Making Movies is HARD!!!: The Struggles of Indie Filmmaking

We focus on feature films this week with several discussions including "what does a $100k feature really look like?" "How do you ask investors for money?" and "what does a good pitch sound like?"

Alrik and Timothy talk about the myths first time filmmakers often believe when starting to make their first films.

Griffin Hammond made a 33-minute documentary about Sriracha that he self-distributed and made money. That's right. Real money. We follow his journey to success from Facebook and Kickstarter all the way to Amazon Prime.

After his films played at 50 film festivals and won a handful of awards, Hassan made the move to Los Angeles to pursue a directing career.

This week we give pointers on writing a filmmaker bio and Alrik downloads us on everything he's learned about fundraising

We talk to Noam Kroll about the ins and outs of shooting an affordable feature film.

After high school, Sean McCarthy started his own production company and more than 15 years later they are going strong. He now works with his partner Elizabeth Mitchell making commercials, music videos and their own passion projects, like Doucheaholics

This week Timothy and Alrik talk about the balance between the artistic and business side of being a filmmaker.

Welcome to the 2017 MMIH Christmas extravaganza! We decided to do something special this year and bring back a bunch of our previous guests to see how they are doing and what's changed in their career's since we last heard from them.

Jim Cummings is the writer/director of Thunder Road, a single take 12-minute short that won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize this year. This week, we ask Jim questions about long takes. When to use them? How to create them? And why they are a powerful tool.

This week Alrik is joined by new co-host/friend of the show, Liz Manashil to talk about her second feature, The Speed of Life, filmmaking as a new mother and most importantly about the struggles of indie film distribution!

This week we have woman 1st AC Megaera Stephens on the show to talk about how she got started in the camera department, being woman in a technical role and transitioning from the SF Bay Area to New York.

Alrik shares his experience screening The Rage at the Pictoclick film festival. Then we delve into Facebook Advertising using a $30 experiment on two different ads.

Many filmmakers think there's an easy path to making it big. This week, we discuss winning the filmmaking lottery. Is it really as simple as entering contests and festivals, getting noticed, and starting your career?

How do you prep a production? Where do you start? This week, Alrik and Timothy describe the process of prepping a music video that Timothy is directing and Alrik is producing.

Timothy is back on Making Movies is Hard! Alrik and Timothy catch up on the last few weeks and talk a deal Timothy was offered from Crypt TV and how that all went down.

We dedicate an entire episode to working with nudity, sex and violence. Here to join us is actress Sophia LaPaglia who gives us the dos and dont's of nudity, sex and violence.

This week Kellerman and Alrik welcome Alex Ferrari from Indie Film Hustle to the show! Alex is a filmmaker, editor, colorist and podcast guru, known for the podcasts Indie Film Hustle, Bulletproof Screenplay Podcast and two time feature filmmaker!

Director of Photography Chloe Weaver talks to us about how she got started in the industry, her career in the camera department and how she went from AC to DPing an episode of The Chef's Table.

Andrew Schrader and Gavin Murray join Alrik this week to talk about the Just Shoot It Live show they all went to the night before and to grill Alrik on how he feels about the crowdfunding campaign for The Alternate which now only has 3 days left!