MICHAEL VERRECHIA (director and producer, Chasing Ghosts)

As first time filmmakers we’ve learned that every step of the process is risky because, with such limited resources, even the smallest problems can turn into big obstacles. We realized early on that for us to make this film to the best of our abilities we needed to get creative in finding a financial partner. With Mike’s investment background, we felt the best way to get this film off the ground was by finding corporate funding. But how do you convince a retail company to finance a film? It turns out the best option is cold calling. Mike phoned game manufacturers and distributors until one bit on our idea for a documentary. Imagine calling Payless and asking, “You guys wanna make a movie about shoes?”

After months of phone calls, one company wanted to meet face to face in their Philadelphia headquarters for an official pitch. We were forced to drive, in a Hyundai, over 200 miles through one of the worst snowstorms of the season. The trip was originally slated for three hours, but the conditions bumped that to nine hours total. We slid off the road twice, were nearly rammed by a team of snowplows, and got duped by Mapquest into taking the most backwards route imaginable. Where I’m from there is no snow, so I was scared.
We arrived in Philly the next day as the sun rose, got freshened up in our hotel room which ended up being more of a changing room, and walked into Company headquarters. Our pitch was going well until one of the execs asked, “Would you be interested in setting some of your movie in one of our stores as promotion?” I think his idea was to have one of our characters shopping for a game or something in one of their many retail outlets.

My immediate response was NO. I was not interested in making a 90-minute commercial. Mike and I looked at each other and knew this would make or break the deal and the pressure of blowing it was skewing my response toward MAYBE.  Fortunately, Mike piped in and told them we were totally opposed to the idea, explained all the reasons it would ruin the picture, and waited for a response.  The execs all agreed, we got the deal and maintained complete creative control from that day forward. Later we celebrated with deep fried Monte Cristo’s at Bennigan’s — another risky endeavor.

JUSTIN THEROUX (director, Dedication)

What is the biggest risk I took? It’s the verb in the question that throws me. What director wants to seek out and take a risk? In independent film in particular, directors don’t seek out risks, but they are inevitably thrust upon them by circumstance.

I should qualify that. Making a film in and of itself is a risk. Likewise, let’s assume it’s understood that all creative decisions are fraught with risk, but after that, filmmaking becomes executive and decidedly about avoiding risk at all costs. Even directors who might be forced to use live ammo in a scene are hoping they can avoid the risk of someone getting shot and will go to great pains to see that no one does. Injury and death in general kind of puts a damper on the whole “filmmaking” thing. Directors who say they seek to take risks in the filmmaking process are most likely lying. It’s counterproductive.

That being said, there is one “risk” that all directors must take, and it is not so much a risk as a willingness to let fate have a hand in your work. Nowhere was this truer than when I hired my crew. From top to bottom, they were my limbs, and they were the mechanism at the end of the many strings I was yanking furiously while trying to avoid disaster.

One of the best pieces of advice I took in preproduction was given to me by a director whom I adore, who advised that no matter what, when hiring your crew, do your best to ignore resumes and pedigree and hire people based upon their attitudes, not just their past accomplishments. In short, “go with your gut.”

This is actually tougher than it may sound. More often than not, I was faced with two choices, between someone who had an impressive list of films he or she had worked on and someone who, although not as experienced, had a passion for their work that shined far brighter than their resume. In these cases more often than not I risked hiring the latter. I was without exception, in the end, glad I did.

When there is no money to be had, accomplishment is the only thing that motivates people. Too often expectations are reversed, and people who are used to working for more money become frustrated and will blame a budget rather than themselves for corners cut. Faced with budgetary dilemmas, a determination to do good work is the only brass ring to reach for, and a crew that is uniformly thinking along those lines is invaluable.

Independent filmmaking is closer to putting on a play in your parent’s living room than it is to doing a Broadway show. Having a crew that understands that a silk purse must be made out of the sow’s ear is more valuable than having a crew that assumes the opposite. When the hours get long and a budget runs dry, enthusiasm alone can fuel the filmmaking process. Conversely, malaise, dissatisfaction, or worst of all, “indifference,” can kill the effort in its crib.

