IFH 037.1: Filmmaking Motivation for 2016 – Happy New Year!

Alex Ferrari 0:37
Welcome my little indie film hustlers Happy Happy New Year. It's going to be an amazing 2016 And you are listening to the indie film hustle podcast. I am your humble host, Alex Ferrari. So I wanted to do this special episode guys, this is a little extra special episode because you know, I always release my podcasts on Tuesdays and Thursdays. But I wanted to do a New Year's Day podcast again to give you guys a little bit of a pick me up and let you guys know what is in store for 2016 For not only indie film, hustle, but for me, and give you guys a little bit of motivation to get 2016 off with a great start. So first and foremost, I've been around today is actually our five month anniversary of being around indie film hustle launched five months ago today. And it has been a whirlwind growth spurt for the brand and for the website and for the podcast. And that's all due to you guys, the fans, the listeners, the the tribe, that you've supported me and the film and the podcast and the websites so much over the course of the last five months. You guys are the ones been out there, talking about it, and sharing my posts with all of your friends and your and your peeps. So it's it's all due to you guys. So thank you so so much for all the support. Over the last five months, it has been humbling that we've are the number one filmmaking podcast on iTunes, and among other search terms that we ranked number one for in our in our indie film niche. So I really am so humbled by what you guys have done, for me and for indie film, hustle, and for our community. So thank you so much for all your help. Now I want to talk a little bit about what I have planned. For 2016 I, I am as you guys might have guessed, a very ambitious guy. I am sometimes a little overly ambitious. But I wanted to let you guys know what I'm going to be doing over the course of the next year. First and foremost, I'm going to be creating more amazing content for you guys. I'm gonna see if I can even pump out more but I think three a week to podcasts. And an article is for one person is is more than enough. But I'll see if I can do more. But I want to keep creating amazing content that helps you guys are further along on your filmmaking journey, I will be talking about topics and things that they aren't going to teach you in film school like I have been doing over the last five, five months or so I'm bringing on amazing guests I already have so many guests already done in the can ready to be launched. Probably for the next two months at least have amazing guests amazing conversation I have I have a lot of surprises for you, in store for you as far as the guests are concerned. Now another area that indie film hustle is going to be dabbling in are putting the throwing their hat in the ring, if you will, his courses, I wanted to start creating courses for you guys. Stuff that I don't see out there in the marketplace, especially things that I wish I had. So the very first course we're going to be putting out is going to be a film school going through an analyzing all my past films of broken red Princess, references Genesis and sin, the four award winning short films that have been screened over, she's probably over 600 film festivals at this point, and won countless awards and we were able to monetize it and show you how I show you how I'm going to show you how I did all of that. I'm going to show you the marketing strategies I did for the film's and what we did behind the scenes, how do we made it pre production production, post production and the marketing of it and talk a little bit about that and it's going to be a living course when I say living course it is a course that will be changing, constantly adding I'll be adding stuff to it periodically and adding new content to the course. So as soon as that's available, which should be available out probably within the next week or two. I will let you guys know where to go get it and there'll be special pricing for you guys. I'm going to be giving a bunch of them away for free so stay tuned for that and and so on. So a couple other courses I have in mind. I've had a lot of a lot of the the little singers have emailed me directly and asked me about marketing. And how I was able to market not only indie film, hustle, but market all the films that I was able to do and what I've been able to do with marketing in general. So my first quarter, my first course is after the film school will be a intense courses on Twitter and Instagram, both those platforms that have over 10,000 followers each on that. And many of those up, I got that I think the number of prior on 10 weeks, 12 weeks to get those numbers because I really didn't start heavy on Instagram and Twitter too. Later in our indie film, hustle journey, I wasn't really keen on it and wanted to see what I could do. So I was able to generate it. And by the way, those are 10,000 or 20,000. Real people, real fans, true fans, as I call them, people who are in our world not bought followers, not not people that are not in our space, specific people who are into what I want that what indie film, hustle is all about, and engaging with them and talking to them, and giving them content and giving them value. That's the kind of followers I'm going to teach you how to get in these courses. And they will be invaluable to you, in your marketing plan on launching a film, launching a web series, launching any kind of anything you want to launch, whether it be olive oil, whether it be a film, a cooking class, whatever the techniques that I show you in the twitter and instagram courses are going to be invaluable. And I will show you how to work with each of them. And move forward in social media because I'm fairly new to social media. I mean, I've been on Facebook forever, been on Twitter forever, but I've really never gone after it heavily. And this year, when I opened up any film, hustle and like I got to learn this. And I, I really went in hard and did a lot of research and did a lot of trial and error, until I found my found my secret sauce to be able to do it very, very quickly. And very, very, very laser like targeted on the people and crowd that I wanted to be following me. So I'm going to be teaching you those those courses coming up hopefully in the next couple months, as well as more marketing courses on filmmaking, marketing, post production courses, on workflow, things like that, because it's a man, it's a place where a lot of filmmakers fall flat on their face in post production. And you've heard my past episodes on post production workflow, visual effects supervisor, post supervisor, but I'm going to give you a whole course on how to do it yourself. So that's a couple of a few of the courses that I have planned in the works for for the indie film hustle tribe. The other thing I have planned for 2016 is to make a feature film, I'm going to be directing a feature film this year, I don't know how yet I'm working on the script, I'm going to be going on the journey with you guys on this. And whether it's something I'm hired on to or something I do myself, but I will direct the feature film this year. And I'm going to hold you guys, I want you guys to hold me accountable to that I'm going to drag the feature film somehow this year, in the works of building up indie film, hustle, creating courses, and running a life as well. So it's ambitious, like I said at the beginning of the podcast, I'm very ambitious. So I'm gonna do, I'm gonna see what I can do to get that done as well. And I wanted to give you guys a little bit of a PEP, a pep talk. Now. You know, I know a lot of you guys have been going through this, you know, going on this filmmaking journey for a long time. And I know a lot of you have had have had problems and issues and obstacles in front of you. And I know sometimes you feel like giving up. And trust me, I I can't tell you how many times I've sat down and said, I don't want to do this anymore. It's so painful. It's so tough. If you're climbing that hill, in the end, you just keep falling down. And you see the light and I've come real close to a lot of times to touching that light or even being in the room. But sometimes it just doesn't doesn't work. For whatever reason. I want to tell you that it's possible. It's always possible. No matter what you do, you just have to keep going. I talked to a lot of filmmakers in my line of work, whether it be in post or whether it be in production or on indie film, hustle. And I get a lot of times people like oh man, I just don't have the talent or I don't have this or I don't have that. And I don't have this I don't have this person on this contact. And you know what? I don't either. You know, it's it's not I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth. And you know, my last name is not Spielberg. So it's a tough it's a tough journey for all of us. But the one thing I've noticed in all of my years watching filmmakers, either close up or from a distance, it's the guys and the girls who make it are the ones Who hustle. The ones who do not stop hustling, ever. They just keep pounding and pounding and pounding it. And they learn and they educate themselves. And they learn another trick and they meet moving forward, the walls in front of you. But you can't keep pounding your head against it in the same way for the 20 years, you have to think of other angles, you have to think of other ways to go around it to go under it to go over it. You have to keep trying. And if you don't want to do that work, get out. Just get out, find something else, go get a nine to five somewhere else. You gotta love this man. You gotta love it so much, that it hurts. You're gonna wake up in the morning, and think about it. And when you go to bed at night, you got to think about it. It is a tough journey. I'm not gonna lie to you. I'm still on that journey myself. But the one thing I do is I gotta keep pushing. I gotta keep hustling. And I'm not trying to say that just to brand, any film, hustle. It's the reason why I call it indie film, hustle, is you have to hustle. We're all hustling at all times. No matter where we are, in our lives, what time what career we're in, what time of day it is, we all hustle every day, multiple times a day. But you have to keep trying. You can't keep pushing harder and harder and harder. 2016 is going to be an amazing year for the tribe. All of you guys. Because you guys are hustlers. You're educating yourself, you're listening to me, you listening to other podcasts, you're reading articles, you're reading books, you're taking courses, you're moving forward. And that's all you can do is keep moving forward. Learn as much as you can, about whatever discipline you're learning, or learn about all the disciplines. Make yourself so crazy, impossibly good, that they can't ignore you. Learn how to market, learn how to shoot, learn how to be the craft service person, learn how the cameras work, learn all of it, learn every aspect of it. Because the more you know, the more dangerous you are, the more dangerous you are, the more work you will get, the more opportunities will come open and come to your door and you won't have to go looking for them. Keep that hustle, going. keep that dream alive. It's going to be an amazing 2016. Guys, I wanted to give you this little talk because God knows I need it sometimes. And believe me ain't easy is definitely an easy guys. But I love it. There's nothing else I can I rather be doing and talking to you guys and helping other people follow their dreams while I'm trying to follow mine. So keep your ears out. Indie film, hustle has a ton of amazing stuff coming up in 2016. I don't even know the stuff that's coming up. It's so amazing.

