Lawrie Brewster’s 5 Brutally Honest Tips for Indie Filmmaking Success
My name is Lawrie Brewster, and I’ve been a horror film producer for about fifteen years now. I’ve worked with the likes of Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Channing Tatum, Malcolm McDowell, Lance Henriksen, and even Roger Corman, who endorsed the founding of my horror film studios via Screen Daily with this fantastic quote:
“Hex Studios is an ambitious new project which aims to rekindle the spirit of classic horror cinema, and gives me hope for the future of original, independent filmmaking.”
– Roger Corman, Screen Daily
Since then, I’ve produced many horror feature films. Alongside my fantastic team, which includes Irish film producer Sarah Daly, we’ve made what feels like a million movies. In fact, since founding our new project, the British Horror Studio, and reviving Amicus Productions, which was covered by the BBC, we currently have thirteen films in various stages of production or post-production.
One of them is Amicus Productions’ In the Grip of Terror, which was covered by Variety and The Guardian. Another is our two-and-a-half-hour fantasy epic, The Reign of Queen Ginnarra, which appeared in the Fife Free Press and premiered recently at the excellent Romford Horror Film Festival, where it was reviewed by Nerdly.
The long and the short of it is this: we’ve been busy, and things are only getting busier. On top of that, we operate out of the blue-collar town of Kirkcaldy, in Fife, Scotland. That brings an additional challenge, as we’re far removed from the centres of the filmmaking industry.
Even as we work on these productions and continue building our exciting new British Horror Studio, I’m reminded of just how far we’ve come. And, my word, how much further we have to go.
The road has not always been easy. In Scotland in particular, as in many places, the creative industries culture can swing between positivity and cynicism. In a place like Hollywood, almost anything can feel possible. But here, when you’re taking a bite of a scotch pie while staring at a disused mining tower, there’s always someone nearby, ready to remind you of what’s supposedly impossible for people like you.
Fifteen years can really fly by. Before you know it, you’re a podgy, Mark Corrigan-esque figure from Peep Show, surrounded by the friends and allies you love. The folks who make it all possible. And the folks whom you’ve helped to make it possible for.
And yet, I look back on those fifteen years and wonder what advice I might have given Lawrie Brewster back in the year 2010. How might I have done things differently? Perhaps some of those tips will be useful to people working in the creative industries today, especially aspiring filmmakers.
I can’t say that each of my five tips is grounded in strict business sense. After all, we’re artists as well. And the path ahead is often measured not by money, but by emotional and spiritual well-being.
Yes, I went there…
For those just starting out, it might seem that the bank balance and the sustainability of your creative passion are all that matter. But they are not. When you finally unlock one door, life will present many more. Each one locked tight. Each one denying you peace or fulfilment until you struggle a little more.
Perhaps my five tips can make that process a little easier. So, with tongue firmly in cheek, but in a resplendently earnest spirit, let’s explore them together, so that you too might become a successful indie filmmaker. Just like Lawrie Brewster.
What would I tell Lawrie Brewster fifteen years ago? Hold your breath.
1. Lawrie Brewster Was Determined to Get Into a Prestigious Film Festival
Ah, Lawrie Brewster. Be sure not to define your success based on how fancy or prestigious the film festival is where you premiere or screen your film. I’ve screened my work at Sundance, South by Southwest, with those collaborations covered by Indie Wire, and horror movies at FrightFest, such as ‘Automata’ which was reviewed by Kim Newman at Screen Daily. All prestigious events. They’re great. The staff were great, and the fans were all fantastic.
But in the end, those events, brilliant though they might be, did not transform my fortunes. They also didn’t change how I felt about myself or the value of my work. Before screening, I thought, “This is a milestone I must accomplish.” But afterwards, the milestone was still there.
It was never really about the festival. It was about a hole in your heart that you hope screening at a prestigious event might fill. After covering the costs of screening and staying wherever the festival happened to be, Lawrie Brewster took the train home with that hole in his heart, all the same.
The lesson: Do not expect the acceptance of your film into a prestigious festival to teach you how to accept yourself. It won’t help. Although Lawrie Brewster makes a reasonable argument that, on occasion, bourbon might.
2. Lawrie Brewster Thought Distributors Want Your Fresh Ideas
So, recently I posted an article at Amicus Horror, with my recommendations for indie filmmakers facing the collapsed distribution market for independent film. In it, I basically suggested that filmmakers should produce and distribute their own films, since that’s what most distributors are doing now, as they shift from exclusive sales to production as well. You can read that article here. This sentiment has also been echoed on Film Courage, and The Guardian.