STERLIN HARJO (writer-director, Four Sheets to the Wind)

It was the hottest day of the shoot and, by far, the most stressful for me. Oklahoma summers can be pretty brutal, but this day the temperature was over one hundred degrees. We were shooting a funeral scene in my family’s cemetery at my grandmother’s house in Spaulding, Oklahoma near Holdenville (my rural hometown of 6000 people). I needed an Indian home in the country with a cemetery in the back yard. Anyone who has been to a place like that knows that you can’t fake it, and my grandma’s house was perfect. I asked my grandma, in the nicest voice possible, if it was okay for me and a group of other lunatics to commandeer her house for a while to shoot a movie. Without hesitation she agreed.

Shooting this scene was a delicate situation because of the fact that it was a family cemetery. We staged the cemetery set about 15 yards from the actual cemetery because I have family members buried there — a grandfather and two baby brothers. I asked friends and family to attend the “fake funeral.” I needed as many Muskogee singers as I could get. In my life I’ve been to many funerals, and there was always one group of singers that I loved to hear. It was a group from Sand Creek Church in the Sasakwa area. They agreed to come help us out. All in all we had about 50 people coming out to be extras in the scene. I woke up that morning a nervous wreck because I knew this scene needed to be perfect and there were a million ways that it could go wrong.

Ty, my locations manager, told me that the rumor back in Holdenville was that I died, and they were having my funeral. To be honest, I was afraid that I wouldn’t make it past the day. Getting a group of elders, friends, and family together doesn’t exactly mesh well with a movie set. People on the crew were pulling me every which way and asking me questions. “Can we move the singers?” “Are you gonna approve the shot?” “Sterlin, can we tie your grandma’s dogs up? One of them has a tick on its eye.” “Isn’t there supposed to be a grave dug?” “Why does that kid have one of our flags? Can you talk to him?” “Why do you look so stressed out?” And people from Holdenville were calling to make sure I was alive.

But the main thing on my mind was that I needed to shake everyone’s hand that showed up to be extras and talk with them for a second or two. Most of them had known me since I was a child. Usually, most people just put the extras near the food and never say a word to them. I don’t agree with that and then, these weren’t just any extras. This stressed people out: “Why’s the director hanging with the extras?” I wanted to scream, but I knew that this was my big test... if I could get through this day the rest would be cake. Everyone got into their positions for the funeral scene. The air felt like it was getting hotter and heavier as dozens of elders sat directly under the sun, and all I kept thinking of was “heat stroke.” But of course, these weren’t just any elders.

The crew was running around in a mad frenzy passing out water bottles and fans. One of the boom mic operators was lying next to the coffin out of sight so that he could pick up the singers. To the extras, I bet we looked like nutbags.

Finally, everyone settled. Cameras were ready, sound was rolling, cameras were rolling, and then I yelled action. It had all come down to this. It’s amazing how one line in your script (“The elders begin singing in Muskogee”) can cause you to freak out, stress out, and question yourself. It was so easy to write that line three years ago. But when the first note was sung, everything else disappeared. We all sank into our positions and began listening. It was as if these singers were telling us all, “Take a breath...it will all be okay.” It was the most beautiful sound. I grew up listening to these songs, but on this hot day in Oklahoma they sounded even more beautiful. None of the elders complained once... they just cried and sang songs. It set the mood for the rest of the extras, and they did their jobs like pros. It felt like a real funeral. We all entered a sort of trance and just listened... by the end the whole crew was in tears.

MARTIN HYNES (writer-director, The Go-Getter)

The physical production of the movie was very risky in that we shot a road picture, in sequence, in 25 days, on 35mm film, moving 40 people sometimes twice in a day, from Oregon all the way to Mexico, driving to a location the middle of nowhere and having two hours of daylight and one chance to get an entire scene – it was a high-wire act the whole way.

IAN IQBAL RASHID (director, How She Move)

How She Move is the first film I’ve directed which I haven’t myself written. My two shorts and first feature, Touch of Pink, were both very autobiographical. My predirecting history is as a scriptwriter for U.K. television drama and, previous to that, as a poet and writer of short fiction. Until I was offered this film, I very much thought of myself as a writer who directs, rather than a director, or even a writer-director.

