I'm a huge fantasy nerd.
Every year I spend hundreds of hours reading and listening to stories set in imaginary worlds. I'm talking epic journeys, magic, and fantastical creatures—the whole shebang.
So, when Brandon Sanderson, the epic fantasy mastermind, released his course on writing sci-fi and fantasy novels on YouTube, I ditched Netflix and got geeky.
What I didn't expect was to share this with you.
But something Brandon said in the first lecture really resonated with me as a filmmaker.
Writing fiction and making a living from it is hard… But if you are seriously dedicated to this and willing to invest 10 years in it, you've probably got more like a one in 20 shot of making a significant portion of your income from writing than one in a million.
- Brandon Sanderson, author
This time perspective blew my mind. 10 years?!?!
We work in an industry that glorifies overnight successes. We all want to be the kid who steps off the bus in Hollywood and becomes a megastar six months later.
But as the lecture went on, the parallels to the film industry became obvious to me.
I used to think my directing career would go something like this:
- make a short film
- get discovered
- make a feature
- get into a bunch of amazing festivals
- endless phone calls from Hollywood
Yeah, no.
Not how my story has unfolded at all.
And I bet not yours, either.
This fantasy of making it on your first try is honestly pretty disrespectful to the craft of directing.
What if we instead borrowed Brandon's perspective? What if we gave ourselves 10 years?
The 10-year plan
What made the 10-year commitment stick with me in Brandon's lecture was when he shared his own journey.
He wrote five entire books that he never tried to get published. The humility to say "these first five books are for me to learn my craft and get good at this thing" is the opposite of an overnight success. It's a way of thinking that will benefit lots of filmmakers out there.
You don't need to make your first film a masterpiece; it just needs to be the best thing you can make at the time you're making it. From there, you do it again and get better.
Brandon sold his sixth book and has since become one of the most prolific and popular epic fantasy writers of his generation.
What I want you to take away from this example is that building your craft and your toolbox as a director requires practice.
Consistent practice over time.
The 10-year perspective forces you to zoom out and look at your directing journey as more than just your next film or your next gig.
Ask yourself:
- What habits do I need to build a sustainable filmmaking career?
- What's the output I need over a 10-year period to build the skill set needed to make a living as a director?
- How can I structure my life today to make this ten-year dream a reality?
Your answers will be different from mine, but here's how I'm thinking about this right now.
The #1 habit that comes to mind is consistently making something. I often get stuck trying to do everything all at once and get overwhelmed by the idea of having to finish an entire feature. The habit I'd put in place for myself is to tackle only the challenge in front of me at the moment and chip away at it day by day.
I would focus on one project at a time and dedicate all my creative time to that one film.
When it comes to output, I would love to be like Clint Eastwood and steadily put out a film every year. But realistically, I'd aim for 6-8 feature films in the next 10 years.
This does two things for me:
- It shows me I can get a lot more done in 10 years than I did in my previous 10 years.
- It takes some pressure off making the next film the end-all-be-all.
It's a lot about dedicating time and working with the realities of my life. I still work a day job in the film industry and I have a family that I want to be present for. Going away for 12 months to make a film isn't an option right now.
The idea of dedicating 1 hour a day to work on 1 project until it's done feels like a great foundation for starting to build this dream.
What about you?
Scaling your directing career
Okay, so we're committed to spending the next 10 years honing our directing skills.
How do we go about it?
I watched an interview with Denis Villeneuve recently where he talks about how he scaled his directing career. He's obviously a very talented and skilled filmmaker who's reached the height of our profession. I found it interesting how carefully he thought about his next project after finishing a film.
A good example is his film Incendies, which garnered an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film and put Denis on Hollywood's radar for real. He received offers to do big studio movies, but instead, he chose to do Prisoners.
A big step up in budget and his first film in English, but not an outlandish step up from his last film.
He turned down a huge paycheck to take what he thought was the next best step for himself as a director. A film that would challenge him, but also a film where he would be able to keep creative control. He could collaborate closely with established actors, and work in the Hollywood system without losing his identity as a filmmaker.
If you look at his career, every new film involves a jump in scale or complexity, but it is a reasonable one.
Villeneuve deliberately built himself into one of the greatest directors of our time, and today he can pretty much make whatever he wants.
Keep this in mind when planning and visualizing your 10-year journey.
If your first film is a $25K ultra-low-budget indie, maybe the next one is a $250K low-budget indie? Maybe it's a $500K indie? Figure out how you want to grow and how you can go from where you are today to the filmmaker you ultimately want to become.
And cut!
That does it for this week. Here are the key takeaways I want you to bring with you into your directing career from today:
- Embrace your journey as a director, give yourself time to reach your ultimate goal
- Start by making films with he goal of improving your craft
- Visualize a career that scales gradually from project to project
As always, thanks for reading.
