SUBSTACK

Okay, I’m going to just be talking about Decentering Hollywood. It was actually a post that I had kind of started for Ted, and got very into the idea.

A little bit about myself: I make TikToks and Instagram and Substack. But my main goal is to be a screenwriter. Luckily, I got onto The Blacklist in 2022, and it’s been a really great journey since that. That’s kind of what kicked off me wanting to share on social media. I was doing a lot of film marketing and wanted to discuss the journey.

I’m going to talk about taking back a piece of the power while you wait for Hollywood or no longer want to wait at all if you’re like me. Or you could try to bring the studio to you, maybe, or find an audience that cares about what you care about and be able to show your film and work to them.

Also – sorry – I talk really fast, so I’m going to try to breathe. Okay. But the first shift that I want to talk about is embracing new avenues. I think we get so stuck in the idea of our filmmaking being the first and only reality of that film, but I think something that’s really cool, that I’ve seen a lot of different people in different places that their careers take over.

Gary Whitta is going to be the first one that I mention. He wrote Rogue One, in case anyone has ever seen that. He also wrote The Book of Eli, and he recently just released a fiction narrative podcast called See You In Hell. It’s doing amazing. He got like a bunch of his friends together to play the different parts.

It’s kind of like a F-you to Hollywood, actually, funnily enough. It’s doing great. He also posts about it on TikTok and it has gotten really viral there from doing that. And I think that just reminds me of all of the different ways in which you can see your work, whether it is writing it on Substack, whether it is showing it on TikTok, whether it’s just making the small pitch version of it on YouTube and then cutting it up into slices to let it go wild.

-Kristen Tepper

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TED: You know, like, if it wasn’t for the Ankler I wouldn’t have come to Substack. I wouldn’t have found Substack, Filmstack wouldn’t have started… the think tank in real time, that is. Filmstack couldn’t have morphed into something more to reach NonDē.

So the OG of what is happening here, Richard Rushfield … you get to start it all off today. Okay?

RICHARD: Thank you. And let’s give a big hand to Ted Hope and Slamdance everyone. In my business I go to a lot of panel discussions and summits and sort of dread when I’m sentenced to sit in an audience for a summit for a day. But this, this has actually been fun and enlightening and uplifting.

So, big hand to Ted there. As of right – I’m going to say… yeah – I think I’m the only person presenting today – maybe the only person in the room – who has never actually worked on a film or had anything to do with [one]. I was an extra in a couple movies, but the directors did not give me a credit, so…

I speak to you just as a viewer or an audience member. And, my thoughts are going to be the least practical and most disorganized here. So, after I go, you can dismiss this and more practical ideas will follow. But – so my big thought was – a big thing I’ve been thinking about is that… how we distribute films and sort of the artistry too that has gone away. That the movie release – now the NonDē world kind of is living in the leftovers of Hollywood cinema… sort of taking whatever screens at a multiplex they can get and going down the track where they’re sort of forced into these big releases, like trying to be like a mini Avatar – just going on whatever screens they can with without any marketing to support that, and setting themselves up in a position where there’s no time for word of mouth to develop. And, if lightning doesn’t strike on Friday night, your whole journey is finished. It’s up in smoke, and the value of your film is erased.

-Richard Rushfield

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I’m one of the co-founders of Slamdance. And by the way, Slamdance basically started in the exact same spirit that everything Courtney just said: with a bunch of filmmakers. We collaborated, we got together, and we supported each other, and that’s me right there. And we’re still going on.

But also, I think part of what – there’s great stuff Courtney and Ted said, and other people are going to say [it] all day about getting your audience and market testing everything – don’t get too hung up in that, though, all due respect. Make your art. We’re filmmakers. We need to think of ourselves as artists. Maybe small “a,” not big “A.” We need to think of ourselves as performers, like musicians, and go on tour with our films.