And in spite of my trepidation in taking on another writer’s script, How She Move attracted me for a variety of reasons. First, I loved the idea of directing a dance film. I’ve always dreamed of doing a musical, and this seemed like a great first step towards that. Also, the central character is the daughter of aspirational immigrant parents, and much of my work has dealt with the stories and scars of migration. And I was very impressed with writer Annmarie Morais’s generosity in allowing me to contribute to the last few drafts — as a result I felt I could enter the directing process with a sense of possession over the story, that I could make this film “mine.”

In the end, it was both liberating and challenging: liberating in that I wasn’t tied to insights or events that might have stemmed from my own life, and so felt freer to reimagine and reinvent the story as needed or required by circumstance or inspiration. On the other hand, because I was working with a story and culture which originated from outside my own experience, I felt it important to approach the material with humility and care, though without inhibiting new ideas or creativity — that would have been disastrous.

I’m incredibly glad I chose to take on this challenge. While at times it was hairy and my learning curve was steep (we had 25 days to shoot the film, which included 14 dance numbers — and also much of the cast was untried), I feel I’ve developed a whole new set of directing muscles. And with the validation of being accepted to Sundance, I also find I can now freely refer to myself as “director.”

CHARLES FERGUSON (writer-director, No End In Sight)

Everything about going to Iraq. We went to Iraq with brand new, untested, high-definition camcorders with complex technical requirements for storage and archiving. I also went to Iraq without any support from the U.S. military and, in fact, with substantial evidence that the Office of the Secretary of Defense was far from interested in assisting me. I went to Iraq with a personal bodyguard I had only met shortly before but who came very highly recommended and who proved to be of remarkable help throughout the entire trip. Through friends, I was able to stay at the Washington Post house, which is in a heavily guarded compound outside the Green Zone, which also helped with access to journalists and Iraqis alike. I also brought Nir Rosen with me, a journalist who had spent the previous three years in Iraq reporting on the war and who we trained in the use of the Panasonic P2 camcorder. Finally, I used a Kurdish private security firm which supplied 10 bodyguards, two of whom were Americans who held passes that allowed us to pass through Green Zone checkpoints without being searched. We had the bad luck to be entering Iraq shortly after the Samara bombings that closed the airport for a week and resulted in a now permanent curfew throughout Baghdad. We were therefore forced to travel to Baghdad by land using a convoy of four heavily armored trucks and driving overnight. In the end, however, everything worked extremely well, and we got remarkable footage from many trips and interviews throughout the country.

CHRISTOPHER ZALLA (writer-director, Padre Nuestro)

As filmmakers, we always ask our actors not to judge their characters, but then when we actually make the film, we often do so with some tacit dynamic that tells the audience that this particular person is “the good guy” and that we should root for him/her. Even when we follow an anti-hero, it’s “there go I but for the grace of God.” There’s some implicit moral that allows us to judge and keeps us from getting too close. I think that when we feel that artifice as viewers, we tend to disengage and become lazy, knowing that the movie will fall into certain formulas and conventions.

Especially in a suspenseful drama like Padre Nuestro, rather than tell the audience who to root for, I wanted to let them think for themselves by subverting the dominant moral paradigm: someone who we love does something terrible; the person we hate wins our sympathies; or past transgressions emerge to yet again complicate our view of another. The result is something that feels much more realistic and suspenseful because the audience realizes that the movie could go in any direction at any moment.

DAVID BRUCKNER, JACOB GENTRY & DAN BUSH (writers-directors, The Signal)

DAVE: The biggest risk artistically, personally, and professionally for me by far was working with two other directors. Narrative filmmaking is so much about point of view and to risk making a whole movie with the hope that all three perspectives wouldn’t contradict was nerve racking. JACOB:It was a lot less risky to make this movie than anything else I’ve ever done because I had two other directors to share in the blame and help mitigate that risk. DAN: Somebody tried to tell me there were three directors on this film...It was right around the time I was editing an important scene where one of the main characters gets the signal and goes crazy. Alex the producer looks at me and says, “The other two directors are going to love this scene,” and I was like, “What other two directors?”