How To Deal With Failure, Rejection and Disappointment

The real "F" word? Failure.
It's the word that keeps many artists up at night. What happens if the film, music or other project you are working on falls short of your expectations? What if you don't get into Sundance or for that matter ANY film festival? What if you give a concert and no one shows up?

Face it, Folks, Failure and its friends Rejection and Disappointment are a fact. A true artist needs to know how to deal with them. Here are a few thoughts on the subject.

1. At least you tried. It takes guts and determination to anything artistic, so the fact that you even tried is worth merit. Think about all the other people you know who are constantly saying "I want to do this" or "I have an idea for" and know that you are a DOER not a talker.

2. It is a learning experience. No matter how much it hurts, there is always something to be learned from failure. In fact, a recent New York Time article posits that very hypothesis. But you don't need to be a genius (or even read that lengthy article) to know it's true. If, instead of feeling sorry for yourself, you simply ask "what lessons did I take away" - you will certainly come away with a list of items that will undoubtably help you at a future time in life.

3. EVERYONE fails! Yes it's true!!! All those celebrities you see airbrushed and smiling on the cover of your favorite magazine? All failures, each and every one of them. The old adage, "there is no such thing as an overnight success" is true, if you look beneath the surface. Read more about your favorite artist and you will discover that they have failed just like you.

This man suffered from severe depression for many years, and then...

4. NEVER give up!!!! The REAL failures in life? Those people who let a few stumbling blocks along the way cause them to abandon their dreams and goals. The number one thing homeopathic nurses say their dying patients confess to them before they die is "I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me." 

Your life is not a movie or a book - there are chapters, stories, and events of course, but NO ONE KNOWS HOW IT WILL END. What you may have thought is the defining moment of your existence, was perhaps a minor setback, that in the end, turns out to have led you to something much more valuable. I too had a long bout with depression, and I was able to harness all the pain and disappointment in my life and make an indie film. 

You can't know what will happen to you unless you have the courage to take that journey.

I will leave you with an image that I saw on a billboard, that, oddly, and inspiringly, was a PSA:

Review: Selling Your Film Without Selling Your Soul

When it comes to navigating the ever-changing landscape of the indie film world, few have the knowledge, expertise and resources as Orly Ravid, co-director of The Film Collaborative, author/filmmaker Jon Reiss and marketing strategist Sheri Candler. You might say these three names are the "Holy Trinity" of Indie Film; any search query on the subject undoubtably returns one or all of their names.

So it makes sense, at least from a marketing standpoint, that they should band together and offer product to the indie filmmaking masses. The result is a new ebook, available on a multitude of platforms, seductively entitled "Selling Your Film Without Selling Your Soul."

This is a must-read snapshot of the current state of indie film. The book offers a rare glimpse inside the books of at least six indie films currently making the circuit. They range from micro-budget no-name all the way up to low-budget big-name.

The numbers they divulge may be discouraging, especially if one is considering investing money in an indie film of any size budget and expecting a return. From my take, none of the narrative fiction films outlined in the main section made any kind of noteworthy profit.

Yet there is a LOT to learn from within these pages. Dryly written, the book cuts the fluff and gets in to the specific details of many of the films' marketing strategies, including their utilization of Facebook and YouTube. One takeaway: nearly all the filmmakers that advertised on Facebook said they saw no benefit from it, in terms of direct sales. This is partly because of the way Facebook both pushes information to its fans and the lack of direct action an interested party can take on a page, something that is rumored to change very soon.

And, I have to say, the thing the overwhelming majority of these narrative indie films have in common?  They all look really really terrible!! Don't believe me: judge for yourself!





Wait, aren't indie films supposed to avoid cliched situations and bad comedy? Perhaps that's why these movies didn't succeed. Then again, somehow, The Cosmonaut, a  crowd-funded Sci-Fi project, raised 37,000 Euros just from a video from a guy running around a forest in a space suit with some erie woman's wailing underneath, so I guess anything is still possible.



Perhaps the most interesting section of the book is the one that deals with The Cosmonaut and a few other projects, entitled "Using P2P Methods to Distribute Film?" in which Candler discusses the threat of piracy to the artist/filmmaker and offers some case studies in "alternative" distribution methods, which are gaining more and more traction every day. Alternative licensing, such as the Creative Commons license is discussed, which is an entirely different way at looking at artistic work.

But the best lesson of this book for independent artists, may be in the way the ebook itself is being marketed and distributed. Until October 1, most versions of the ebook are free from the website. They also promise that there will always be a free PDF version available.

They are undoubtably hoping, like many of the filmmakers profiled in the book, that while they may not make a direct profit on the sales of the ebook itself, through ancillary revenue like advertising, and status-building, it will help them continue to work in the world of independent film without - yes - "selling their soul."