A German film distributor called Störkanal will soon release a special edition German DVD of WEAPONS. I have been sent a list questions to answer for the booklet. Instead of posting all the answers here at once I will answer a single one each day.

Question #9

With no doubt you like to work in the independent film scene, so what is good and what is bad about working as an independent director?

Well there’s really no independent film scene anymore in this country, there hasn’t been for some time. Now there’s basically studio movies and extreme low budgets – the middle ground has disappeared entirely because of the economic crisis. Hardly anyone is financing at the 5-10 mil level anymore. It’s a huge divide now. If you want to work independently of the studio system be prepared to make your film on an entire budget of 100,000 dollars. The game has changed dramatically in less than a year. I’m happy I came up in the so-called ‘digital revolution’ of the mid to late 90’s. I own an HD camera and I know how to shoot well. I own Final Cut Pro HD and I know how to edit. I feel for the old established directors who don’t know these things. What are these guys doing now? Many of the established, great filmmakers of our country who have been shunned by the studio system for whatever reason, they don’t have the guerilla filmmaking knowledge and skills of people in my generation and below. So on the one hand I feel very fortunate because if I want to I can still go out and shoot a feature film on 100K. Not ever filmmaker can do that. A lot of these guys are stuck in the old model of multi-million dollar budgets, teamsters, unions, studio deals. Give those filmmakers an HD camera package, a laptop with Final Cut Pro and a concept and they wouldn’t know what to do with themselves. So I feel fortunate that I have that skill to fall back on. I’m prepared to survive through this crisis and come out unscathed. I’m like a guerilla soldier in that sense. If the normal rules of warfare are thrown out and all hell breaks loose I can still survive with my knife and my AK-47 by banding together with some other like-minded soldiers and making due with what we have. Because that’s how I learned from the very beginning.