The Filmmaker’s Reset: Why Zero-Based Thinking Might Save Your Next Production
11 days ago • 10 min readI was chatting recently with a Producer friend who’d just wrapped a micro-budget feature. “You know what killed us?” he asked, “We spent half our budget on crew positions we didn’t actually need because, well, that’s what the call sheets always look like.” That got me thinking about something I’d heard called “zero-based thinking” - this idea of stepping back from how we’ve always done things and asking: if we were starting fresh, what would we actually need? It’s a concept that’s...
READ POSTRejection & Why We're Still Making This Damn Spy Movie
20 days ago • 8 min readIt's 5:30 AM. I'm on my second Americano, staring at the rejection email from Telefilm that landed yesterday. Three cups of coffee won't wash away the sting, but they might fuel the anger-typing that follows. Look, I'm not going to sugarcoat this. Getting that "Unfortunately..." email hit like a sucker punch to the gut. After six months of application prep, budget revisions, and endlessly tweaking that pitch deck - the suits in Toronto decided "The Quiet Canadians" doesn't deserve their...
READ POSTDefine Your Path: Using Jon Reiss' Framework to Set Meaningful Goals as an Independent Filmmaker
26 days ago • 9 min readSo you want to make a movie? Great! But here's the million-dollar question that most of us filmmakers skip right over in our excitement to get behind the camera: What exactly do you want to accomplish with your film? Trust me, I've been there. When we made "13 Miles," our triathlon-focused first feature, we were so focused on telling a great story that we hadn't fully clarified what success would actually look like beyond "finish the darn thing." It wasn't until later that we realized how...
READ POSTThe 0–150 Email List Test: Validate Your Film/TV Idea Before You Write.
about 1 month ago • 18 min readWhy gathering 150 interested fans can save you months of wasted work. Okay, this week, I'm giving you something hopefully you can use. We’ve all heard horror stories of filmmakers spending a year writing a script or shooting a proof-of-concept only to discover nobody cares. One way to avoid that fate is to test your idea first, before you write a single scene. The “0–150 email list test” does exactly that: it asks you to build a small mailing list – up to about 150 people – who are genuinely...
READ POSTScrew Perfect. Just Make the Damn Movie. (And Then Make Another One.)
about 2 months ago • 16 min readWhy Volume Beats Perfection—And How Indie Filmmakers Can Build a Sustainable Career One Movie at a Time I've been on a bit of a soap box the past couple of weeks, admittedly. It's because I’ve got a confession: for years I chased the “perfect” film. You know, the One: waiting for the right pieces, circumstances, people, etc. for the perfect movie that would launch my career like a rocket. I polished scripts until they fell apart, waited for ideal conditions (spoiler: they never came), and...
READ POSTBeyond the Frame – April 2025: Happy National Canadian Film Day!
about 2 months ago • 5 min readApril, 16 2025 From the Producers’ Chair Hello Reader, Today is National Canadian Film Day—a moment to pause and recognize the incredible stories born here, told here, and shared with the world. And it’s a perfect day to send this update because The Quiet Canadians—our next film—is more than just a movie. It’s a declaration of how we believe films should be made: • With clarity of purpose. • With a committed audience from day one. • And with a whole lot of Canadian grit and ambition and some...
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