I didn’t plan to shoot this film solo. It’s a choice that can read as a difficult person avoiding collaboration. But I crave collaboration. I miss the friction of a team’s creative perspectives colliding and creating something new and unforeseen. Never mind the huge gaps in my skillset: It’s a long, hard road on your own.
The reasons are complex, but basically it boils down to the principle that I believe all creative people deserve to get paid for their labor and input, and I didn’t have the kind of budget that could support even one more creative on the crew, never mind a team. While I had offers from friends who could do this or that from time to time, I needed a big commitment: I had to travel 3K miles across the Atlantic to a remote location in the UK and shoot for three days, then bounce around the nation picking up supporting interviews. I needed consistency in the production crew and equipment (to avoid technical issues arising), so if I had to shoot one location solo, I had to shoot all locations solo. It made sense to me at the time. I’ve since looked into other filmmakers’ careers and found this particular production plan is so rare it’s barely a thing. With the benefit of hindsight I can well see why.
As a solo filmmaker I was always trying to steer the project towards some area where I could get feedback from creative people. I have editor friends who have been helpful and supportive when they can be. I’ve leaned on a producer friend of mine’s patience and goodwill a little too hard by seeking his guidance (He’s watched a dozen hours of this film by this point, which is above and beyond, frankly). And now I have Tony Longworth as a collaborator, and he’s seen every cut of the film since 2022. But back in 2020 what I wanted was someone who could be part of the project as a producing mentor or consultant, a seasoned filmmaker who could really help me wrestle with the problems and ideas.
I’ve been a member of the IFP (now Gotham) off and on ever since I moved to NYC. They have filmmaker labs that offer meaningful feedback for a select number of projects, to guide them through post-production towards a film market sale. I was hungry for that kind of support and so I applied. Even though the project was nowhere NEAR ready for that kind of scrutiny:
April 21, 2020
I finally heard back from the IFP selection committee, or specifically Milton Tabbot, Senior Director of Programming and Charlotte Reekers, Non Fiction Program Manager, with the news that my submission of HEART OF NEON had been rejected for the 2020 Documentary Lab Program. It's a very nice form letter, and if you've read my initial comments during the submission process then you'll already know I always thought this was a bit of a long shot. It's still a bit of a bummer, though, given that like many, many people right now I could really use some good news. Then again I've had better news than this and I've had far worse news than this during the course of this project. So really nothing has changed and the work continues.
It really should have come as no surprise, honestly. I didn’t have a handle on the story at that point, and there were whole sections that had not been edited properly in my push to get to the end of the first draft. It wasn’t even an assembly yet. But I really wanted the support, so it felt like it was worth taking a swing at.
I struggled on largely on own through the end of the first draft, hammered away at the cut to get to a sharper, more focused second draft at the end of 2022. At that point my producer friend told me, “when you get to your next draft you need to show it to an audience. You’ll want that kind of feedback.”
Finding an audience large enough and local enough to get them in a room was my problem. My HoN network is scattered all over the globe, which is great, but not helpful in this case, and I’d let my local Brooklyn contact list languish since lockdown. So I cast around of filmmaker collectives in the area. When I first moved to NYC there was a vibrant indie film community. It felt like there were filmmakers on every corner and we all talked to each other. Lately, though, that scene has cooled and condensed. I didn’t know where they were anymore. A lot of indies had moved away from NYC because it’s expensive and often a harsh environment to have to hustle in.
That’s when I found the Brooklyn Filmshop, a collective organization that supports local filmmakers by creating, amongst other things, forums where filmmakers can share their work and get feedback from their peers in a safe, structured environment. I joined one of their online workshops to get feedback on this 2 hour+ cut of HoN, and it changed the course of the film significantly. Having the feedback from these people I’d never met was empowering as heck. It’s hard to quantify just how valuable that four-month workshop was to me and the film. I’d found my people.
Part of being an indie filmmaker is not asking permission, and instead just making the film. As an indiedev, Jeff is in a similar circumstance. His best work comes from when he creates something based on his own motivations and goals. That was what I admire about him, and that’s why I wanted to make a film about him. But the unexpected story that emerged out of that was about Jeff finding his people. There would be no forty-year career for Jeff if he hadn’t found his people. It’s the flipside of the auteur theory. While I still believe there is some merit to auteurism, it’s the collective that makes the thing. It’s the village that raises the child whether we want to believe it or not.
If you want to follow your passion and make it your life’s work, find your people. That’s the heart of neon.