February 21, 2010
I am in Chicago and I just finished up speaking at the SEA (Self Employed Artists) Conference. It was great I had standing room only for one of my workshops and the other one was pretty full. A great conference and a great group of people, I am glad they invited me. I look forward to coming back next year.
I will be in Chicago all week doing guest lectures at Columbia and Northwestern. It should be fun.
I am booking for the Spring and still have a few holes in my schedule. Contact me at angryfilminfo@aol.com and let’s see what we can work out.
Here is a sample from my book The Angry Filmmaker Survival Guide Part One: Making The Extreme No Budget Film.
“When I first got into the business, my accountant gave me some very prudent tax advice in November: “tell your clients not to pay you until after the first of the year. Then take out a loan for 90 days and invest in equipment. Then after the first of the year, you can pay off the loans with the money you’re owed. Take the tax deduction for the previous year, and you’ll be in good shape.” It made sense to me and everyone else I talked to
because we all went to art school! I almost went bust because of that advice!
Right after I bought all of that equipment, business dropped off severely. The film business can be seasonal, especially if you are outside of LA. In Portland, it usually dies off around Thanksgiving and doesn’t start picking up again until mid- to late February. Sometimes it stays busy through the end of the year, but don’t count on it.
A lot of the corporate and commercial people who hire us need to get things done and money spent before the end of their fiscal year. Then they take the holidays off. Why not? They have steady salaries. After the first of the year, they need to put together budgets and plan for the rest of the year. This is a cycle I have seen over and over. There have been exceptions to this, but rarely.
By the time I got paid on what I was owed, I had other debts that accumulated, and guess what, gang? Banks will not loan you money when you need it! They only loan you money when you have money. (Don’t get me started here, I hate bankers.)
Anyway, I spent nine months in hell trying to pay my bills, and I had a bunch of equipment that suddenly felt like a burden.
The upshot of all of this is:
DON’T LISTEN TO BULLSHIT MONEY PEOPLE!”
The Angry Filmmaker Survival Guide Part One: Making The Extreme No Budget Film. It’s full of things to help you make your film. So why haven’t you bought it!
Go to my site, (www.angryfilmmaker.com) and buy it for a mere $13.50 + $3 S&H. (It is still on special) You’ll feel better about yourself in the morning.
Go check out some of my friends blogs, there is some pretty cool stuff in them…
John Gaspard – http://fastcheapmoviethoughts.blogspot.com/
William Akers – http://yourscreenplaysucks.wordpress.com/
Nic Brown – http://bmovieman.com/default.aspx
Jon Ashby – http://www.filmrogue.com/
I’ll add more next time, but if you’re not reading these guys you’re not learning anything.
Don’t forget to check out my tour sponsors, Show Biz Software, (www.showbizsoftware.com), Pollard Design (www.pollarddesign.com), Zoom Creates (www.zoomcreates.com), and Cheezy Flicks (www.cheezyflicks.com ). If you haven’t checked out their sites and their services, you better.
Film Slug, (www.filmslug.com) will be up and running soon, but more about them later…
As always, feel free to link to my site and you can subscribe to my blog. So what are you waiting for?
Talk later.
Kelley
Angry Filmmaker Rants 