Inevitably, in obscure filmmaking Facebook groups, whenever I share an article like that, I will see comments from folks who try to simplify and rationalise the byzantine world of film distribution by naively declaring something like:
“All you need is a GREAT SCRIPT… then make the best movie you can… and you’ll get discovered!!!”
Well, the short answer to that is that it’s not true. But try telling me that fifteen years ago, and with unblinking idealism, over a paper cup filled with Dr Pepper, I would have exclaimed with evangelical purpose that the purity of art transcends all obstacles.
The truth is, it does not.
But that doesn’t mean, as artists, we shouldn’t strive to make the best art we can. In reality, we’re supposed to do that anyway. We don’t get brownie points otherwise. However, it also confers no real special advantage.
In fact, in all my years working with distributors, I’ve found that many of them bristle at the notion of artistic idealism or ambition. To them, it is chaotic, strange, and off-putting. What they actually want is simple, marketable high-concept ideas that can produce key art for Amazon Prime thumbnails. It needs to be something that even a five-year-old could understand.
If you promise anything fancier than that, you’ve already lost your job to the heartless mercenary who didn’t.
The lesson: The industry does not want to see the best creative ideas thrive, even if that’s what audiences actually want. Instead, they want films that are produced based on the most scalable and predictable market indicators available.
Incidentally, that’s why all the co-productions I ever made with the distributors High Fliers always had dragons. It is also why 4Digital, who collaborated fervently with the now tragically deceased Andrew Jones, always featured killer dolls.
If you’re not prepared to work that way, then you will be wasting your time pitching to 99 percent of distributors who will most likely waste your time!
3. Lawrie Brewster Thought Folks Would Be Impressed by Indie Production Value
This is an important one that I wish I could have told the younger Lawrie Brewster, but it’s almost impossible to teach any aspiring filmmaker this simple, but brutal truth.
So, as we begin our voyage into learning camera, editing and all the hallmarks of independent filmmaking, the one thing that preoccupies many, especially male filmmakers for some reason, is trying to prove they are the ‘real deal’ as some sort of Hollywood player.
I don’t mean anything that might actually be useful as a Hollywood player, like, “Hey… I’m best friends with Brad Pitt, and we’re hosting a villa party to discuss new movie ideas.” No, no, nothing like that. More like the sort of thing that would convince a 21-year-old filmmaker in Milton Keynes that he’s a Hollywood Player.
Like… saving up to buy a fancy camera. Especially a RED. (Don’t forget to buy a RED Camera baseball cap to go with it.) Or producing a film with twenty extras, instead of ten extras, or five extras. Getting lots of guns… not three guns, but twenty guns!
Filmmaking forums, especially those fifteen years ago, were all over this subject. Filmmakers would fawn over the most popular members of those groups (especially on my beloved retro filmmaking forum DVXUser.com), where someone posting an Adobe After Effects video of a 3D car exploding would cause a splurge in man-dom that would require a life belt to survive.
Or… a group of five SWAT team costumes, with black visor helmets and awesome MP5 sub-machine props would, ugh, again cause a male fawning that might require paramedics. Honestly, the women (of which there were a minority) in those forum groupings never seemed to succumb to the same level of boy-toy production value that us bearded types sought.
Fast forward, and this feeds a bit into my mentality, though not with my first horror film Lord of Tears, which, with its simple chamber-drama narrative, brought about our success (thanks, Sarah Daly). This was followed up by me, with increasingly ambitious production value that often exceeded the budgetary resources I had available.
That in and of itself should never discourage a filmmaker from making epic stories. I just did, with The Reign of Queen Ginnarra, but it must be for the right reasons.
In the end, I saw time and time again that folks who bought my movies told me their favourites were not the ones I had spent the most time and resources producing, with the aim of showing off more production value. It was always character and story. That was it. Not the toys, not the extras, and not the fancier production value.
All that impressed was fellow filmmakers, and it didn’t really impress distributors back then either.
Actor names might… but nobody would waste the chance of buying a cool new lens or ten prop guns over getting one of them, right?
The Lesson: Ah, poor Lawrie Brewster. It means that no amount of production value, when predicated on independent film and indie resources, can ever truly “impress”. In reality, even Hollywood films with millions of dollars often fail to impress. Whenever we wasted time trying to do it, it was always for our own vanity, in an attempt to impress our filmmaking peers.
4. Lawrie Brewster Was Convinced That Names Would Bring Success and Glory
This was a more nuanced, half-truth for Lawrie Brewster, and at the start of my filmmaking career, I was simply a consumer of films. Like everybody in the universe, one of my first questions about any new film someone brought up in conversation was, “Who’s in it?” To which I might reply, “Oh, I really like them.” Or, if you were my mother…
If you were my mother, she always had a dark and almost perverse repulsion for Kris Kristofferson that defied any explanation. She would become quite violent at even the mention of his name and could discern, from any place in the house, that someone had even softly whispered that man’s name.