So you should just make the film you want to make, and hopefully you’ll find an audience along the way – even if you haven’t figured it out ahead of time – because technology changes so fast. Audiences change so fast. Your film is going to change as you make it. You don’t always know what your audience is going to be until sometime much later, sometimes 30 years later. Your only audience is yourself. So make the film that you want to make, because in 30 years you have to look back on it and go, “Oh yeah, I like that movie,” even if no one else ever saw it. So don’t be afraid to ignore all the advice that you hear.

-Dan Mirvish

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“We cannot solve our problems at the same level of thinking that created them.”

I did not say that, but Albert Einstein did. And, another way to say that is, “just to solve the problem, you can’t think at the level of the problem—you have to rise to the level of the solution.”

My name is Courtney Romano and I’m a writer/director, and like most of you, I have watched Hollywood confront the problem of getting audiences to our films and making money doing it by staying at the level of the problem. It’s a business problem, and so you’re thinking like a business. They think with big budgets and saturation marketing and sequels and sometimes tax write-offs.

Now let’s talk about non-dependent filmmaking. Non-dependent filmmaking wants to solve that same problem – get audiences to our films and make money to have a livable career by doing those films – but we do not want to stay at the level of the problem. We want to rise to the level of the solution, where Hollywood only tries to solve at a business level. My dangerous and fun idea is that I believe NonDē film should rise to the level of the solution and solve it at a political level.“

-Courtney Romano

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We have to embrace a practice of capturing institutional knowledge. This is another failure of so-called “independent film.” When you start to try to examine the process of change, along the way you start to see how key this fits – that generally when people ask, “why is change so slow?”, we have kind of a broad answer. That is: change won’t occur until the pain of the present exceeds the fear of the future. How do we recognize that we can’t, we can’t afford to wait that long?

We need to embrace a practice of both production and overall sustainability that has the tactics of looking at recommended best practices for every aspect of cinema. Indie film had one tactic that served that one principle, which was to demystify the development and production process of our work. One thing! There are so many other aspects of it. A lot of this day’s focus is demystifying distribution and exhibition, but there are many others, across all perspectives and all ways that we engage. To do this, we each – and this is where my list starts to build, these are the tools – [we] need to take it upon ourselves to develop the resources that we can share with others. So if you read my newsletter, you’ve already got a list of over two-hundred film financers that are out there. You already had the list of the over a hundred theatrical distributors that work in the United States. You have a list of all the podcasts that deal with the film industry. You have a template to help you and your distribution planning. You have these things being mapped out by Filmstack right now. We need to create resources. And the key piece of this, the practice that we have to embrace with it – hence the list growing – is transparency. Transparency in all things. Drop your shame about anything. To embrace transparency means that we all have to start to recognize the beauty in becoming. The fact that we are all in process in one way or the other. Don’t look just to the end state, that final product, to say that that’s where the vessel for beauty delivery is.

To do that, you know, we have to also recognize that a key part of the process is always going to be failure. And that means that all of us have to stop being so damn judgy. Like, let it go! Get over it! We all make mistakes all the time. We learn. Franklin’s called me out several times. Courtney evaluates what I’m saying. They help me get better at what I do, and I appreciate it. We’re moving to a better process of recommended best practices.”

-Ted Hope

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Welcome to The Slam, Slamdance Film Festival’s official Substack on the future of filmmaking. Through its ecosystem of alumni and guest writers around the world, editorial coverage spans new ideas, emerging voices and sustainability in filmmaking and digital media. The Slam is guided by a cooperative spirit, non-conformity and commitment to empowering artists.

What better way then to launch The Slam than with The NonDē Way: Fun & Dangerous Ideas To Disrupt What Once Was “Indie” & To Separate From A Lame Ass Corporate Film Industry?

Working from the premise that both Hollywood and Indie are on their death rattles, what does an ecosystem that prioritizes the sustainability of the art, artist, and audience look like? In collaboration with Slamdance, NonDē presents a feast of dangerous ideas that were first delivered by its instigators at Slamdance ‘26. For the first time, The Slam is now publishing each idea as a complete series, to keep building this thing we love – cinema – better than before – and always along practical and positive lines.

-Peter Baxter

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