skill set is to be a visual articulator, you know, um and how you learn that whether you start in photography or you shoot things on your phone or even if you come from pictorial arts and you can figure out, you know, what your aesthetic is in telling conveying information visually, then I think you already come into film with some of the most important nuts and bolts. — Well, just from doing research on you and speaking with you now, I see just an excellent set of like communication skills. — Do you think that always translates as well to film? Is that a different mindset or it's still the same thing? — I think it's valuable to be a good communicator when you are working with your team, right? to be able to convey something in in discourse is very important to get an idea translated or get to get something acted upon properly. But there's a double-edged sword. I mean, I think um you know, if I can criticize myself, I sometimes do get lost in words in my screenwriting. Sometimes there's too much said in a scene and we end up in the editing room deciding to peel out things that are better left to just a gesture conveying. But sometimes when you're in the screenwriting stage, you don't know how it's going to ultimately play visually, right? And sometimes an actor who who's great and just invested in their world, they can say what 10 sentences would convey with how they close or open a door, you know, and you don't know that till you see it. So, communication is vital when you're dealing with a film crew because so many people that have to be told so many different things to make it all gel. Um, and you got to do it quickly and and sharply. But, um, when it comes to storytelling itself, I still think you're better off having a visual first kind of mentality to how you articulate story because too much words, too much talking, too much leen in the dialogue can weigh it down. — Why do you believe you are a filmmaker? Um, [sighs] well, that's two there's two sides to that. It's uh do I define myself as such or how did I become what I believe is currently a filmmaker? Which aspect? — Oh, maybe both. Okay. — I'm sure both will be interesting. Um — well when I was very young um my first sort of creative gestures were as many kids are in pictorial art and I went through um I studied fine art from high school onward and had a bit of sort of natural inclination towards it and then I started uh pretty young learning music and and taking you know music lessons on a couple of instruments and once I got closer to finishing high school and I first was seeing, you know, obscure art or art films, you know, foreign films, some American filmmakers that really spoke to me, too. Um, I realized, all right, film is where you put it all together. You get the visual, you get the music, you get the mood flowing through time in a movie like you can't in any of the other art forms. So for me that set off a trigger of like this is how I can put all my interests into one creative basket even as daunting as trying to find your path doing it might be. But I guess now jumping ahead to now um I know and I think that I'm a filmmaker not just in action because I can substantiate that I make movies. So that sort of defines it one way, but I think it's more a thought process. Like I will be sitting in a

restaurant or I'll train station and I see an interaction and I think oh that would be really interesting to film like there's something that or I ear market is oh there's something there to look into a scene down the road or stick in a screenplay like something in the interaction if it's a gesture if it's something said if it's the way something looks in a certain light that sticks with me and it gets you know footnoted in back recess in my brain. So, I think I'm always thinking and I'm always perceiving the world through the lens of is this something? Is this a story to tell? Is this a scene to shoot? Is this an image I want to modify and come back to in a movie someday? So, you're always kind of just existing within the framework of thinking through the medium. And I think that, you know, that might be the better definition of knowing if you're a filmmaker or not. What attitudes about the business when you started out did you have that maybe changed as you went along? — You know, interestingly enough, um it actually moved more in a positive direction for me. I think there's so much [sighs and gasps] nasty and and uh sort of jaundest said about how the film world works, how the film business works. And there's certainly reason for that to be a stigma associated with it. We've seen plenty of downfalls of really corrupt people within it who've done horrible things and taken terrible advantage of people financially, physically, otherwise. There's plenty of that to have a bad taste in your mouth about what that business is like. But I find now having been doing this ever since getting out of grad school in the early 2000s that I I've met some of the greatest, most authentic, committed and intelligent people who work in this field and who really believe in the the impact that a great piece of cinema can have uh and that it's important and it is. So, you know, I think um yeah, there's always a bad apple. Sure. And there's plenty of underhanded financial dealing and legal slight of hand that's always kind of going on in different aspects of the business. But when you shake it all out and sort of sift the gold out of the pan, um there's really some remarkable people that you get to collaborate with and build collective imaginary worlds with and it's very rewarding at that. It's it I mean we just had a cast screening uh of my new film last night and I the emotionality of just reconnecting with some of the people you've worked with across some time because we shot that movie quite some time ago. Um you realize just how impactful your those relationships become and how deep of a little quasi family you become with those people through a project. And that is not something I ever really thought about when I was initially uh endeavoring to make movies. I didn't think about sort of the the human connection factor. Quite honestly, I thought about this is something I want to express. I love the art form. I love to watch it. Now I want to make it. Uh but I didn't think much and I was fairly young. So I probably didn't have the sort of the life experience to take on the fact that you the relationship and collaborative aspect of it within the matrices of the business is very rewarding when it gels properly. — What do you wish someone would have told you about the film industry or making movies when you first started? — That it overtakes your life. Um, it's not a hobby. It's not a diance. It's not something that just occupies this sort of sliver of your life wheel. It it's all consuming. It really is and it permeates every aspect of your life and almost time. Um, I it's an allconsuming venture. It's not like you can just, you know, when you're in the midst of making a movie, whatever, or a show, whatever stage you're in, even if you're ju just trying to get the thing to to get some wheels and start going, or if you're well into shooting, or if you're in editing and you're getting ready to finish it out there, it never stops. There's always it's a very needy baby.