Never could I uncover the reason why she hated that particular actor (known mostly for country music?). It seemed she hadn’t even seen the films he was in, certainly not his magnum opus Heaven’s Gate, directed by Michael Cimino.
Now, as a penniless independent filmmaker, I was far less inclined to spend lots of money on names. But there was still that part of me that wanted us to be taken seriously. With our first film, Lord of Tears, covered by Bloody Disgusting, we had actually spoken to Christopher Lee and Tim Curry about providing the voice-over for the Owlman.
For a time, we even chatted with Doug Bradley’s agent. Everyone was polite, and Christopher Lee was pretty much up for it until he became quite ill for a prolonged period of time. Too long, in fact, for us to wait, because we literally had to complete our Owlman horror film for delivery to our Kickstarter backers.
In the end, we worked with David Schofield (Pirates of the Caribbean, Gladiator, and of course An American Werewolf in London) and I spent my Christmas bonus for the next decade on that. He was brilliant, and I can’t say enough good things about that incredible performer, except that I very much look forward to working with him again.
Afterwards, we co-produced a multi-million dollar picture (in which I was a hired-hand producer) that included wonderful names, including Malcolm McDowell and even Armand Assante!
But what difference did it make?
The Lesson: Ah, to the Lawrie Brewster of years gone by, I would say that it’s not that names don’t make a difference. They do. But if I could go back in time, I would tell myself that it was not the name that mattered, but how the name was packaged.
If you complete your film fait accompli and present it to the market with or without names, you will be at a great disadvantage.
Why? Because the distributors will know that you have already spent your hard-gotten gains making the film and paying off the actors. They know you need that bread to prevent yourself from eating your own toes.
Names can help. But those names need to be bigger than you would think, and they need to be used in pre-packaging so that a deal is made with a distributor to pre-finance your film before you hire them.
In other words, names are useful, but they were not the shortcut indie producers often think they are. I have seen tens of thousands spent on names that made no difference in the deals offered. And again, it was all because of when and how those names were hired.
5. Lawrie Brewster Wonders About His Well-being… Food… Drink…
In retrospect, I think of how the Lawrie Brewster of fifteen years ago worked like a complete maniac, and also ensured that everyone else around him worked like maniacs too. Not least my long-suffering accomplice in indie filmmaking, Sarah Daly.
Of course, that was just the way I am. I’m an intensely driven person, and I’ve always been determined to make the most of every opportunity I might be given.
At the earlier stage of my career, it felt like this was driven almost out of fear, or a sort of anxious panic. Like a man rushing towards the gangplank of a ship that’s about to take off. There was never any notion of preserving energy, playing the long game, or conscientiously balancing personal and professional life. None of that. That was for losers. Hippies.
Well, that was a mistake.
I’m not suggesting that if I went back in time I would say I shouldn’t have worked as hard as I did. But the psychological intensity, anxiety, and fixation of sorts that I experienced, and to some extent still do, would have been something I’d have reminded the younger Lawrie Brewster was unnecessary.
In other words, I would have told Lawrie Brewster to be kinder to Lawrie Brewster.
In many respects, I am my fiercest critic, and sometimes my biggest enemy and ally, depending on the toss of a coin. Such is the emotional place that many artists and entrepreneurs often occupy.
When I look in the mirror at my podgy self, I think that fifteen years ago, the value I might have seen would be measurable in the prestigious film festivals my films played at, the extent of my artistic ennui appreciated by distributors, the awe-inspiring indie production values that would impress my probable Games Workshop-collecting filmmaking peers, and the names of fancy folks I worked with. Anything about me… soul or spirit… would have felt fairly irrelevant. That fifth aspect of self-worth would, of course, be defined by the answers to the first four.
Only over time, as no answers manifested from those first four tips, was I left with the momentous question of what the hell number five is. And, by extension, who the hell I am.
The Lesson: While you develop films, produce ideas, and create stories, it is important to consider yourself as part of the project too. Your emotional and spiritual well-being may, in fact, be the most important part of your project and your career.
That’s not only for your benefit, but also for your family and loved ones, whom you may have dragged along with you on this perilous journey if you have chosen to become an independent filmmaker.
It’s not for the faint-hearted, is it?
And it is all the more reason why the Lawrie Brewster of today would tell the Lawrie Brewster of yesteryear to be kinder to himself. To give himself just a little more time than the edit.
About Lawrie Brewster
Lawrie Brewster is a veteran horror film producer with 15 years of experience. Lawrie Brewster leads Hex Studios, serves as president of Amicus Productions, and runs the British Horror Studio project in collaboration with filmmakers from around the world.