64 ways to try non-dependent filmmaking & free yourself from Hollywood
Small, not insignificant actions.
Never have I ever been inspired by the refrain: “You can make a movie with the phone in your pocket!”
Yes, sure, you can do that. Kind of.
Making a movie on your phone, while completely possible, is also only one step in the multi-step life cycle of a film. If all you had to do was make the movie, then every completed film — whether filmed on an iPhone or a Red — would give the filmmaker a sustainable career.
But we know that’s not the case.
The filmmaker needs distribution, marketing, financing, the ability to reach an audience, context for their work, opportunities to fail and iterate without career-demise, and a culture that values (and has access to and can find) their work.
This “make a movie on your phone” advice prizes the highly individualized act of execution as the only thing standing between you and a sustainable career, but misses the bigger, more fundamental truth:
Sustainability is a product of a healthy ecosystem.
Truly sustainable careers do not happen in a vacuum. A completed movie is all well and good, and can represent a lot of wonderful things, but prioritizing individualistic thinking will not save us from mergers, deviously programmed machines, or economic injustice.
But the collective, redirecting its efforts toward a healthier ecosystem for all, will.
Or at least, it might.
NonDē: Instructions for Transformation
Rebecca Solnit, national treasure, writes in her new book The Beginning Comes After the End:
“Ideas have power, and while those who support them often dismiss that power, those who fear them recognize they can change the world…Ideas are seeds in that they are beginnings, if they succeed, they do so as they take on more tangible and concrete forms. They become how the world is, how we do things, they guide our practical actions, whether it’s our relationships to each other or the land. Seeds—or imaginal cells, the instructions for transformation.”
Non-dependence (or NonDē for short) is one such seed. It’s one set of instructions for transforming the world around us.
It’s championed by the greats, written about in the mags, and exercised by a growing chorus of filmmakers from across the globe, many of whom are convening here on FilmStack.
And yet, you’d be forgiven for not knowing where to start. Solnit writes:
“We inhabit and inherit a world that has changed bit by bit, in ways so vast and so varied, in so many spheres of everyday life, that the transformation has hardly been described.”
Which is to say, this wave of non-dependence is already well underway, but the ways it’s changing the world is, as Solnit says, “so vast and so varied” that it’s hard to see.
Non-dependence is a philosophy, a political action, and a framework. There is not ONE place to exercise it, there are many. There is not ONE path to non-dependence, there are many. That multiplicity makes it tricky to see.
Sometimes you can only see the shape of these “vast and varied” changes by noticing an onslaught of self-serving critiques, diss tracks, or political backlash. Solnit points out:
“Cruelty, greed, and division are not new, but when the old order that institutionalized them is threatened, its beneficiaries come out fighting to hold onto advantages that used to go unquestioned.”
Nevertheless, the new order is on its way.
And it’s due to a deluge of new thinking from every corner.
It will never be one film or one voice or one leader or one project or one geographic location or one tactic or one box office hit that transforms the cinematic ecosystem around us. It will be all of those things, everywhere, all at once, and in reaction to each other, formulating a cosmic soup of a new ecosystem.
Solnit reflects on how transformational change actually occurs:
“…underlying most of [this change] is a shift toward the idea that everything is connected, that the world is a network of interrelated systems, that the isolated individual is at best a fiction, and that the natural and social realms run more on collaboration and cooperation than competition.”
So Then: How to Try On Non-Dependence for Size
I wrote a whole series about the political philosophy of non-dependence here. But let’s say you skip all that and come back to it later.
How might you, Dear Reader, try out non-dependence today? How might you start to see the possibilities open up at your feet even while you’re one full foot in with Hollywood? How might you make your next move in this newly forming ecosystem?
Pausing here to say: You don’t need to “commit” to non-dependence in order to simply consider it. Truly.
You can test out this philosophy of filmmaking in small ways, see how it feels, and take it or leave it. Don’t ever forget: you are a sovereign being. Do whatever you want!
So with that in mind, below you’ll find 64 ways to “try out” non-dependence.
