Sunday Seven
Every Sunday seems to invite the same question.
What are you hoping for?
Perhaps you’re hoping your screenplay finally comes together. Perhaps you’re waiting for an investor to call. Maybe you’re refreshing your inbox every few minutes, hoping a festival has accepted your film. Perhaps you’re wondering whether anyone will ever discover the work you’ve spent years creating.
Hope is a wonderful thing. But over the past thirty-five years of Raindance, I’ve noticed something curious.
The filmmakers who spend the most time waiting for miracles rarely experience them.
The filmmakers who eventually create what everyone else calls a miracle almost never describe it that way.vThey talk about rewriting a script thirty times.vThey talk about making another short film when nobody noticed the first one.vThey talk about borrowing equipment, persuading friends to work weekends, living on baked beans, sleeping on sofas, hearing “no” a hundred times before finally hearing one “yes.”
Looking back, people call their success an overnight sensation.
Living through it, it felt like years of very ordinary Tuesdays.
I’ve come to believe that miracles usually arrive wearing work boots.
Not angel wings. But with Work boots.
The older I get, the more convinced I become that this is true, not only in filmmaking but in almost every worthwhile pursuit.
Here are seven reasons why.
1. Miracles begin long before anyone notices.
The public loves beginnings. We love firsts. We celebrate premieres, award ceremonies and standing ovations. What we rarely see are the thousands of invisible hours that made those moments possible.
Take Christopher Nolan.
Today he’s regarded as one of cinema’s great directors. But before Memento, before The Dark Knight, before Oppenheimer, there was a young filmmaker making a tiny black-and-white feature called Following (1998).
He shot on weekends because everyone had weekday jobs. he used my office on Berwick street s a production base. He rehearsed extensively because film stock was expensive.vHe planned every frame because he couldn’t afford mistakes.
There was nothing glamorous about it.
No miracle. Just extraordinary preparation applied to very ordinary circumstances.
When Following finally attracted attention, it looked as though a brilliant filmmaker had suddenly appeared.
Of course he hadn’t. He’d been quietly becoming that filmmaker for years.
Every great career has an invisible apprenticeship.
2. Hard work compounds faster than talent.
Talent matters. Of course it does.c
But I’ve met hundreds of talented filmmakers whose careers never quite happened.
I’ve also met filmmakers with modest natural gifts who simply refused to stop improving.
Guess which group usually succeeds.
When Edgar Wright was making amateur films as a teenager, he wasn’t waiting for permission from the industry. He was learning by doing. He experimented with editing, comic timing and visual storytelling years before most people knew his name.
Those early projects weren’t masterpieces.
They were practice.
Every film taught him something. Every mistake became another tool.
By the time Shaun of the Dead arrived, audiences thought they’d discovered an exciting new filmmaker.
In reality, Edgar Wright had been preparing for that opportunity for years.
Talent opens a door.
Persistent effort builds the house behind it.
3. Every “overnight success” is built one ordinary day at a time.
One of the most dangerous myths in filmmaking is the overnight success story.
It makes everyone else’s progress seem painfully slow.
Yet almost every filmmaker I’ve admired has experienced long periods where nothing appeared to be happening.
Guy Ritchie spent years making commercials and learning his craft before Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels burst onto screens.
The film looked fresh because it was. But freshness is rarely accidental.
It usually emerges from years of experimentation, frustration and repetition.
The audience sees ninety minutes.
The filmmaker lived through ten years.
Never compare your Chapter Three with somebody else’s Chapter Twenty.
4. The smallest jobs often lead to the biggest opportunities.
When Raindance began in 1993, nobody was asking us to reshape independent cinema.
We were simply trying to create a place where filmmakers could meet each other.
Our office was tiny. Our resources were limited.
Most of the industry ignored us.
If someone had told me that those modest gatherings would eventually help launch thousands of careers, create the British Independent Film Awards, educate tens of thousands of filmmakers and build one of the world’s largest independent film communities, I would probably have laughed.
At the time, none of it felt historic. It felt like hard work.
We printed programmes. Answered telephones. Moved chairs.Hung posters. Swept floors.Made coffee.Welcomed guests.
One ordinary task after another.
The miracle wasn’t a single event.
It was consistency.
5. Nobody builds miracles alone.
There is another myth worth challenging. The lone genius.
Cinema has never worked that way.
Christopher Nolan has long collaborated with producer Emma Thomas.
