Don’t you think your stance is a little pretentious? You have to enter material into a film festival in order for it to be worthwhile? I think just the opposite. I think the boom of Youtube and Vimeo have given filmmakers an amazing tool to get their work in front of many more people. I work for a large non profit and we’ve entered documentaries into film festivals. i think putting the same documentaries on Youtube and Vimeo give me and this organization a better chance at having out work seen. Film festivals are completely subjective. You have judges who determine whether your work is good enough to even make it in. On Youtube and Vimeo there is no one deciding what people will or won’t see. it’s up to the viewer themselves. I’ll take that model any day of the week.

SMR isn’t for everyone, that’s for sure, but you can’t hope to please everyone with what you do. I seem to have angered you somewhat and for that I apologise. Dig a little deeper and hopefully you’ll find some other pieces of work that I’ve done which may meet your criteria of ‘saying something’. For me, given that I’m working in satire, I’d argue you that Super Massive Raver says a great deal about the state of celebrity culture in the UK at the moment. But that’s just my point of view as the filmmaker. Right now, I think the festival system is antiquated and hasn’t changed much to reflect the way young filmmakers need to be supported. Great people like Future Shorts are an exception and have really taken great strides to address this and should be applauded for it.

I’ve never ever said I was better than anyone, and if you think I lack humility then thats a shame. I’m very well aware of my own shortcomings as a filmmaker and am working hard to address them. As someone who never went to film school, built a successful company from scratch with no prior experience and is completely self-taught as a director, editor, cameraman and motion graphics artist, I would hope I’ve earned the right to have an opinion.

SMR is just one of many projects I’m involved in and yes, I have short films going through the festivals at the moment, I won the Bahamas 14 Islands Film Challenge earlier this year and my short ‘Monument’ was a finalist in two big UK competitions. This year I shot a one hour drama pilot and a comedy short ‘Please Hold’ which will be doing the festivals in 2011. Hopefully that helps you understand that my opinions come from a place of experience….

if you think you are better tham them (by never making a feature film or even a short film ) then keep on making videos for you tube and be an excellent videographer but perhaps let the filmmakers who actually make films , even if they fail at it , even if they don’t have that many you tube hits, talk about making films . Your project seems to be going well and I wish you the best but don’t believe the hype, i, for once found smr utterly stupid.

R

In any case, looking forward to the next articles.

Thanks,
L

I fully understand that it takes a lot of work to make real money this way; but it’s well worth the effort to actually earn a living from my own creations. Any information, tips and experiences you can share, that would help me to achieve this goal, would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!