It's just crazy amount of stuff that I haven't planned for indie film, hustle, and things that I don't have planned and are starting to show themselves. Little by little. I'm just so humbled by what's happening with indie film, hustle. But at the end of the day, guys, indie film hustle is here to serve you. I want to serve you. I want to help you guys, be better filmmakers, better entrepreneurs, and make a living. Like I say survive and thrive in the film business. I want you guys to make a living doing what you love to do. The thanks again guys for all the support. And I want to leave you with this amazing quote by incomparable Sylvester Stallone, as Rocky, one of the best motivational speeches I've ever heard.

Sylvester Stallone 13:47
Let me tell yourself do you already know the world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You Me or nobody is going to hit as hard as life. But ain't about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward how much you can take a keep moving forward. That's how winning is done. Now if you know what you're worth go out and get what you're worth. But you got to be willing to take the hits and not pointing fingers saying you ain't where you want to be because a him or her or anybody. Cowards do that. And that ain't you. You're better than that. I'm always gonna love you no matter what. No matter what happens. You my son your my blood you're the best thing in my life. But until you start believing in yourself, you could have a life Don't forget to visit your mother.

Alex Ferrari 14:59
That was from Rocky Balboa. Sylvester Stallone wrote an amazing speech. And I just wanted you guys to finish off like that and start 2016 off with a bang. Keep that hustle going. Keep that dream alive. And I will talk to you guys soon. Happy New Year guys.