Broken Frontier

This past weekend, there was a marathon of the full season of “Project Greenlight.”  This show is the one program that EVERY film and TV industry person I know watches religiously.  It’s like watching a train wreck in slow motion, from every possible angle.  It satisfies something in industry folk: that feeling of “I know what they’re doing wrong.”  That feeling of superiority overcomes the envy of some schmuck getting to make his own movie.  But, that being said, there’s something we can all learn from it.  John Gulager, the director and de facto star of the show, is all about passion.  His reel was raw, filled with a spark, although not necessarily executed to their fullest potential.  It can be argued this spark is what made them pick him. At least in part.

The other reason is that he has no clue what he’s doing.  That makes for good TV.  A guy who technically knows what to do, but not how to do it is one of the most engaging things on television today.  That’s because it accentuates a massive fear we all have: that terrible feeling that we’re in over our heads.  From the opening moments of pre-production, when John decides that he’s ‘just a contest winner’ and not a director, he’s fated himself to fail.  Everyone around him treats him like a dim-witted child, not because he is, but because that’s how he presents himself.  He doesn’t know what his job is, and everyone around him knows it.  Add to that a huge helping of social awkwardness, and childish bickering, and you have a picture of all of our worst fears.

Being in over your head has its benefits.  A lot of times, when you have to rise to the occasion, beyond what you’ve ever had to do before you can accomplish great things, things that redefine who you are and what you’re capable of.  But, at the same time, knowing how the process goes or what jobs everyone else needs to do will help you to achieve those goals.  The biggest difference between comics and movies and TV is exclusivity.  Getting involved in film requires you to be living in New York or LA, Montreal or Toronto, or, to a lesser extent, Chicago, Boston, or San Francisco.  You need to be in a hub of production in order to get in on the ground floor, working on film sets as a Production Assistant to start your path.  If you live in the middle of nowhere, where there’s nobody making movies, your options are greatly limited, although, with the rising digital evolution in film, that might change in the next few years.  Still, though, to get the experience needed to work on the highest echelons of the industry, you need to do your time on major sets to get the experiences.

Comics, on the other hand, can be done from anywhere, and, there is no true hub for production.  The internet has become our new bullpen, message boards and blogs our training grounds. There’s scores and scores of books about how to get into the industry, and unlike their film equivalents, they’re actually practical and useful to that end.   Books like Larry Young’s “True Stories,” Richard Starkings “Comic Book Lettering,” Alan Moore’s “Writing for Comics,” Tony Caputo’s “How to Self-Publish,” teach you all the tricks, both philosophical and practical to give it a genuine run at the business.  Do they teach you everything? No, not really.  But, they give you a true sense of the work involved, the steps it takes, and what you can expect realistically.  As a film school grad who’s read literally hundreds of film and tv industry books, trust me when I say there is no film/tv analogue to these (Although, there’s a book called Shot by Shot that’s probably one of the most comprehensive idiot guide style books I’ve ever read. It’s about the equivalent of what you learn your freshman year of film school in a 200 page book.)  In any event, these books exist, and coupled with the free access a young creator has to comic professionals, for example, you can e-mail Bendis and get a reply.  Try that with Steven Spielberg. 

The point to all of this is that you can do it.  You can be a member of the professional comics community, and the road blocks that you’d stumble upon on in other creative arts industries just aren’t there.  So go order these books, join up on a few of the industry message boards, and get to it.