So, you have maxed out your credit cards, borrowed from family and friends and made the Indie feature you have dreamed about for years. You have fought your way through the scripting, the shoot, the post production when the money ran out and with superhuman effort you completed and submitted to a number of Festivals where your film vanished without trace.

Undaunted you did it all again with the same result.

Your finances are in ruins; all you have left is an editing system and an HDV camera so you decide to make wedding videos to restore your fortunes. This is a hard competitive world of the toughest documentary making, miss the vows and you are dead, have a mic go out or a tape dropout at the crucial moment and you had better plan to run and hide. A stressful, demanding world where the rewards are small and the demands high.

You still love film making, but your potential budgets are measured in the few dollars in your purse, enough to buy a couple of rolls of tape, you have the ideas but where is there an audience? What to do?

Do More !

There is another world of film making that operates well below the radar of the world of the high end independents, even the middle and low end independents, the world of amateur film making.

Films made for fun, for artistic expression, to make a statement about society, made for the love of film making with no professional or financial aspirations.

Like many professionals or want to be professionals you probably hold this world in contempt, the very word amateur associated with film suggests to you inept, home movies. People waving at the camera, sound of telephone quality, sketchily edited, poorly presented.

Times have changed, the same DV/HDV revolution hit the amateur world, NL Editing is inexpensive and widely used, CGI is used with remarkable results. Amateurs spend months even years making their films with meticulous care, free from the pressures and demands of the world of commercial film production.

What then ?

What do they do with their productions? Enter them in to Festivals and competitions open to non-commercial film makers. Here in the USA the major Festival is the American International Film and Video Festival, now in its 79th year of continuous operation organized by the American Motion Picture Society (AMPS) and open to non-commercial films from around the world.

Last year there were entries from the USA, Canada, Australia, Malta, New Zealand, Belgium, Germany, Norway, Switzerland and the UK.

Yes, there is life after indie rejection so take a look at another film world.

You are on a "Film Talk" page. Click to visit:
Home | About Us | Tech Talk | Club Talk | Film Talk | Festivals | Contact | Join | Links | President's Corner | Students | Free Tools