Hear Kevin Smith’s Three Tips For Aspiring Filmmakers (NSFW)

If you’re seek­ing advice about mak­ing your first film, Kevin Smith is a good place to start. The comedic direc­tor of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and Chas­ing Amy fame was a Hol­ly­wood out­sider when he made his debut with the crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed Clerks in 1994. The black and white fea­ture went on to gross $3.1 mil­lion — not bad for a Van­cou­ver Film School dropout who shot the movie in the con­ve­nience store where he once worked, on a total bud­get of $27,575.

In the clip above, Smith dis­pens­es a dose of ram­bling advice to Cana­di­an film­mak­er and video pro­duc­er Gavin Michael Booth. We’ve summed it up in three main points. Our sum­ma­ry lacks the exple­tives that makes Smith’s talk rather col­or­ful.

1 – “You have to have a rea­son­able amount of unrea­son­abil­i­ty” – Smith sug­gests that film­mak­ers must pos­sess an appro­pri­ate degree of self-belief and dri­ve, regard­less of the obsta­cles before them. If young film­mak­ers were rea­son­able about their chances of suc­cess, the only peo­ple mak­ing movies would be Los Ange­les natives already entrenched in the film indus­try.

2 – “You have to know… what hills you’re will­ing to die on.” The rea­son­able amount of unrea­son­abil­i­ty also refers to know­ing which bat­tles are worth fight­ing for. A direc­to­r­i­al vision is impor­tant, but at the end of the day it is sub­or­di­nate to bud­get con­straints.

3 – “You have to learn how to kill your babies.” Smith is an ardent believ­er in movies need­ing to be only as long as they must, and no longer. Includ­ing scenes because you like them unless they’re unequiv­o­cal­ly essen­tial is self-indul­gent and does a dis­ser­vice to the audi­ence.

If you’re after fur­ther tips, we’ve also writ­ten about Quentin Taran­ti­no joint­ly giv­ing film­mak­ing advice with Sam Rai­mi, and leg­endary Sovi­et direc­tor Andrei Tarkovsky’s coun­sel to begin­ner film­mak­ers. Plus we have 10 Tips From the Great Bil­ly Wilder on How to Write a Good Screen­play.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman

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