The Passion Movies

[Shameka Cretsinger]

Microbudget filmmaker David Axe has dedicated himself to making one movie per year and has kept it up for almost seven (skipping 2021). He and others who worked with him recount the production of one such movie, Acorn, which evolved into his most complex project to date. From scripting to working with the cast and crew to all the little unexpected curveballs thrown at him, Axe and his team were determined to see their vision through, sharing his insight, humor, and passion for a little film that could.

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So, you've spent the past three years studying Tarantino, DSLR, green screen and independent film and damn. It's getting hot. All your mates are sick and tired of telling you how talented you are. More, they are sick and tired of hearing you tell them how you can't wait to ditch the dull and boring day job and do nothing but write movies and/or make films. It's getting time for a reality check. New Year's resolutions are right around the corner. Why not make a New Year's resolution that will stick?

It's crazy to give up your day job, just yet. You need to get tooled up. And learning the ropes of any job is hard, and in the creative industries it's downright hard and harsh. I have learned so many painful lessons along the way myself.

Here is the good news: Canadian philospher Malcom Gladwell wrote a terrific book Outliers: The Story of Success explaining the 10,000 hour rule. Basically, you can do anything you want in life, as long as you are willing to put in the hours. Do 10,000 hours at any one thing, and you will become really good at it. And reading this Raindance rticle will count towards that sum total! BTW Outliers: The Story of Success is available on Amazon for less than 6.00.

Budget is everything. A lot of aspiring filmmakers I know decide that their first project is going to be a multi-million dollar film. Movies are categorised by their budgets. From high budgets to low budgets. Learn what these budgets are. Don't forget that low or even no-budget films are easier to finance and if you make a mistake you haven't lost the family inheritance!

Five thousand years ago, a man called Noah said he wanted to build a boat. He had never done it before. His friend and neighbors mocked him. 'Why do you want to build a boat when we live miles from the sea?" But he did and the boat floated. The proof is that we are all here!

A hundred and ten years ago a Londoner said he wanted to build a boat. He went around the City and raised a huge pile of money. He engaged all the top maritime engineers and went to Belfast and built the Titanic.

My question is: "Which boat do you want to float?" Sometimes lo-to-no budget filmmaking is a great way to launch your career. Keep control in your own hands and don't risk the hidden icebergs of the film industry.

Watch movies and read scripts of the movies you love. Soak up the way the successful filmmakers who have gone before you and learn from their filmmaking and storytelling. Your goal is to develop your own distinctive voice.

To answer this question you need to learn about the roles available -- and be honest with yourself. Take a look at the jobs pages for the film production companies you're interested in, read the descriptions carefully, then pick a direction.

A lot of successful filmmakers have started off as interns. Martin Scorcese started off interning with Roger Corman. Edgar Wright started off interning for Raindance. Get an internship and learn the ropes from experts. You need to be persistent to get an internship. Have a look at the fabulous Raindance interns.

Nearly everyone at Raindance has started as an intern and/or volunteers. Find a festival or organisation you admire. Secure a volunteer or intern position. Impress with your energy and passion and keep your fingers crossed.

Get on-the-job training and make a bit of cash on side. MAny runners use this joib for 6-9 months to get a feel for all the different companies and people in the industry. Often runners make really good connections and end up collaborating with fellow runners.

Working for a film organisation can give you a great window into different parts of the business. You must be: willing and able to learn a new role every few months. You must love the organisation you choose.

The context you gain will help you understand if the company or organisation is actually a good fit -- and it will make you a stronger candidate. And as you learn about the company, identify the decision makers for your areas of interest. for example, if you want to work on sets or build props and wardrobe you need to find an art director. It is the art director who hires the people in the art department.

Once you know something about the companies you're targeting, figure out how to move from a resume to a relationship. How are you connected to the key decision makers? It's hard, but if you can engage somebody in a conversation, you get a free pass through the most difficult hiring round: resume screening.

How do you engage hiring managers? LinkedIn and Twitter are the best tools. Follow them on Twitter and see if you can find an opportunity to start a constructive conversation. On LinkedIn, you should take a different approach: Use the LinkedIn network to figure out how you're connected to people at your company of interest, reach out to your connections for informational phone calls, then see if those connections can steer you to the right hiring managers.

