Guest Columnist: Nate Winslow

If you’ve followed this blog for any length of time, you know of my interest in and support of independent filmmakers. Therefore when GITS reader Nate Winslow informed me he was producing his first full-length feature film and inquired if I’d be interested providing GITS with an ongoing first-person account of his experiences in that process, I said yes. Rather than step on Nate’s shoes with alengthy introduction, I’ll let him do it — as you’ll see, he’s more than capable as a writer:

Before I introduce my idea for this weekly column, I thought I’d take a small paragraph to let you guys know who’s behind this. My name is Nate Winslow, I’m 22 years old, I’m from the Bay Area and I’m currently in New York attempting to produce my first feature film: I am not famous and I have won absolutely no prestigious awards. When I was 18, I got unbelievably lucky and spent 5 months working on Touchstone’s DAN IN REAL LIFE as both an unpaid intern and a slightly-better-paid Production Assistant. I met an actor on set named Felipe Dieppa who was my age and we stayed friends: we made a short film together the next summer, almost made a couple more, started developing a feature and now I’m in New York and we’re in the middle of casting for BAD ACTOR (that feature). Also: I am an enormous Arsenal F.C. fan, I’m horrible at golf and I’m still mourning Oasis’ breakup.

Scott has generously agreed to let me write up a weekly column chronicling my dangerous and coffee-fueled adventures in trying to get this feature film made, and that’s just about the only thing I have going for me: as of the posting of this column, I am technically part of an independent film that hasn’t failed. I have no illusions, though. I am not an overly qualified teacher (like Scott), I have no real established credits that anyone would blink twice at seeing, and I have no intentions of pretending to be an authority on anything here. What I do have is 8 months of painful/bittersweet/glorious/sleep-deprived experience in attempting to get a low budget independent film into production and the lessons I’ve learned throughout that process.

The idea that I pitched to Scott was to be able to write up something that was informative/educational, honest and relevant to a type of filmmaking that is within touching distance for just about all of us. And — I say this as unassumingly as possible — to be able to give something back. I am by no means incredibly accomplished, but I have had the fantastic good fortune to be a long way ahead of where I was two years ago, and I’ve learned things (usually the hard way) that my 20 year old self would have killed to know. So I feel obligated to try and take this experience and turn it inside out for anyone who’s interested in one person’s very recent — and ongoing — experience in low-budget filmmaking.

Using the experience I’ve had with BAD ACTOR, my goal is to provide some form of insight into the pitfalls and hurdles of trying to make a movie for under a million dollars in 2010, and open it up for discussion: Scott has established a huge readership of talented, driven and knowledgeable guys and girls, and I am eagerly looking to involve every last one of you. So in recounting the most important lessons I’ve learned and the worst mistakes I’ve made, I want it to be the beginning of a discussion with this community at-large. I know that this is a blog about screenwriting, but I’m hoping that there are enough of you interested in exploring, brainstorming and discussing the practicalities of taking a finished script into the next stage of the process that this will be useful. Short of being Steven Spielberg himself, there is absolutely no better way to see your script’s vision safely home than to make it into a movie yourself. Right?

I’ll take a tentative step somewhere towards a soapbox-like structure just to say this: in the past 6 months, I’ve been told different variations of this: “independent film is dead” or “funding? For an indie?” or “Everyone’s out of work, good luck!” There’s certainly some truth in there (there definitely are a lot of industry professionals out of work right now, and that works completely in our favor — more on that later), but it’s not bleak-without-hope. Film festivals all over the country are premiering countless films made for under a million dollars, and the internet is providing a platform for hundreds more. It’s extremely difficult, don’t get me wrong — more movies don’t get made than do get made, but when has that ever been different? End soapbox.

That being said, here’s an outline of where I’m going next. I’m planning on doing this in roughly chronological order: starting from the beginning of development and moving through towards production. That would make next week about…

- The realities of developing a story for a limited budget (without sacrificing your vision or your creativity — don’t panic!)

-Why script readings during the re-writing process were incredibly helpful for us

-What we did wrong

-Where we went — and where you can go — with the finished script

Before I go, and related to the first point for next week, I wanted to see what sort of discussion we could have about writing and acknowledging the budget — it’s a fine line to walk, and I’m not saying you should sacrifice your entire vision for your story to the notion that you only might have x amount of dollars to spend. No. But! From a production standpoint, the script for a 500,000 dollar indie might not want to set their climactic goodbye sequence between the two lovers at rush hour in Grand Central Station on St. Patty’s Day. I don’t think of it as sacrificing creativity to the almighty Dollar, I think of it as appreciating the realities of the film, the absolute needs of the story and a chance to make sure you’re setting a scene in the perfect place. An example from our script: a number of drafts back, we had our ending involve a few scenes outside and in an airport. Since we’re filming in New York, the only possibility was Newark International Airport, and only if we paid them 18,000 dollars. A few drafts went by, our ending changed and the final sequence was no longer at the airport — that scene was still there, though. As we were editing, we realized that since it no longer ends at that point in the story, you don’t NEED for us to be inside the airport watching the protagonist get on the plane. Editing that out saved us 22,500 dollars that suddenly were free to go somewhere else in our extremely cramped budget.I’m not saying Steve Zaillian has to worry about that sort of thing, but I want to know what you guys think about that sort of approach, or that sort of awareness during the writing process for scripts that might be for smaller films.

And that does it. Feel free to email me with any questions/comments/concerns/thoughts at winslownate@gmail.com, or yell at me in the comments. Until next week!

Nate Winslow is a 22 year-old filmmaker from Danville, California. He graduated from UC Santa Cruz with a degree in Literature, and has been working in the film business since he was 18. He’s currently the Vice President of She’s So Pretty Productions — an independent production company in New York City — and is executive producing the company’s first feature film “Bad Actor”

Welcome, Nate, and good luck with your movie. We look forward to your reports from the ‘front line’ of indie filmmaking.


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