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The Case Against Making More Films

How making 3 films in 10 years led to a $1M feature at TIFF

In less than a month, I'll be sitting in a theater at TIFF watching my debut feature with a room full of strangers.

A decade ago, I was packing camera lenses into cardboard boxes for $12 an hour at a local camera rental company, LensProToGo.

By the end of that summer I had about $3,000 saved up... the most money I'd ever held in my life. I felt like a millionaire.

That summer job is the reason I'm screening at TIFF with my first $1.6M feature film, ISLE CHILD. And I got there by ignoring the most common advice in filmmaking.

There's a piece of advice that floats around film school and film “Twitter” like gospel: make as many films as possible. Just shoot. Ship it. Move on. Volume is the teacher.

I don't believe that.

I've made 3 shorts films in roughly a decade, before making my first feature. Each one took everything I had - financially, emotionally - and each one felt like reaching for something I wasn't quite ready for.

My first short, TREJUR, was made using the $3000 I had saved up from the Summer job. After spending 3 years finishing it, it won almost $12,000 in awards and cash prizes… which became the budget for my next short, SI. I was 18 years old, cold emailing the actor from The Maze Runner, assembling a ragtag crew — including a “cinematographer” who never even held an Alexa mini!

I got nightmares everyday leading up to the shoot — we missed that shot, we ran out of time, my team is upset at me… I felt like I was thrown off the deep end… and that was the best teacher I could’ve had.

No amount of “practice films” would teach me the things I’ve learned from making something I felt I wasn’t ready for.

Si eventually got distributed on HBO Max and led to Jim Cummings, who brought me into his Shorts to Feature Lab. Jim became a mentor and introduced me to crowd equity — a new financing model that helped ISLE CHILD raise it’s million dollar budget, outside the Hollywood system.

Again, none of this would’ve happened if I made 10 short films instead of 3… if I had spread that $3,000 across four little projects instead of betting it all on one ambitious one.

I just listened to Barry Jenkin’s recent DGA interview where his film school dean called filmmaking a "blue-collar art form." Blue collar means plumbers, carpenters, etc — people who develop a skill, refine it, go out and build things.

We usually don’t think of filmmaking as "blue-collar art form” — we ask ourselves whether we “have it” or not — whether we have “the thing” that makes us talented enough to pursue the arts for a living.

But what if we just call ourselves practitioners? We clock in, put in our best hours, hone our skills, and mature over time… like fine wine. We don't expect someone to paint the Mona Lisa after just three attempts, and it's wild to expect filmmakers to do the same.

We're all just constantly developing our skill sets and I think that we have to practice with quality in mind. Make it, share it, then be as self-critical as you can to analyze how you could do better… and then go take that next big risk, go tell that crazy story that you’ve never seen before.

Every film should scare you a little. Every budget should stretch beyond what feels comfortable. Every project should be the thing that, if it works, changes the trajectory of everything after it.

I was broke between films. Edited freelance shorts, the occasional commercial or TV gig to pay rent. No trust fund, no industry parents, no safety net. At every point in my journey, people told me to go make something smaller — wait another year, take a break, be realistic. If I had listened to any of them, I would not be writing this email right now.

I simply held the belief that if I put everything into one thing and made it as good as I possibly could, it would open the door to the next thing. And so far, knock on wood, that belief has been right every time. Quality compounds.

And one more time for the folks in the back: the filmmaker who makes 10 mediocre shorts has 10 videos that nobody remembers. The filmmaker who makes 3 films at the absolute ceiling of what they could do at that moment... has a trajectory.

$3,000 from packing boxes became $12,000 in prize money. That became a $12,000 short that got on HBO Max. HBO Max led to Jim Cummings, crowd-equity, and a million dollar feature… and that feature is now screening at TIFF.

Put all of your eggs into one basket. Make every basket count.

See you in two weeks,
— Thomas Percy Kim

📌 Thomas’s Bookmarks

My favorite links of the week to help you be wiser and more creative.

• Barry Jenkins Full Interview on modern filmmaking - Always blown away by how articulate Barry is. Always tuning in anytime he does a new interview.

• Free AI keying plugin from Basqel – Some of y’all might’ve seen that Corridor Digital video where they solved green screens with AI… someone turned it into a one-click plugin for AE, Premiere, DaVinci, and Nuke. Super cool.

💾 Community Plugs

Resources for filmmakers, content creators, and industry professionals.

• ✂️ We're hiring a short form editor for The Vandalist! If you know your way around a reel and want to work with a team building something from the ground up – reply to this email with your portfolio and some recent work.

• 🎬 Crowdfunding a short film? The Short Film Crowdfunding Playbook is live – a step-by-step guide to raising funds outside your personal circles. If you're thinking about running your own campaign, this is where I'd start.

• ✍️ Looking for cast or crew? If you're a filmmaker searching for someone to help you fill a role, reply with info of your project, rate, location, and job description — I'll try to connect you with someone in the community!

• 💡 Community spotlight: If you've recently wrapped a short, locked a feature cut, or hit a milestone you're proud of — reply and tell me about it. I want to highlight community wins here. :)

📹 Behind the Scenes

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