For example, maybe you know you want to be in London and work at a mid-sized commercial production company, but you're really not sure about the right role. Totally normal. Here's what you should do: Find a company that interests you, look at the various roles available, find one that you think might work, and give it a shot.

Think of the role as an experiment. It's not a necessarily what you're going to be doing forever. It's something you're doing to get more information to help you make your next career decision and steadily get close the career path that's perfect for you.

The film industry is full of specialists in every single area. It's a really good strategy to get some specific film training that will prepare you for life as a screenwriter or filmmaker. Raindance's entire history since 1992 (when John Major was still the British prime minister) has been to design and implement cutting edge training.

Raindance also has an innovative Fasttrack Programme, and also offers a Postgraduate Film Degree in conjunction with Staffordshire University. Raindance also has a brand new 2 year HND Level 5 BTEC in Moving Images, You can also get film training from these London film schools: National Film and Television School, London Film School and the Met Film School.

Why not come to our upcoming Open House? It's free and you can ask Raindance tutors and experts anyhting you want! Get details here for this free event. If you would like a free taster tutorial about our Fast Track or Postgraduate Film Degree email us postgr...@raindance.co.uk or call us 0207 930 3412.

Things stayed pretty quiet for a while after that, though I did interview Jim Caviezel and The Passion of the Christ producer Steve McEveety when they collaborated on another film, The Stoning of Soraya M., in 2009:

One extra note: my friend Matt Page has noted that there are quite a few significant Bible-movie anniversaries taking place this year. You can get the full list at his blog, but here are a few that stand out to me, in order of their anniversary dates:

The film had been hugely successful, but also hugely controversial, when it first came out in 2004. I had written many articles about the film before, during, and after its release, and I hadn\u2019t just reviewed the film as a critic or analyzed the controversies as an op-ed writer; I had also written some news stories that allowed me to interview some of the people who were promoting the film.

My editor wanted me to go back and talk to some of these people and see what sort of long-lasting impact the film had had on their ministries. So I made a few calls. And I learned very quickly that most of these people had moved on from The Passion and weren\u2019t really thinking about it any more.

I can\u2019t recall if any of them gave a reason for their lack of interest in the subject of my would-be story. By that point, the film\u2019s co-writer and director, Mel Gibson, had become a genuinely scandalous figure thanks to a drunk-driving incident in 2006, so it\u2019s possible they just didn\u2019t want to be associated with him any more.

But it\u2019s also possible that they had genuinely lost interest in The Passion of the Christ once its moment of fame (and infamy) had passed. For ministries that are always looking for ways to turn whatever\u2019s hot and trendy into an evangelism tool, even The Passion may have been another flavour-of-the-month that had come and gone.

I found myself thinking about that recently while working on my coverage of The Chosen. The hit life-of-Jesus series is now almost five years old itself, and it\u2019s as popular with the fans and the parachurch ministries as ever. Interest in The Passion may have dissipated after just a few years, but The Chosen has found a way to keep it surging.

I posted a similar round-up ten years ago for the film\u2019s tenth anniversary, and a lot of what you see below is taken from that round-up. However, there has been more to write about since then\u2014not least because Mel Gibson and lead actor Jim Caviezel have started talking about a sequel\u2014so I figured an update was needed.

I also wrote an essay on the film for a book called Re-Viewing The Passion: Mel Gibson\u2019s Film and Its Critics. Most of the other essays in the book approached the film from historical or theological angles, etc., but mine was supposed to look at the film from a cinematic point of view\u2014and it didn\u2019t take me long to figure out that one of the uniquely cinematic things about this film was its use of flashbacks and point-of-view shots, and that the film\u2019s use of these techniques was actually quite significant from a theological point of view, too. (I was pleasantly surprised to discover, once I read the other essays, that a few of my fellow contributors had focused on how the film brings together the \u201Cobjective\u201D atonement theology of St. Anselm and the \u201Csubjective\u201D atonement theology of Peter Abelard, which dovetailed perfectly with my take on the film\u2019s use of \u201Cobjective\u201D and \u201Csubjective\u201D cinematic devices.) By the time I was finished writing the essay, I had come to a whole new appreciation of the film:

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