If you’re doing anything in film right now, over the past year or so, you’ve probably come across a plethora of posts and threads written by filmmakers bemoaning the broken model of independent filmmaking today.
If you can even raise a budget to make a film, how do you even break even once you’ve completed it? Unless you’re friends with an A lister or B lister or your uncle’s a billionaire, you’re pretty much consigned to the graveyard of filmmakers who give up having bet their house on their passion project. So goes the tenor of these observations.
But could there be an alternative to this picture of gloom and doom? Recently I came across a filmmaker who not only thinks there is, he’s proving there is. For his film Woodbridge, writer, producer director Stephen Meier had the inspired idea to cast influencers who could act. Why is that a smart idea? Because these influencers have a big and dedicated following.
I got together with Stephen to find out more about his business strategy and of course his journey from script to screen and beyond.