I am but a guppy in the filmic ocean of bigger fish.

My playground has – thus far – been the realm of historical documentary, music video, promotional videos, and music documentary. But, it’s by being a guppy in such a big ocean that I’m able to adapt quickly, alter course, and go into those places the bigger fish can’t play. I can fit into little niches that the hammerhead sharks of tradition can’t go, without turning sideways and bending to circumstance. They’re not willing.

I am.

My most recent project, the music documentary GATHER ‘ROUND THE MIC , was an exercise in breaking away from my old ways of doing things, much as my present collaboration with my writing partner is a complete change from GATHER. For the purposes of illustration and illumination, I’ll chat a bit about GATHER – the whos, the whys, the whens, the hows, and the what nows.

When GATHER came to me, I was in the midst of a complete upheaval in my life. I was relocating from Boston back to my home state of Ohio, and was searching for a house and new beginning. One evening, I went to check my MySpace filmmaker profile to see if anyone had any gems of encouragement for my work (they didn’t). However, this time, something was different about my page. My “Screenwriter/Director” credit was in Swedish. Perplexed, I went to the one place where answerscan be trusted – the MySpace Filmmaker’s forum. Inside was a message from a bloke calling himself Skunkfoot. It read:

“Music Festival in Cleveland. Help!”

I like music. I like Cleveland (most of the time). I had some camera equipment and a desire to
do something different & new. So I jumped in, said “I’ll do it,” and a week later was standing in a
backyard with a camera, an extension chord, and lots of DV tape.

This brings up the first topic: WHY?

I jumped at the chance to do GATHER for two reasons. One, it sounded fun and was close by.
Two, I wanted to do it. That’s it. There’s no deeper meaning here. No hidden messages, no
desire to change the world. Bottom line: it sounded like fun.

The experience of making GATHER was something I’ll never forget. Yes, it was really hard. It’s
a 15-person concert movie shot with one camera and no budget. That the film was even
completed is a minor miracle in and of itself. Regardless of that, I came out of shooting the
picture having made some of the best friends I’ve ever had. Creative, talented, and interesting
people from all walks of life, from all over the world, doing something they love – and brought
together by MySpace and social networking.

That’s an important thing here. I’ve said before on my blog, Multi-Hyphenate that social media has torn down all of the walls between audience and creative – but it’s also created opportunity. GATHER wouldn’t have happened without MySpace. 95% of the contributors to my Multi-Hyphenate blog came from Twitter. You wouldn’t be reading this article right now, were it not that Maria and I found a mutual admiration of one another’s work through Twitter.

To deny the power of social media as a filmmaker and visual storyteller is as much a death sentence as saying “I just want to direct.” Your art may be great. You may be the next Picasso, Spielberg, Scorsese, Adams, or Renoir, but it doesn’t mean a damn thing if no one knows about it.

Following the shooting of GATHER, it took me around nine months to churn out a finished product. In those nine months, my life was in a continuous state of flux – the upheaval and new beginnings taking hold with a mixture of tragic loss and wonderful new things. And somehow, overcoming my own perfectionistic tendencies and “chicken with head cut off” work/career/home lack of balance, I finally finished GATHER ‘ROUND THE MIC in April, 2009.

Then I gave the movie away for free.

And we’re not talking the SITA SINGS THE BLUES “free,” with merchandising and all the other
fun stuff. We’re talking FREE. As in “I’m going to put it on my website, and people can watch
it.”

Why?

Firstly, in the spirit of the Gatherings, the musicians in the film paid their own way to the show,
the show was free, and it was all about coming together and doing something you loved. There
was no money exchanged (except for pizza and beer). In total, the movie cost me $800 to make
(and IMDb flagged that entry as “are you sure??” prompting me to switch it to $10,000 to get in,
then I switched it back following IMDb approval). The costs were: New 500GB Drive. Shotgun
mic. DV Tape. Gas. Food. And that’s it.

Due to my relative low cost to churn out a big project (for me – it was 20 hours of footage over three days that I turned into an 83-minute film), I couldn’t justify spending the money to make DVDs, to ship them, what have you. It would have cost me more money to sell the movie than it took to make it – and that’s not a worthwhile scenario. And hell – out of all of it, the best thingthat came from the film was that I started working with my perpetual go-to sound guy, Jay Cox, who is featured in the film and plays one mean blues slide guitar.