and these days because of how things have changed in the business and I think have become more challenging for the creative side of things is you have to have a number of things going on at once because you never know when one thing is going to kind of catch fire and be your next project. So, you can't be myopic and just be like, I have this one thing and I'm going to put everything into that and just it's going to go my way because more often than not, you're surprised by what project kind of gets its traction. And you have to have multiple. And to do that is all consuming in a creative way because you always have to be working. cultivating what's next. You got to be writing. talking to people in the realms where things get made. finance years, production companies, agents, managers, whatever it is. And then when you're actually in the throws of creating something, I you don't get to just leave the office and turn off the phone. It's constant. It wakes you up in the middle of the night. There's things you forgot that you got to do. It it's [snorts] it it's pervasive. So, I guess had I known earlier on that, you know, there's a bit of a deal with the devil in terms of how much life it claims, [snorts] how much flesh it takes. Um, but you know when you get to see something come full born into existence and you it just started as a twinkle of imagination and now it exists and people can watch it and evaluate it. I it's kind of a remarkable thing to to bring into the world. Um, and that kind of makes it worth it, I guess. You know, it's really interesting the deal with the devil because it reminds me of an interview we did years ago with Sebastian Younger and he talked about men coming home from war or women too, forgive me, women as well. And that your levels are blown out. You're never the same. And on a in a very sort of crude way, and I and I'm not to disparrage anybody that's gone to war, but that it's almost the same with film making because you really just can't go back to the quote unquote normal. you've been you've sort of been in this weird battle and — it is a battle. I mean, I have heard people describe shoots a in such flowery ways and they that they had the most amazing time and everything went right and everybody was so wonderful to work with. And I listen, I I'm more than happy for them to have that experience. But I have not found that to be the case in in my personal uh endeavors that it is a battle and there are so many forces a and just physical laws of chaos that you're up against whether it's weather or illness or equipment. I mean interpersonal dynamics, you name it. It it's fraught, — right? But you said, yeah, making this deal with the devil and your levels are kind of blown out and then this weird thing takes over where you want to do it again. — Yeah, I know. Stockholm syndrome kind of. Yeah, I know. It's very true. — It's very true. You finish one out and you for you kind of forget all the trauma and you're just raring to jump into whatever's next. — What do you think would happen if you stopped making movies? I probably would live a little longer. I would probably have more peace and tranquility. Um, but I'm not so sure what I would do with that. Uh, I don't know. I think I would have that quietude set in and I would be like, I want to make something again. I, you know, it's an impulse that you can't really turn off. um if I didn't make movies, I've at lower points along the way, I've had to wrestle with that thought, you know, is there an off-ramp here of something that would be as uh gratifying and and feel as onetoone with who I really believe, you know, I am as a creative expressive person. Um, I didn't come up with any good answers, so I just kept kind of sticking it out. Thank you for watching the video all the way to the end. Here is a complimentary question from our book, Story Questions.