Everything I Wish I’d Known About Indie Film Producing

It's been a lifetime (or two, for my 3yo daughter) since Unicornland came out, but I'm still frequently contacted by budding indie film/digital series creators looking for advice. 

Back in ye olde 2016, self-producing was a little more stigmatized (“Your own money?! What if no one watches it?”) and a little more technically challenging. In this creator economy, it’s now expected for dramatic writers to self-produce. But no amount of streaming apps or smartphone camera K can overcome the inertia that takes root when embarking on The Big Project. 

I’m not going to say it’s easy. Producing Unicornland damn near killed me. But independently self-producing your feature, short, or digital series in a big city like NYC is possible. You can even make it schwank, I promise.  

1. Determine your Organizing Principle

Why are you doing this? For clout? For your writing/directing portfolio? To get into a specific web/film festival? For a proof-of-concept for a feature film? For fun*? Establishing your main goal at the outset may seem dry and corporate, but is actually a necessary bottle for the lightning that is your brilliance. Consider all the creatives and business-people (and rich uncles) you’ll be pitching: each has their own level of experience (ie wariness) with indie film producing, and their own goal for why they’re getting involved. If you don’t set the tone with Your Organizing Principle, you will quickly get swept up in theirs, usually without even knowing it. 

Being frank about your goal means being realistic, cold and clinical about who you are. This can be a tough conversation to have with yourself or, if you’re lucky, an early-stage collaborator. It involves humility in coming to terms with the reality of your paltry budget, or that you’ve never even done this before. It also involves bravado; acknowledging your naked ambition to be famous or win Tribeca or blow a small fortune on the perfect camera for the (12-second) shot of your dreams. It involves taking a hard look at your script and your resources (relationships, money, talent) and figuring out how to optimize. 

*Spoiler - This is not a punchline. Fun should be #2 on your list of principles. It is paramount to  remind yourself you’re here for good time not a long time. No one is saving lives. Your #1 goal is, no matter the passion, drive, industry connections and talent fueling it, unlikely. Prioritizing fun means you’ll make friends, learn some things, and look back on this with a smile. 

2. Hire a Good Producer (hint - it's probably you)

If you have the budget to hire an experienced producer–and you’ve called their references and reviewed their preliminary/final budgets–go for it. But yes, you can and should produce this yourself. It’s both harder and easier than hiring someone. Honestly, I know about as much about what you don’t know as you do, so you’ll have to figure it out for yourself. In the event that your budget won’t accommodate hiring someone who has done this at least once before–or you don’t have a collaborator who’s bought into the passion, here are some of the dumbest things we did, that our producer (who, in truth, caused some of them) helped solve: 

• The owner of one of our locations, a personal friend, didn’t realize that her coop prohibited shoots. We learned this several months later, when she was issued with a fine. But even before the fine, this was a challenging location. Shooting is LOUD and prewar NYC coops aren’t known for their sound-proofing. Her difficult downstairs neighbor banged on the door and ceiling throughout the day–at one point for 20 minutes straight. We tried to reason with her; every time she banged, we had to start the scene from the beginning, thus making her day (and ours) much longer. At 10.30pm, after hours of banging and negotiating, she stormed off. We hustled to finish the final scene, and were minutes from wrapping when the cops showed up. Our producer–a Norther European former investment banker who’d handled his share of screamers–stayed calm while the neighbor pitched such a fit of hysterics that the cops apologized to US and left! The thing was, she was in the right. The fact that we needed 10 more minutes was irrelevant; our presence in the building was unlawful. When friends offer their NYC apartments for your film shoots, double check the building rules before loading in a truck’s worth of equipment and a 20-person crew. Or bring in minimal equipment and a skeleton crew. 

• Our X foot truck, carrying $15K worth of rented equipment–drove into a X-2ft tunnel. A metal bar installed in the ceiling of the tunnel sliced into the truck like a can opener. 

