Biggest Challenges Faced By A Filmmaker At Humanist Films

If you become a filmmaker, you're usually independent before you become "made." I say "made" like a gangster "made," where you get into the studio system. You're making big films, highly budgeted, working with giant teams of people.

Most of the time, you start off as an independent. Many independent filmmakers wear that designation as a badge of pride, knowing that's how they started. They did it themselves.

The toughest thing about being an independent filmmaker, and filmmaking in general, is how to accept and turn rejection into something positive. You constantly face rejection. You apply for grants or try to get people to donate to your project.

People will constantly say no. You'll talk to people you want to work with, your team, and they're either busy or you can't pay them enough, or what they deserve. That's always hard.

You finish a project and it doesn't get acclaim. It doesn't connect with anybody. You put your all into a film, and when you share it with someone and it doesn't connect, that feels bad.

It might not get accepted into festivals, win awards, get critical acclaim, or find distribution or a way to sell it. These are all things you have to deal with as a filmmaker on a daily basis.

Sometimes I receive, I laugh with my wife that I got three rejections in a day from different festivals. But you temper that with the successes you have.

Perhaps the more real thing to temper it with is the joy you receive in making the film. You can't really control your success, but you can control the happiness you receive from doing that art form.

It's difficult to deal with rejection as a human being if you're constantly facing it. I don't think in normal work situations, artists have to deal with rejection as much as other types of work.

But it's about how you turn that negative into a positive, how it makes you stronger, how you essentially disregard it. It can help you critically. You figure out what you need to do to improve, but it doesn't define who you are as a filmmaker.

Often, as a young person, you don't believe in your own voice, your own developing voice. As you grow older, you become more self-assured that your voice means something and is unique in the world. You foster that, allow it to grow, and mature.

Even if someone doesn't like it, it is still your own. It is still important.

One of the best compliments I've received over the years is, "Thank you for making this film." It's not an award-winning film or a money-making film. Someone felt it was important enough for you to make, that it was valuable to them, and they thanked you for it. That has been one of the greatest things I've received.