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Daily Blog

April 25, 2012

It is almost summer, which means that it is almost summer intern time!

As right now everyone in LA is interviewing candidates for summer internship positions, I thought it would be good to post tips for anyone looking for an internship:

It Is Who You Are, Not What You Know

While having some experience in the business is helpful, no one  really expects any potential interns to know everything already (otherwise why would they be interning?).  Instead, employers are looking for other skills.

Can you write a good resume? Can you give a good interview? Do you have good people skills? Are you excited about the opportunity? What do you think you bring to the table that other interns might not have?

Be confident in who you are because that is what is going to attract employers at this stage of your career.

Go After Something You Want

Everyone loves free labor (hey it’s free!) so don’t be afraid to really go after an internship you want. Even if it is an internship with JJ Abrams or Dreamworks or anyone, really, take a shot - the worst thing they can say is no!

And if you do not see an internship posting, do not take that as a no! Just take it as you need to dig deeper.

Find an email address to someone at the company and write a nice short and polite email.  Say that you are looking for an internship and would love to talk to whomever is in charge of interns. You never know what the response will be!

There Are Plenty of Fish in the Sea

Sometimes an employer for whatever reason is not taking interns at the moment. Do not get discouraged; there are plenty of other companies who want interns.

If you are not successful at one company, widen your search and research the plethora of companies that are looking for interns. Never give up because, even if one person or 10 people say no to you, just remember that all you need is ONE person to say yes.

Good luck!  And If you are interested in being an intern for Tom Sawyer Entertainment, check out our intern policy at www.tomsawyerent.com

March 22, 2012

Every writer, actor, director, producer, and creator has two jobs. One — to be good at whatever facet of the entertainment business he or she is focusing on.  Two — the larger and, ultimately, more important job is to learn how to sell, sell, sell.

No matter what you do you will always be selling:

You will be selling your idea to potential investors
You will be selling why you should be hired rather than someone else
You will be selling why you project should be made and not the other millions of scripts out there
You will be selling why someone should believe in you over everyone else
And if you do not know how to sell your idea, your idea will always just stay your idea.

Questions I often ask young directors, actors, writers:

Can you sell your movie in two sentences? One sentence?  The time it takes to ride down an elevator? Does it come through in a one-page document? A five-page document? A sizzle reel? A book proposal?

No matter what you are putting together — a movie, tv show, book, website, business, you name it — you need to be able to sell your vision.

And, yes, while your vision may be perfectly clear to you, if you cannot relay it to people — you will never be able to move that idea forward.

Here are some quick tips on key points that you must be able to communicate:

What the project is about (in two sentences or less)
Who the audience is for the project
What is your idea comparable to (for example, our movie LIBERAL ARTS could be described as GARDEN STATE meets Woody Allen)
How the investors will get their money back
Why YOU are the person to bring this project to life

Once you get the answers to these questions down so well you can recite them in your sleep, the art of the sell becomes much easier.

March 12, 2012

I just watched a great (and short) TED talk by Chris Anderson about asking questions to which no one yet knows the answers, and this talk led me to thinking about entrepreneurship and the film business.

It is easy in the film business, and really in any other business, to go along with what everyone is thinking and not buck trends. But by challenging the norm and asking those big, unanswerable questions — sometimes you open up whole new worlds.

Some big questions to which no one had answers until they were cracked:

- Could you shoot a movie for under $10,000 that grosses hundreds of millions of dollars?

Before 1999 you would have said no.  But in 1999 “The Blair Witch Project” came out and showed the world how much money an indie film could make.

- Could you launch a site - -outside of the studios — that lets people rent and stream thousands of movies?

Nobody in the studio system thought so.  But in 1998 Netflix came out and proved this could happen.

- Could you sell separate tracks instead of an entire album for 99 cents for each track?

Just ask Apple, which is making a fortune doing this.

- Could you start a simple website that would connect everyone in the world?

Mark Zuckerberg did it from his college room and now Facebook has over 800 million users worldwide.

And you can ask the big questions on a micro level:

Could you tell a narrative story without doing it sequentially?  Yes, the films “Memento” and “500 Days of Summer.”

Could you make a movie with no dialogue and have it win Best Picture?  Yes, “The Artist.”

No matter what you are working on or what field you are working in — it is good to challenge yourself and ask the hard and interesting questions.

Go ahead and ask those big questions.  You never know what these will get you thinking about.

Watch the TED talk here:
http://www.ted.com/talks/questions_no_one_knows_the_answers_to.html

January 19, 2012

We are two days away from Sundance and four days away from our Sundance movie entry, LIBERAL ARTS, premiering.  And I’m starting to PANIC — there is just so much to do!

Between the premiere, the party, travel arrangements, dinner arrangements, along with our other Tom Sawyer Entertainment clients and everything else we have to do to run a company, it is nuts. And this craziness could VERY easily turn into being overwhelmed.

The problem with being overwhelmed is that it freezes you into not being able to do anything and instead you just sit there and panic, which is not helpful to anyone.  And let’s be honest, whether you have a movie at Sundance or not, life can easily be overwhelming.

There are four things I do to try to stay calm:

1. Take deep breaths: Remembering to breathe is one of the most important parts of staying calm. If you aren’t breathing properly you can’t get enough oxygen in your brain to think rationally.

2. Prioritize: Part of feeling overwhelmed is the feeling that there is too much to do and not enough time. If you are starting to feel overwhelmed it is important to prioritize what you have to do so you tackle the most time-sensitive things first — everything else can wait.

3. Keep it all in perspective: Life gets crazy and it is important to remember that it could always be worse.  Remember the good things you have going on.

4. Feel good about even the small accomplishments: Feeling good about the small things you accomplished will give you optimism and forward momentum to tackle everything else on your plate.

Hope these tips help you as much as they help me!

October 31, 2011

On October 28th my production company submitted our second movie, LIBERAL ARTS, to the Sundance Film Festival for review.

And while I was nervous when we submitted our first movie, HAPPYTHANKYOURMOREPLEASE, I discovered that submitting the second movie was much, much more nerve racking.  Why is this?

I realized that, when we submitted our first movie in the fall of 2009, we had very little expectation of getting accepted into Sundance, let alone winning the 2010 Sundance Audience Award, which HAPPYTHANKYOUMOREPLEASE won.

Thus we were very zen about the whole process.  We didn’t spend a lot of time and worry on something that we thought we had a very little chance of getting. This time it is different. It is our sophomore film; there are expectations on us and on the film.

What if people don’t like the film? What if we don’t get into Sundance?  If we don’t get it, does that lessen the value of our first movie winning at Sundance?

All these questions and concerns that we never thought of before started to crop up — making us stressed, nervous and very un-zen. Which brings me to this blog post — the sophomore film jitters — and what to do about them?

I’ve had many people ask me this same question and, until now, I never experienced this firsthand.  The only thing I can suggest is exactly what I did to calm myself:

First, you have to believe that your script or project stands on its own two feet. You can’t spend your time comparing it to the last movie you did.  Otherwise you will never be able to concentrate on your project, and, if you don’t concentrate on your project, there is no chance that it will be the best it can be.

Second, you have to try to get zen about it and just hope that people judge the project on its own merits and are not comparing it to your previous project.  And since you can’t control what other people think, you have to just let that worry go.

Third, you have to keep moving forward.  The more you can focus on moving other projects forward the less time you have to drive yourself crazy with negative thoughts.

We have two more indie movies we are working on putting together as well as keeping busy trying to move all our clients’ projects forward.

That being said, I can’t help but have all my fingers and toes crossed for the new movie’s submission to Sundance!