They’re organized by:
LIGHTEST LIFT — No one has to know you’re thinking about non-dependence. You can simply do some reading, some thinking, some tinkering. You can open up to the values of non-dependence in the smallest, least confronting way possible.
MEDIUM LIFT — You dip your toe into it. You move from lurker to participant. You may join a group, or interrogate your own values, or do some social research to deepen your understanding of the movement.
HEAVIEST LIFT — You try some experiments and you might even figure out how to type that ē1 on your keyboard. You want to give this a go. It might not work, but you’re excited to try something new.
It feels implicit in what I’ve written so far, but just in case it’s not: the following 64 examples of actions you can take are merely suggestions. Nothing is prescriptive. And this list certainly isn’t exhaustive.
Here’s how I’d recommend going through the following list:
Highlight the actions that strike your curiosity.
Copy/paste them into your own doc.
Notice if there is any common thread.
Come up2 with 4-5 other actions within that common thread.
Try one out by the end of the week.
Or, don’t! No wrong answers here. Just go with your gut.
LIGHTEST LIFT
Introduce two other filmmakers to each other and exit the conversation. Giving more than you take takes practice.
Record “why you click play” every time you choose to watch something for a week. It’ll give you a lot of insight about the state of audiences.
Get into meetings and/or webinars and IRL meetups to overhear the conversations happening in the NonDē space.
Rent films on Kinema.
Research the New Hollywood Era.
Track your own data!!!! From your socials to email to your film to everything. Know thyself and thyself’s stats.
Read about the state of the industry on The Ankler.
Start an email list. Even if you don’t send out a newsletter, at least get an Email Service Provider and collect email addresses from your audience directly.
Don’t attempt “brand coherence” just be curious and be real.
Evolve your filmmaking identity out loud without over-explaining. You’re allowed to change and the more you swerve, the more you guard against AI ripping you off.
Read Rebecca Solnit’s The Beginning Comes After the End.
Watch 12 Angry Men as a case study for a (mainly) single location film.
Start an Are.na board with film images you never see on screen and you wish you saw on screen.
Read this primer on NonDē from FilmStack Deep Dive.
Subscribe to FilmStack Daily Digest to learn what’s happening on the ‘Stack.
Get recommendations from Film Soup Zine for what to watch next.
Use George Saunders’ A Swim in a Pond in the Rain to develop your taste.
Set up a Notion rolodex of everyone you’ve had 1:1 chats with this year and everyone you want to speak with soon.
Watch Charlie Kaufman’s BAFTA lecture. (Or read the transcript.)
Read Octavia Butler’s A Few Rules for Predicting the Future essay.
MEDIUM LIFT
Write a manifesto. Take a look at Dario Llinares’ description of Manifesto Thinking in this three part series to get inspired.
Interview another filmmaker about their latest project.
Infiltrate your local film club. Make friends.
Take your work off YouTube. (!!!) Before you get angry, I have my work on YT. I have no judgments here. But if you make it harder to find (as Richard Rushfield suggests as a marketing tactic) you might come up with some new distribution strategies that are less about virality, and more about depth.
Learn and/or uplevel your copywriting. (Don’t outsource this to AI.)
Join forces with a collective of filmmakers. (Groups like the NonDē 50 Films Project, the micro-budget collective at University of North Georgia, Blended Future Project, and more exist everywhere. Tag in!)
Embrace failure as information and only information.
Use social media as a reminder service for your already engaged community, not the main marketing event.
Define the future you want. Easier said than done.
Talk to your friends and family about blocking the merger.
Ask a fellow filmmaker you genuinely like to chat.
Speak with a film journalist or critic about what they like to watch and why.
Start tracking your films’ stats beyond their box office numbers.
Interview a content creator about their revenue engines.
Get email addresses at every single screening of your film.
Do a table read with some of your NonDē allies.
Set up a DFOS with your production team, a group you’ve already started, or start a new collective now.
Identify 2-3 goals or metrics of success for every marketing action you take.
