By Jon Danzig

What makes a good movie?

Of course, it’s all in the eye of the beholder. You are making a movie for the audience. What is the movie for? If it is to entertain, then the measure of success must be to entertain. The films I made were to inform, persuade and hopefully change the world! If you know from the beginning what is the purpose of your movie, then you will be able to measure its success.

In my opinion, there is no set formula for a movie’s success. But as a very basic, the film should be competently and technically produced. After all, you could not expect a book to be successful if the writing was bad and made no sense. Similarly, there is a basic requirement for a film to have good production values, whatever its purpose or message. Beyond this, the screen is blank, there are no rules, you can fill it with what you like... so long as your destined audience likes it too.

What makes a film production business these days?

It’s tougher than ever before to be successful in film production, but easier than ever before to make films. In the UK for example, there is no longer just one TV channel, but hundreds. The internet is also a relatively new medium to show films. Now, anyone can make films and show them to an audience of millions, a privilege previously reserved for an elite. Some amateur films shown on You Tube get audiences several times bigger than TV programmes.

The picture quality of quite cheap video cameras today is better than TV stations could produce, say, twenty years ago. Video cameras are now almost as ubiquitous as the pen. This is a threat as well as an opportunity for professional film makers. After all, good writers should never have been scared that everyone owns several pens. Owning a pen doesn’t make you into a brilliant writer. Good writers are few and far.

Similarly, owning a video camera doesn’t necessarily mean you can make a great movie. Yet, it does mean that ownership of film making equipment is nothing special. To be something special at producing movies, you have to excel at making full use of all the production technology available today. With millions of hours of films being made across the world every year, it’s more and more difficult to make a movie stand out as brilliant and, also, to make a profit. That comes not from the equipment, but the imagination and creative skills of people.

People’s creative skills will always be more important than the film production equipment. So, if the question is what makes a successful film production business these days, it all comes down to the imagination and technical skills of the people running it. Owning the equipment is a burden, as the equipment will soon become out of date, replaced by new gadgetry, such as high definition or the emerging techniques for 3D films. It’s invariably better to hire equipment than to own it.

What will never become out of date, however, are people who have the brain power to combine images and sounds in such a way that will compel and awe their audiences. That’s as true today as it was when the movie camera was first invented. A good director could make a brilliant and compelling movie using the cheapest mobile phone. Yet, the best and most expensive camera in the hands of someone who didn’t know what they were doing would result in a film no one would want to watch. If starting a film production business yesterday, today or tomorrow, I’d invest most of my money in people skills, not the equipment.

What would you say to a young person wanting to be a director?

Don’t rush. Take it easy. Learn all the production values and techniques first. To conduct an orchestra, you should know about all the instruments and players and what sounds they can make. Similarly, you should understand every aspect of film production, from the basic concept, script writing, production and post-production. All these are learnable by anyone, but to learn them properly, takes time and dedication and lots of practice.

And yet production skills are not enough. You need passion, enthusiasm and an eye that can see the world in a different way to everyone else. It doesn’t matter what road you take to learn, only the destination counts. Before I made any films, I learnt the craft of writing and photography and then the skills of producing sound. By combining all these talents together I could produce a film. Without a clear understanding of all the multiple layers of visual and aural flavours that can be mixed to make a movie, I would be a terrible director.

So, I would encourage any young person who wants to be a director to earnestly learn all the skills of film production before they even dream of shouting “Action!” If you know nothing about photography, how can you instruct the cameraperson or lighting technician? If you know little about how sound is recorded, how can you have a sensible conversation with your sound recordist? Similarly, if you know nothing about the world of acting and what inspires people to give a brilliant performance, how will you ever get the best from the people appearing in your films?

Perhaps most importantly, to be a good director, you need to be someone with a vision that you can enthuse and inspire your team about even before the first shot is produced. A director is a leader, commanding all the multiple skills of people and movie making technology in such a way that a coherent film results from it. Can only those with a natural talent do all this? Not necessarily. I believe that all skills are learnable. But the drive to learn has to be within you. That, in my belief, is the only natural talent you need – a desire to learn. And hopefully, that is a desire that nestles deep within the hearts and brains of all human beings.

About the author

Jon Danzig is a journalist and media director, with considerable experience in the world of publishing, photography, broadcasting and short film production. He was an investigative journalist with Roger Cook’s consumer programme at the BBC; he won an award for his medical journalism, and he has produced over 100 short films.

Jon Danzig’s YouTube channel: www.JonDanzig.com.

Email: jondanzig@aol.com