I love Chris Jones web show: www.chrisjonesblog.com. Every film maker should watch it. He is so up beat and full of advice that one cannot help but think anything is possible. It isn't, but a dose of Chris helps suspend the disbelief.
Chris unlike most advisers puts his money where his mouth is. He acts on his own advice. The cynic in me wonders if his enthusiastic prosletising is merely a psychological need to justify his actions. One does detect a certain sense of exasperation with an industry that has not exactly handed him the big prizes. But he is a genuinely talented man. I loved his short film "Gone fishing".
Though I can see why it failed to get much action in European Film festivals. Europeans are too cynical to buy into the idea of a heaven. At least not one where ducks are eaten alive by evil fish caught by giant worms and gutted for human amusement. See? You don't want to think too hard about this sort of stuff because it spoils the story!
As he says, he makes American - code for entertaining - and not European - code for self-indulgent - movies. Or at least would love to. And like an American he would thus love to be a "success." Or at least he talks about success a lot, so I assume he is not quite certain that he himself is successful. He's English, so how can he? Being English is to feel forever disgruntled.
He may not be artistic but he is a film maker. And film makers constantly struggle to balance art and commerce. I think he comes to the conclusion that art is in the doing, which is as good a definition as anybody else's.
The danger for the rest of us is in believing that if we follow his methods we will have good results. I am pretty certain one will have results, but life does not quite hand out the prizes in a fair and equitable fashion. And what works for one person, does not necessarily work for everyone. Which is another refreshing thing about Chris Jones. He merely tells you what he does. There are no special secrets of Hollywood Success to be purchased, no revolutionary theories of story construction or miracle film making formulas. There are just plans of action, execution, and then retrospection.
So many on-line gurus tell you how to be a success and one wonders why, if they are so smart, they haven't cracked it. We say, those who can, do, and those who can't, teach. But in there lies the danger that the teacher is merely giving you bad advice dressed up as compelling rhetoric. And I, as a teacher myself, not short of rhetoric and enthusiasm while teaching, do try to warn the students that they are to supply the talent and often in this game talent is not enough, nor hard work, nor a positive attitude, nor dumb luck because that only happens once!
Perhaps one should re-define success. A filmmaking career is full of teaching, writing, corporate work, wedding videos, advertisements, TV shows, and some times Feature Films and if you are lucky successful ones that make you famous and able to charge more money until you are involved in another disaster. And if you enjoy the whole process, complete with the up and downs, and the life style, complete with confrontations with complete arse holes, then you are a success!