So, I did what any digital producer/filmmaker/multi-hyphenate should do when the paved roads
are closed. I took an off-road detour and experimented. Though experiments are risky, there’s
really only two outcomes: they either succeed, or they fail.

GATHER was met with resounding indifference upon its online release (outside the group of
musicians for whom it was made). There were a number of reasons behind that. Off hand, I can
think of a few.

• It’s a concert film/music documentary that is sort of a new thing, in that there’s no soundtrack
album, no established artist. It’s filled with largely unknown musicians playing original songs
which means EXTREMELY niche market.

• Is it a great film? No. As I said in my commentary track for the film (available at my website, I never set out to make a great film. I’m proud that in spite of all the craziness surrounding the making of the flick, that a little slice of life movie with a lot of heart came out of it.

• No one wants to watch a movie on their computer. Especially a movie as outlined in point one.

But – thanks to this being the new age of digital production and distribution, I used that to my advantage. I took the movie, and sliced it into 13 bite-sized morsels called GATHER ‘ROUND THE MIC: THE NIBBLY EDITION.  The logic being that one would be more willing to watch a bunch of little pieces that they could shuffle around like a music album than one chunk of a flick online.

That experiment was more successful, though the final results have been less than mind blowing.  And that’s OK.

The film festival question has come up frequently, and to answer the question: Yes. I submitted
GATHER to film festivals, but rapidly came to the conclusion that paying someone to watch this
little flick and decide if it’s worthy of being on a big screen was ludicrous. It hardly cost me
anything to make. I wasn’t in it for awards, I was in it for eyes. Internet release solved the
problem. Eyes with a click – but even fiercer competition in web sites and all the other
distractions that come with the internet. GATHER was not accepted at any of the film festivals I
submitted it to, and I’ve laid out the reasons above (Niche market, not a great film, but a good
little slice of life with heart).

So what now? I’ve got a feature film that few people have seen (but on the whole, seem to have
enjoyed), and given it away for free. This brings me to my three golden rules of digital
filmmaking:

• Never take the quick fix when you can start forming long term investments in your career and
future .

• You are ALWAYS marketing. The films you make are a product. As a filmmaker/creative/whatever, YOU are the brand.

• Be honest with yourself and be realistic. But don’t be afraid to take risk.

I knew that making GATHER would be a calculated risk. I didn’t expect it to catapult me onto the
international stage, where a bevy of buxom beautiful women would surround me, hanging on my
every word. I made the film because I wanted to make it, and I made the film I wanted to make.
And at the end of the day – that’s the most important thing.

It is undoubtedly a film by me. It demonstrates my point of view on a particular topic at a particular time in my life with a particular budget and is a record of my skill set at this point and time. No one else would have made the same film that I made, but it bears the brand I’ve created for myself. Low budget, high impact, with good storytelling and heart.

Though GATHER didn’t take the world by storm, had I not taken the risk with it and used it as an opportunity to explore new forms of self-distribution, I wouldn’t be writing this today. I wouldn’t have gained the creative capital to turn Multi-Hyphenate into a successful (so far) blogazine featuring articles from the new creatives I’m interested in. I wouldn’t be writing a great script with my writing partner, Paul Klein and cementing an amazing writing and producing partnership.  And I wouldn’t have a video record of all the memories from one of the most wonderfulexperiences of my creative life.

I have a long way to go as a filmmaker, but with technology on my side, my feet on terra firma and my head in a “learn, learn, learn” mindset, I’m going to keep pressing on, through success and failure, through thick and thin.

It’s a big ocean, and we all have to carve out our place. We’re guppies, yes, but we’ve got to be guppies with big, sharp, pointy teeth – the best of both worlds.

Tyler Weaver is an independent filmmaker and the EIC and Founder of Multi-Hyphenate , a blogazine featuring articles and contributions from all sorts of hyphenated creatives as they navigate the new medialandscape. He also contributes weekly television reviews as a columnist for the pulptone.com website.

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Gather ‘Round the Mic – Trailer II from Tyler Weaver on Vimeo.