Hey Film Folk,

Film is a funny business. The public understand what actors do, they have some notion as to what a director and producers do and a few of the other key roles… but most people have no idea how many people go into creating a film.

A large Hollywood film can have literally thousands of people working on it from writing to marketing. It’s min-boggling how it works.

As a low budget, indie, atomic filmmaker, I’m rather used to doing multiple jobs myself. I’m a writer/director/producer/editor, but on productions that are small and modest.

This wasn’t always encouraged. I’ve been to pitches and funding meetings and had projects greenlit if I’ll purely write or direct. When I’ve stuck to my guns to do both, I’ve had projects fall to the side. I’m always impressed by the people who can turn their hands to multiple roles at the top of the game. The Robert Rodriguez’s and John Carpenter’s of the world.

That’s one of the reasons I was so proud to have John Ottman kindly put a testimonial on my book. Not only is John a world class composer, he’s also a world class editor too.

John has been a key creative on far too many films to begin to list them all, but examples of his work include most of the X-Men films, “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang”, “Superman Returns”, “Valkyrie” and “The Usual Suspects”. John edited and composed all of those films (and many, many, many more). Wow.

John’s testimonial for my book is as follows:

“Rules are for fools! I’m glad there’s a book stressing
the importance of following one’s creative instincts”

That is brilliant advice. You need to follow your creative instincts and do what feels right to you.

Thanks for reading,

P.S. John also has producer credits, actor credits and director credits. The guy can do it all!