• Lost a key location on the day before the shoot; had to bribe the superintendent to secure a replacement location. 

• Surprise Taxes! Did you know that all freelancers paid more than $650 need to file income? I didn't! This was a fun surprise in March of the following year (at which point I was in the ICU -- see the "Breaking My Back" story)

3. Cast Your Community

Big gets might bring more eyes–might–only if they actually post about the show on social media, which they aren’t necessarily inclined to do because it’s just a job to them. They’re also extremely expensive, eating your tiny budget up. Cast from your community; see off-off-off Broadway shows and approach actors personally. Make friends on Twitter/TikTok. You want the cast to be a little family, like a play; that’s the best way to create good chemistry with actors when you don’t have a lot of rehearsal time, and it also yields marketing benefits - actors feel more connected to the project and are more likely to post about it and invite their networks. 

4. Establish a public budget and a private budget 

Budget is obvious - how much money you want to spend. There are lots of free budgeting tools online like this app, or this app, or these templates. Please please please don’t ask your mentor/friend/me to see their budget. My organizing principle, values, and context is completely different from yours. Build your public budget from scratch. It will help you reckon with your values and circles back to your organizing principle. 

A public budget is the budget you share and talk about. When potential collaborators ask how much, you give them numbers from the public budget. The private budget is closer to what it’s actually going to cost; anywhere from 1/3+++++ more than the public. The private budget is one you open when your dream DP tells you their rate, and it’s above what you've offered but not completely out of the realm of possibility. Or when you lose a location last-minute and decide it's easier to spring for a hotel room than hustle your friends for in-kind donated space. Or when your gaffer tells you a disco ball/laser would *really* sell that club scene. It really all comes back to the organizing principle, and what wild extravagances are worth it to you. Not having a private budget means that when all these things happen at once, you can prioritize. Trust me; it will save you in the long run. 

Both the public and the private budgets must have an unallocated contingency fund of 15%. This must not be touched until at least half-way through shooting.

5. Start marketing ASAP

Maybe this doesn’t need to be said now (2023) but the internet was churning pretty hard back in 2016 and this still went by the wayside. It’s easy to forget about marketing when you’re creating. Marketing (documentation for social media posts, networking, building content around the content) feels like the bad kind of work. Creating, however, is the good kind of work. The exciting kind. Telling stories! Making magic! Dreams coming alive! In fact, marketing IS creating. Chances are that you want people to watch your film/series when it’s produced. Which people? Do they know about it already? Have they been excited for months? Or better yet, bought in?! 

Social media, blog posts, talking about your nascent project at social events (aka networking), crowdfunding…these are time-consuming and often feel fake, but they create a story around your project that ties it into a larger narrative of human experience. Also, talking about it helps you pitch/sell. Posting about it helps you write and direct in new mediums. Documentation is research in human behavior. My dudes, that sounds a lot like making art. 

6. Give no shit; take no shit

I’d say this is a shitty business, but it’s not a business at all, just a bazillion confidence wo/men in search of an industry. We are all simultaneously self-conscious of our tender, sensitive souls, while hustling hard, cutting through swathes of haters in a really tough environment. People get hurt and do hurtful things because they’re hurt. Once the project blinders are on, we forget that “Haters” are often–not always, but often–people who love and support us enough to share difficult truths. Because YOU initiated the project, YOU are responsible for setting the tone. Establishing a culture of respect through your words and actions sends a powerful message. That everyone involved is seen and valued. That you don’t take your work more seriously than the time and welfare of those around you. That your dream is a dream for Us, not just for you. If you are not paying people, this is extremely important. If you are, it is just as important. And it goes both ways; Give no shit and take no shit. 

