I’ve come to the conclusion that having made a feature film, I am far more and far less qualified to be a film critic.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe there is good, mediocre, and poor art, and I’m not going to give a pass to everyone that picks up a camera and tries to tell a story… but there’s something most people miss when they casually dismiss a film: the filmmaker probably barely made it through to the other side so you could see their story, and has cleared the battlefield that many a director has fallen in known as “Making a movie.”

It takes dedication, leadership, communication, vision, artistry, business savvy, connections, financial burden, and many more things to get a film finished (not necessarily all wrapped up in one person).  Some Very few are handed the directing job on a silver platter, and many have to slog through their first independent film to even get to the point where they could eventually obtain “a budget,” as few investors are going to entrust large sums of money to someone that has to have the skillset equivalent to that of running a small company… in a unique and marketable way amidst a sea of other filmmakers vying for the same eyeballs and dollars.

Greyscale has been my passion project.  It was the film I had to get done any way I could.  I used every location I had access to in the Tulsa metro area (and then some), utilized every actor I knew in the ways I felt best played to their strengths, and I purchased every piece of equipment that I could afford given what money I had and what money I had been given after months of careful research.

I feel I’ve done my due diligence for the film, and there’s nothing really to apologize for.  I’m not going to talk it (or myself) up as a piece of art (or an artist) as people are going to make up their minds when they see it anyway, and the higher the expectations I raise, the harder the film has to work to live up to them (and the wider the gap, the bigger the hack I look).

A colleague asked me what my budget was, and a friend stopped me from answering, stating that it really didn’t matter what my budget was, because nobody was going to be able to produce my film for as little as I did because I pulled in every favor I could.  The budget was proprietary… so what mattered is what the audience thinks the budget is (and what the distributor thinks the budget was versus what it actually was).

If I get to play again, my next film will be (hopefully) better than Greyscale, just as anything I had made prior to it was a stepping stone to get to where I was when I set off to make my first feature.  I don’t regret stepping off and making the film, and the relationships I’ve made through the process and the doors it has already opened for me keep me from looking back.

To use my favorite director, Christopher Nolan, as the backdrop for this analogy… I didn’t make the equivalent of Inception, but I’d like to think I took a decent stab at Following… and someday maybe I’ll be able to follow in his footsteps.

I’ve veered off topic slightly, but all that to say that I have a soft spot for people that work hard and come up with the best they can come up with as long as they don’t hail it as the next best thing.  Their film may not be my cup of tea, but I sincerely hope they find their audience.

So I’ll keep telling stories, I’ll keep honing my craft as best I can, and maybe someday I’ll be content… but even if I’m not, it should hopefully produce better work in the future as I push myself harder.

-R