Creativity & Business

I was trying to think what the main differences between advertisers and filmmakers are...my immediate thought was "well obviously Advertisers are trying to sell you something. They are businessmen disguised under layers of witty captions and seducing images on screen whereas filmmakers are..." wait a minute, are we the same??? I really hope not but there are some filmmakers who appear to be nothing more than that, businessmen seducing you with visuals merely pretending their film is a great story that needs telling, a true work of art or an important moral worth reiterating. 

Advertisers are obviously meant to allure you into their products, thats their craft but I think perhaps when they do it really well, and by this I mean those adverts that we always remember, that stayed with us. Then maybe they stop being businessmen for a moment and become artists as they have made us think and that's what I believe art should do. 

I think in this industry there will always be a fine line between business and creativity, I mean thats what the industry is -you have your storytellers and your producers and we are taught at the Academy that everyone should think of both.

There is nothing wrong with business in a creative field, during my time at the Academy I've accepted that the two come hand-in-hand but I get annoyed when people say it all the time, I think it's important to realise that you don't need business to be creative. You don't need it to originate an idea, to write a script, to shoot it with your camera or to get your film seen by a small audience (on youtube for example). People get far too concerned with budgets and things which can be helpful but really aren't the most important thing to a film. It made me think that maybe the business side of filmmaking is more social learning? Getting out there, experiencing others creativity, working with other people, getting different varieties of audiences that enable us to learn and grow as creative people. Even this love of budgets is to pay someone for something you don't already have, if you had it you wouldn't need the budget. 

So perhaps in conclusion to my thoughts -creativity and business go together in filmmaking like we've been taught here, I completely accept that. We can definitely be creative without business & money that's for sure however we wouldn't gain the knowledge and experience that comes from the business side of our industry such as working with other individuals, creative trading and leaving our comfort zones. So I can see why it's necessary but it's definitely less important to me.

"Usually, with creativity, the reason not to do it – is the reason to do it...because people say “you can’t do that” and they’re immediately engaged" Steve Henry on advertising