One of the books I turn to in my library often is Chris Holland’s “Film Festival Secrets“. It’s a great resource for filmmakers looking to do the festival thing – for a few reasons. There is the hardcore film festival advice, and then there is some great general “reality check” advice for filmmakers sprinkled throughout.

My favorite is a listing of things that that film festival programmers complain about seeing over and over again. You can go grab the free PDF version of the book and check it out (page 5), but I’ll list some of my favorites here:

  • Someone takes a shower or brushes his teeth
  • We realize it was all a dream
  • A scene in a convenience store switches to security cam footage

(from Film Festival Secrets)

What’s wrong with these? There is nothing inherently wrong with them, but you can recognize the pattern. They are all the cliches of independent films, whether imagined or not (and I suspect, since these came from film festival programmers, they aren’t imagined).

We can all kind of scoff at that, but there is a little bit of inspiration to be had from this, because it’s something that the independent film crowd can rally around.

I like to think about it like this: the derivative stuff is supposed to come from Hollywood. The cliches like guys never looking at explosions as they walk away. And that stuff is really supposed to be stolen by the true innovators at the independent level. So why would we borrow from each other? That’s for the people who are supposed to be stealing anyways and packaging it for the megaplex crowd.

I’m not bashing Hollywood – I love it and I love going to the megaplex. It’s what got me into filmmaking in the first place. But remember – innovation is supposed to come from the ground up – and DiY Filmmakers and other independents are the ground.

So next time you are writing a script – maybe add a check reading for cliches or other things that are just derivative of your fellow DiYs and Independents. You can borrow and “pay homage” to things when you are getting paid $10 million and have a craft services table.