At the Nevada Film Office, we are asked one question more than any other single inquiry:  Where can I get funding?  Indie filmmakers with shorts and full-length features, writer/producer individuals and teams, people with a script, people with a pitch, people with a bare-bones concept, people with just a dream… They all want to know how to get someone to give them the money so they can make their dreams a reality.  We share info that ranges from seeking investors to finding foundations to attending workshops on getting grants to asking friends and family for help to various other brainstorming techniques!  But perhaps, lately, the best advice we’ve heard out there in the indie world is:  just do it – on a shoestring, on your own -- and do it right away, don’t waste any more time. To paraphrase the movie “Jerry Maguire,” Show YOURSELF the Money!

If you’ve been waiting for funding (and waiting, and waiting, and waiting…) to make your media project a reality, it’s time to take matters into your own hands.  How?  Save, borrow, hit up the folks, work an extra job, or otherwise somehow scrape together a few thousand dollars cash and invest in the tools you need.  Whether a screenwriting program that handles all the dotting-of-the-I’s-crossing-of-the-T’s, or a good quality ProSumer DV camera or a G5 computer with Final Cut Pro editing software, or similar products, and dedicate yourself to making the time to learn the process.  Dedicate yourself to doing the absolute most you can with the absolute least out of pocket expense, but do something.  As the old cliché’ goes:  The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

New media has created a true paradigm shift when it comes to low-cost tools for scriptwriting, shooting, editing, scoring, animation, special effects, etc.  NOTE:  let me clamp the brakes on that rushing train of thought for just a moment:  Going out and buying a scapel and a pair of rubber gloves will not make you a surgeon.  If you want to have a short or a feature film you can enter into Sundance, you can’t make poor quality, amateurish home movies.  If you want to make an MTV-worthy music video or an award-winning documentary or a hysterically funny mockumentary or a historical introspective or a docudrama, etc, you have to do your homework. You must learn the craft and the art form, the structure and industry-standard requirements. 

Learn everything you can from checking out books in the library or taking affordable night classes at CCSN or UNLV (example:  CCSN’s Final Cut Pro “Bootcamp,” less than $60 for five super-intensive training classes on how to cut together your footage).  There is a brave new world technoforming for right-brain creatives willing to be hardy pioneers and work the landscape of the mind.  Instead of seeking someone else’s bankroll for a half million dollars, take a look at aligning yourself with a technical partner who can be the production yin to your creative yang.  Form an alliance with a video production company where you trade your labor for their tools: scriptwriting jobs for equipment use of cameras, audio, lights, etc. to shoot your project.  Be a grip or a gaffer or a gopher in your spare time and build up markers rather than taking a paycheck.  Apply that credit to production resources, post-production edit time, etc.  Wheel and deal with in-kind services!  Do “rough draft” offline work on your raw footage yourself to save hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars that would otherwise be paid to an editor.

On the simplest end of this spectrum, people are trying their hand at posting video productions on line to see what sort of feedback they get.  That’s one way to test the water and see how others critique your work (although it will open you up to divulging a unique concept or idea that someone else may take and run with…)  Startup new media entrepreneurs such as ClipShack, Vimeo, YouTube and Blip.tv are allowing makers of homemade films to distribute their work for free online and otherwise, and they hope to make their money through ads and by charging fees for premium services.  

Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus who will bring you presents and shower you with gifts:  YOU, yourself, with ingenuity and perseverance and the sweat of your brow and flexible problem-solving, and by learning how to use the creative and innovative wondertools out there today which will let you grab hold of your destiny as a media mogul…  Go chase that dream!

For more information on the Nevada Film Office contact:

Jeanne D. Corcoran

E-Mail:  jdcorcor@bizopp.state.nv

Direct line:  (702) 486-2713