Filmmaking and its Linkages with Entrepreneurship

People ask me what I find so interesting about teaching film to kids. To be honest I just like to see what stories they come up with, and how they execute those ideas through filming and editing. The sheer act of creating is what inspires me! What I love about our program is that every term we get a fresh crop of students all who have different interests whether it be acting, shooting, audio, or editing and they come together to create something new and different that no other group of kids would have come up with. This (as I can attest to) is a lot like starting a business. You get a group of people together who have a shared vision and work with them to create something new and different that wasn’t there to begin with. Someone once told me that being an entrepreneur is a lot like being an artist - you have a blank canvas, some tools, and your sheer will and that is what our program teaches. It forces our students to act entrepreneurially in order to get the job done.

How do we do this? By giving them limited recourses and forcing our students to get creative. “Ok guys, you have use the building we are in for locations, the park down the street, the cloths you have hanging in your closets and any props from home, and wait! You have each other.” This act of taking what is in front of you and creating something new is very much tied to how an entrepreneur acts when he/she is getting ready to start a business and/or partnership. They ask themselves three questions:

1) Who am I? Am I an artist, financial analyst, a lover of dogs?

2) Who do I know? Do I know a good printer who can give me a deal on my prints? Do I know a good VC who can invest in my idea? Do I have a friend who wants me to walk or watch their dog?

3) What do I want? Do I want to make money on my art, do I want to have my own business, do I want to take care of multiple dogs in one day?

What usually happens next is action! As you can tell from the tag “Lights, Camera, Action” Action is fundamental when making a movie. You can’t go from here to there unless you take some steps. With filmmaking once the players and the props and locations are set the rest is just about moving forward, and this is how we get our kids to go beyond themselves, with a team, hard work, and a project at hand.