I Was the Filmmaker on Stage This Time
What 14 years of watching other filmmakers on stage taught me about the moment I finally got there
I have been to a lot of film festivals over the years. I have sat in dark theaters and watched other people’s films. I have listened to directors talk about their work from the stage. I have felt the palpable reactions of audiences watching live in theaters.
And every single time, there was a part of me that was watching from the outside and imagining what it would feel like to be on the inside of that moment.
That started in 2011. The first time I went to Sundance I walked into a room full of filmmakers talking about their work and something in me came completely alive. Not in a vague, inspiring way - in a specific, clarifying way. The kind where you stop wondering what you want and start knowing. I remember sitting there listening to a filmmaker talk about their project with that particular kind of passion you only have when you have made something that cost you something real, and I thought: I want to be that person one day.
I also got the awesome privilege of meeting James Cromwell in person, and let me just tell you he is a GEM, a complete gem of a human being. He told me to call him “Jamie.” Jamie is a big part of the reason why I was so inspired that year.
This year at SXSW I was that person.
I stood in front of an audience and talked about a film I helped bring to the finish line. A film about something that matters. A film that tackles hard topics and tells a story most people do not want to sit with but need to. And after the screening, people came up to me. Not to congratulate me. To tell me that the film was their story. That they had lived what was on that screen. That they had never seen their experience reflected back to them like that before.
I cannot describe what that feels like. But I will try.
It feels like confirmation. It feels like the whole reason the work is worth doing. It feels like a reminder that filmmaking is not content. It is not product. It is not a deliverable. It is one of the few art forms we have left that can make a stranger feel genuinely less alone in the world.
And I want more of it. Not for myself - for the filmmakers who are somewhere in the middle of their project right now, exhausted and unsure, wondering if anyone will care when it is done. The answer is yes. Someone will care. Someone will walk up to you after a screening and tell you that the film you almost gave up on was the film they needed.
But only if you finish it.
That is the whole thing. That is the entire reason I do this work. Because I have spent 16 years inside the industry - producing for the major streamers, for broadcast television, for theatrical release - and I have watched too many films stall in post-production and disappear. Not because the filmmaker was not talented. Not because the story was not worth telling. Because nobody taught them what finishing actually required. Because they ran out of money, out of energy, out of momentum, and out of people who knew how to help them get unstuck.
I keep thinking about all the voices that never make it out. All the films sitting on hard drives that audiences never got to see because the filmmaker hit a wall in post and had no map and no guide. The Graveyard of Unfinished Films is enormous and quiet and most people in the industry never talk about it.
I want to talk about it. I want to help empty it.
Because we are standing in a moment right now where what indie filmmakers make is exactly what audiences are desperate for. They are tired. Tired of the same recycled franchises, the same safe choices, the same productions that look and sound and feel identical to everything that came before them. They want something that feels real. Something that could only have been made by the specific human who made it.
Your film is that thing. But only if you finish it.
That is why I came home from SXSW more certain than ever about why this work matters. Not because I got to stand on a stage - though that was everything I had imagined it would be - but because of what happened in the room after the lights came back on. Because of the people who found me and said this film was their story.
Your audience is out there waiting for exactly that feeling. Give them a reason to find you.
Let’s talk notes from post.
Until next time,
Shawna Carroll
If you want to hear me talk about the 98th Annual Oscars and guess horribly wrong on which films actually won check out the podcast episode here:
Hey, we did our best with the Oscar predictions. Maybe next year will be better.