Filmmaker Sean Baker on not giving up – The Creative Independent

Always take the initiative. There is nothing wrong with spending a night in a jail cell if it means getting the shot you need. Send out all your dogs and one might return with prey. Beware of the cliché. Never wallow in your troubles; despair must be kept private and brief. Learn to live with your mistakes. Study the law and scrutinise contracts. E

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Yeah, we don’t believe in a 30-person crew. We don’t believe you should emulate the look of a major Hollywood film. I like the indie game philosophy, where two guys make a whole game with pixel art and pick an aesthetic and a style that matches the scope of their budget and team. We believe in small and slow. Four people over 12 weeks can make a mo... See more

I'm really inspired by also how they were really quiet for a really long time at the beginning. They were not trying to become the next new success story on the pages of every paper. They were much more just like, "We're just going to prove through the quality of our output over time that we are doing something interesting, and weird, and different... See more

“You need time. And that doesn’t mean necessarily even working full-time on it itself; it means time to throw some ideas together and let them sit, go off and do something else, come back and see what still feels right.”

–Christopher Nolan

When you’re working, there’s so much self-loathing. Everyone feels like their stuff is awful. When I was at CalArts I was studying painting—I’m a terrible painter—but I remember there’s a stage of a painting that just looks like a mess and then all of a sudden it becomes a painting. Movies are like that too. Magically it starts to take shape. Now I

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