Give No Shit Anecdote: For reasons I’ll get into below, I was a basketcase during post-production. To make matters worse, when editing finally began I was living in a different state. I would call the director every day and send constant text messages. Every cut he shared, I’d respond with a litany of notes. When he failed to respond, I’d call/message the editor. What was going on? Had they seen my notes? Why weren’t they listening to me? Eventually the director called me on this: Enough. He was the Director. A year ago, I had entrusted him with this project, and he had more than proved himself. He gave me a list of hard limits–no texting after 10pm, no repeated notes/emails, etc–and I ate my humble pie and followed them. Nick, I’m still sorry for what I put you through. You are an exceptional director, and Unicornland never would have happened without you. 

Take No Shit Anecdote: At the beginning of Unicornland, I was very self-conscious about my lack of experience in indie film. In interviews with DPs and ADs, I pivoted from questions about my on-set experience by posturing about being a produced playwright, an alum of Youngblood and some fancy residencies (that no one outside of my niche knew or cared about). We hired a key crew member we found wildly talented, but the honeymoon period was brief. They denounced the script, were impossible to schedule, demanded to hire their friends as the crew, and insisted on a specific camera and lights/lens package. The BS continued on set - they were sarcastic about budgetary constraints, snarked openly about my lack of experience, and mutinied against the director’s process. It became clear why they wanted that camera when we found out they’d “borrowed” it one weekend for a personal shoot. Because I was so concerned about seeming like a knowledgeable producer, I froze in these instances. I didn’t want them to know I needed them, but I also didn’t know how to handle their disrespect. We got all our shots, but it was miserable and arduous and the air was thick with mistrust. 

Later, a producer friend–far more experienced than me–said she would have fired the crew member on the spot for snark. Yes, there’d be a loss of time, money, location hours, but those things can be bought. Respect, once lost, is gone forever. 

7. Pre-production includes post-production

Maybe you are–like I was–a playwright and budding screenwriter, ie not someone with technical cinematic or digital skills. Maybe you think–like I thought–that a script and some gumption would get the job done. Please, please learn from my mistake. 

Filmmaking is an Art that marries the techniques of Dramatic Storytelling (dialogue, plot, character, theme etc) with Technology. Each step of filmmaking, including location scouting, electric checks, room tone, lighting set ups, gaffing, digital image transfer, truck fire watch, string ups, syncing footage to sound, editing, mixing, color correction, credit animation, music licensing etc etc is a fundamental part of the technological process. Each requires precise planning for the Art to happen. Each, if ignored, will bite you in the ass. You can plan to disinclude something, but then you’ll need a plan for what to do instead. 

Anecdote: After our 8 day shoot completed in March, we had 5 drives of footage…and no editor hired. We interviewed editors and realized that our final $5K was not only not enough to hire an editor, but we also needed to hire more people. Fine, I thought, I’ll do it myself. After 8 hours of syncing footage (there are some cameras that allow for automatic syncing of sound to photo footage; we did not use one of those cameras), I broke down. We made a new post-production budget then launched a Kickstarter campaign for post-production funds. By September, we had the funds and the team in place. March to September may not seem like a long delay; consider that I had spent all my savings and was in debt for a project that–due to a lack of forethought–might now never be completed. Once editing began, it took another 4 months before all 8-episodes of the series; 45 minutes in total–was complete. By January 2017, my panic-attack rate was approximately 1 per day. We launched successfully (unprecedentedly successfully according to our PR rep) but it would not be hyperbolic to say that this phase of the process broke my back. 

There’s a lot more to share, but much of it was specific to my organizing principle and circumstances. Things like film festival strategies, working with/out PR reps, working with/out SAG/AFTRA, music licensing were all major headaches that we learned about the hard way. This is, of course, assuming that you know the difference between a delightful script/concept vs one that’s worthy of devoting your entire savings and the next two years of your life…But that’s what’s so special about self-producing. Everything you learn is yours to keep. It will make you a stronger writer, a savvier producer, and a bigger mensch. 

I hope I haven’t deterred anyone. Producing Unicornland was the experience/achievement of a lifetime, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Well, maybe my T12 vertebra. 

Feel free to reach out with more questions, and I’ll add to this post. Godspeed!