Define 3-5 target demographics for your film beginning in development. Keep adding on as you discover more of your theme, details of production, and story lines.
Use Margaret Fuller’s pedagogical framework “Conversations” for building out community screening programming.
HEAVIEST LIFT
Set up a digital screening series of your favorite shorts.
Conduct market research with your audience.
Re-release your archives with a refreshed marketing campaign.
Sell out MSG! (Okay okay, that’s cheeky. But Vulfpeck is a great inspiration when it comes to non-dependence. Because… they booked & sold out MSG… by themselves.)
Cultivate a repertory group — cast, crew, collaborators.
Develop 7+ revenue streams.
Treat investors as collaborators and figure out new ways for them to
investcollaborate.Try out worker-owned profit sharing for your next project.
Talk to your local politicians about funding a local screening series.
Cultivate unlikely financial partners with industries that don’t typically invest in film.
Make a no-budget short and use it to kick off your community screening events.
Experiment with slate financing or crowdfunding with your allies and collaborators.
Host a filmmaker dinner party.
Host an audience dinner party and conduct market research in conversation.
Find an alternative venue in your city and screen your film there.
Pitch a new screening series to your local theatre or comedy space.
Pitch your past work to screen at book clubs.
Put together a collective label of filmmakers who believe in the same kind of movies.
Interview current film students about what they’re learning and create a curriculum to fill the gaps.
A note about where we’re going
It would be very human of you to need to know where each of these actions would lead before you take them.
It would be very human of you to feel unequipped to action until you had clarified the exact results you were trying to achieve. I deeply relate to that.
And still…
Solnit leaves us with something else very human. The truth that, for change to happen, we must act despite not knowing everything first. She advises (bolding mine):
“This is a reminder that you do not have to picture the destination to reach it or at least draw closer to it, you just need to choose a direction and keep on walking…the process itself creates it and covers the distance between the idea and the actuality.”
The process is the thing.
The most human thing.
The most natural thing.
And if you find yourself in the process of non-dependent filmmaking, not quite sure where you’re headed, but walking nonetheless, you can trust that every step is building a new world.
Free Workshop Coming Up: Town Hall on Lore-Building and Marketing that Doesn’t Suck
Want to talk more about how to market your non-dependent film? Let’s discuss.
WHEN: Monday April 20th, 11a PST / 2p EST / 7p GMT
WHERE: Zoom!
WHAT: Town Hall style. I’ll give a brief introduction about lore-building and then you are free to ask me any questions you have about marketing your current projects.
REGISTER: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/cXDTG3A-ScadW1cjKvESVg
Feeling NonDē curious? Quick Ways to Get Started in the NonDē Film Movement ahead »
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Read about the New Film Criticism and subscribe to a swath of amazing film critics who don’t just introduce us to new work, but also help us think and write about films in an altogether fresh, original, personal way. Check out Film Soup Zine run by KLA Media Group and C. C. Simmons who will be reviewing specifically-NonDē films.
Join the NonDē 50 Films Project by signing up here and checking out the dashboard here.
Start talking about it. Let’s bring these ideas into the conversation. At first people will say we can’t do it. That’s fine, let’s talk about it. Let’s bring these big ideas into the rooms with us.
Discuss with your team. Be the leader on your production team and bring non-FilmStack filmmakers into the fold. Share resources and posts with them about how to do things differently.
Share about the NonDē Film Movement far and wide. A better world is inevitable if we make it so.
Read the entire NonDē series:
Went to Slamdance, and all I got was renewed faith in the future of film
The (not so) hidden agenda of non-dependent film (part 1 of 3)
The love of the game is a power move (part 2 of 3)
Who gets to speak about the future of film? (part 3 of 3)
Long hold the e + press 7. :)
I recommend you don’t use AI here. The ideas you will come up with by simply sitting with your thoughts will be far more compellling.
Bookmarked thank you for making this
That’s really exciting! I hadn’t heard this term before, and it feels so liberating and inspiring that there’s a whole community doing this.