Shaking the Money Tree, 3rd Edition. Morrie Warshawski

mean a note enough, it will sound different. You got to pick the notes you really mean!”

      Filmmaking is a funny business. Part art, part business. Neither fish nor fowl. How does a professional fashion a career in this hybrid environment where the formal training is primarily concerned with technique and aesthetics, but rarely with business and career development skills?

      When a filmmaker comes to me for advice it’s almost always because of a problem with funding — or rather a problem with a lack of funding. I work almost exclusively with artists in the noncommercial sector who are doing the type of projects that need grants and donations for support. What I have discovered over the years is that funding problems are almost always rooted in a basic set of unresolved career issues. This work has led me to a system of consulting that focuses on helping professionals with career development basics that, in turn, affect every aspect of their work, including fundraising. Below is a quick summary of the main points of my approach to career development work.

FIRST STEPS

      The “first step” my clients must accomplish is to identify their set of Core Values — those immutable values that are inherent in their daily lives and infuse all the interactions they have with others, both personal and professional. We are stuck with our values, our basic set of beliefs. They follow us wherever we go and dictate how we respond to our significant others, how we act in teams, how we drive our cars or cook our meals. Since we are stuck with these values, the important thing for a filmmaker to do is to recognize these values, bring them to the surface, and broadcast them proudly. In this manner, values serve as a strong attractor — and a strong detractor — as a filmmaker moves through the professional world, picking the projects and people with whom she wants to work. Because core values are inescapable, they have become a more and more important part of my work with all clients. My own core values are: creativity, tolerance, thoughtfulness, and transparency. Filmmakers I have worked with recently have listed the following values: mentoring, curiosity, honesty, human spirit, humor, intelligence, courage.

      The next thing I ask every new client to do is to create a Mission Statement — a short, succinct enumeration of their raison d’etre. Why are you a filmmaker? What are you trying to accomplish with your work? The filmmaker has to be able to articulate this for herself, and for everyone she meets. This encapsulates the heart of her work. The Mission Statement also helps the filmmaker make day- to-day decisions about what projects to accept or reject, and how to apportion time to be most effective.

      The most important aspect of the mission statement is its ability to help the filmmaker articulate and commit to a unique sense of purpose that keeps her centered, and broadcasts to all potential funders and clients that this is a person who is serious about her work and knows what she wants to accomplish. No one wants to work with or fund a filmmaker who is unclear about this central issue.

      I had a client once who was very gifted and had created a few excellent award-winning documentaries, but was having no luck fundraising for her next project. As we began our work I asked for her Mission Statement. She said that she didn’t have one. We then explored how she was approaching funders. As it happens, she was going to funders and saying, “I’m an accomplished filmmaker. I just want funds to do documentary work, and I’m willing to make a film about anything that is of interest to your foundation.” It took a while for me to convince her that her approach was all wrong. She needed to be very clear about why she was making films, and what she hoped to accomplish, otherwise funders would not take her seriously. She took the time to create a Mission Statement that conveyed her true interests, then matched that with a project that she very much wanted to accomplish. After a year of fundraising she was able to raise over $1 million for her next film.

      Here is a note I received from filmmaker Alice Elliott (director of the Academy Award#nominated documentary The Collector of Bedford Street):

       Dear Morrie,

       Just a brief testimonial. Since I’ve started saying my personal mission statement whenever I speak, and adding it to my e-mails, funding opportunities have sort of jumped up in my lap. It’s very neat.

       Yours,

       Alice

      Alice had gone through a number of iterations of her mission statement. An early version was: “Creating art that shows us how to live together with humor, tolerance, and compassion.” After some consideration it became: “Leading social change by revealing the big stories hidden in the human heart.” If you visit her Web site, www.welcomechange.org, you’ll find her mission statement right at the top of the home page.

      After creating a mission statement, I ask every client to create a Vision Statement. My instructions are to pick a point in the future (at least three years out) and envision as specifically as possible what your life as a filmmaker will be like in that future. I often have my clients draw a picture of this future, and then go back into the picture to identify items/accomplishments that are more important than others.

      The Vision Statement is a powerful tool for energizing the movement of a career, and for giving focus to the accomplishments that mean more to a filmmaker than other things. The filmmaker’s vision may well change over the years, but it always provides the filmmaker with a set of strong images around which she can create a plan of action. It’s the vision that allows you to become strategic.

      Two years after giving my “Jumpstarting Your Career” workshop at Seattle’s 911 Media Arts Center, I received a call from one of the attendees. I remembered him well because during the workshop he had drawn a particularly vivid and simple set of vision drawings — one showed his present reality as a person sitting by himself in a theater watching a group of people working on a stage, and the second drawing of his future vision showed a theater full of people watching him working on the stage with a crew and actors. “I just called,” he said “because I found that drawing I did a couple of years ago and realized that I’ve gone from being an independent and isolated filmmaker to someone who is working at an agency with lots of creative people, and I’d completely forgotten that this was my dream.” Once the vision is located it can have a powerful pull on a filmmaker’s next steps.

NEXT STEPS

      Once the filmmaker settles all the issues of Mission, Vision, and Values, she can move on to designing a healthy path toward career development. At this point, it helps tremendously if the filmmaker can identify just a few Major Goals — both short-term (six to twelve months into the future) and long-term. These goals, on the short- term side, must be reasonable and achievable goals. And whenever possible, they should be goals that can be quantified (e.g., “Finish one short film per year for the next three years” or “Learn how to do digital editing using XYZ software on my home computer within the next five months”).

      The goals should be in alignment with the vision the filmmaker created for the future. All the goals should be directed at helping the filmmaker make a difference to her career, even if that difference is a small one. You want to create some momentum forward, so even small steps are important.

      One exercise I often give is to have the filmmaker create two lists of actions: “Five Quick Wins” and “Five Bold Moves.” The quick wins help to define actions that can take place in the short term and give the filmmaker some quick successes, which are very important for morale. The bold moves help the filmmaker identify larger and riskier actions that, if taken, can make a major difference to a career. The bold moves are harder to make, and therefore demand a different level of commitment — one that brings the filmmaker to the very center of how serious she may or may not be about her professed choice of career and vision for the future.

      If goals are in place, and the filmmaker is very grounded in a career direction that she feels very strongly about, then it’s time to consider one of the basic facts of life in filmmaking, and every other profession — the fact that it is other people who help make or break a career. At this point in planning I have clients identify their Circles of Influence. Begin