If you read No Film School then you're probably obsessed with film and television and want to know everything about the process of making movies. We strive to be the best, but we know we don't know everything.
To supplant our knowledge, we talk to as many people as we can.
That seems to be the same philosophy as Justin McConnell.
He's an independent filmmaker who went out to learn every lesson about making a movie...and how to survive doing it.
This all led to a documentary called Clapboard Jungle, "an emotional and introspective journey following five years in the life and career of an independent filmmaker." It features interviews with some of the best filmmakers of our time, including Guillermo Del Toro, Richard Stanley, Barbara Crampton, Paul Schrader, Tom Savini, George A. Romero, Gigi Saul Guerrero, Michael Biehn, Frank Henenlotter, and many more.
Check out the trailer from Unstable Ground.
So, what inspired McConnell to make a documentary about making movies? Well, part of it was to explore the arduous path indie filmmakers take to find success in their medium, but it was also meant to be an educational resource of sorts for aspiring creatives in cinema. McConnell explained this to Screen Anarchy, saying, "I set out at the beginning with the goal of creating a sort of film-school-in-a-box full of knowledge from people who knew a lot more than me,” stated director McConnell “At a certain point the project just grew into something else, and the decision to split it into two very distinct purposes seemed natural. The film now starting festival play has a lot of information, but it’s also emotional and a little esoteric, the goal giving a full story arc and not just an educational piece. The series is the film-school-in-a-box. With both of those and a bunch of extended web and Blu-ray material, this is the kind of thing I wish existed when I was first starting out. And I’m glad I surrounded myself with a great team that could give me advice and a little objective distance from the source material, as you can’t get any closer to the subject than turning a camera on yourself."
We're excited to learn from this wealth of information and incredible interviewees. It'll begin its festival run starting March 2020.
Check out the movie if it plays near you!