Edgar Wright has built enduring creative partnerships with writers, actors and craftspeople.
Guy Ritchie relied on collaborators who believed in his vision long before the rest of the industry caught up.
Every remarkable career is supported by people whose names audiences rarely remember.
That has always been one of the great joys of Raindance.
Watching strangers meet over coffee. Seeing a writer find a producer. A cinematographer discover a director. An editor meet the filmmaker they’ll spend the next decade working beside.
The miracle wasn’t the networking event.
The miracle was what happened five years later because two people happened to meet there.
Community quietly multiplies possibility.
6. Faith is a discipline, not a feeling.
Sunday is traditionally associated with faith.
Whether or not you belong to a religious tradition, I think every filmmaker understands faith. Not because of churches. Because of Mondays.
Faith is opening Final Draft when yesterday’s pages disappointed you.
Faith is applying to another festival after receiving another rejection.
Faith is believing your next script can be stronger than your last one.
It isn’t blind optimism.
It’s disciplined persistence.
There have been years at Raindance when finances looked uncertain, when people questioned our direction, when every sensible voice suggested giving up.
Yet every Monday morning we opened the office again.
Not because success was guaranteed. Because the work still mattered.
Faith isn’t believing everything will work out.
Faith is deciding the work is worth doing anyway.
7. Put on your work boots.
People often ask me for the secret.
How do you build a career? How do you become successful?
How do you make a film that changes your life?
I’m always slightly disappointed by the question because it suggests there’s a hidden shortcut.
I’ve never found one.
The filmmakers who eventually succeed usually share remarkably ordinary habits.
They finish scripts.
They make another film.
They learn another skill.
They read.
They watch great cinema.
They help other filmmakers.
They keep going after disappointment.
None of those actions feel miraculous.
Until one day, somebody else looks at the finished career and says, “What an incredible miracle.”
No. Not a miracle. Thousands of small decisions made consistently over many years.
That is how careers are built. That is how movements begin.That is how independent cinema survives.
This Sunday, if you’re waiting for your miracle, I have a suggestion.
Stop looking towards the sky.
Look down.
Are your work boots on?
If they are, you’re already much closer to the miracle than you think.
Because in filmmaking, as in life, the people we call lucky are usually the ones who quietly kept showing up long after everyone else had gone home.
And perhaps that’s the greatest miracle of all. Not that extraordinary things happen.
But that ordinary people, doing ordinary work with extraordinary commitment, can create films that outlive them, inspire strangers, and change lives they will never meet.
That’s the kind of miracle I believe in.
And it’s one that’s available to every filmmaker willing to lace up their boots tomorrow morning.
One final thought.
When I founded Raindance in 1993, nobody was waiting for us.
There wasn’t a queue of sponsors outside the door. There wasn’t a waiting list of filmmakers desperate to attend. There wasn’t a master plan promising that one day we’d discover filmmakers, launch careers, create the British Independent Film Awards, teach tens of thousands of students or still be here more than three decades later.
There was simply a small office, a telephone, a photocopier, a handful of believers and an idea that independent filmmakers deserved better.
Some weeks we wondered whether anyone would turn up. Most months we wondered how we’d pay the rent.
There were moments when giving up would have been the sensible thing to do.
Looking back, people sometimes describe Raindance as a miracle.
I don’t.
I remember carrying boxes of programmes through Soho. I remember stuffing envelopes late into the night. I remember persuading filmmakers to give us a chance. I remember introducing strangers to one another because I thought they might make something together. I remember sweeping floors after events because there wasn’t anyone else to do it.
Those aren’t miracle stories. They’re work stories.
And enough work stories, repeated over enough years, eventually become the stories other people call miracles.
That’s why I have such enormous respect for independent filmmakers.
Every day, somewhere in the world, someone is opening a blank screen and writing “FADE IN.”
Someone is borrowing a camera.
Someone is rehearsing actors in a borrowed living room.
Someone is editing until two in the morning before going to work the next day.
Someone is making a film that almost nobody believes in.
Yet. Those people aren’t waiting for miracles. They’re building them.
If that’s you, keep going.
One conversation can change a career.
One introduction can become a lifelong partnership.
One short film can become a feature.
One festival screening can introduce you to the collaborator you’ve been searching for.
I’ve seen every one of those things happen at Raindance. Not once.
Hundreds of times.
Which is why, after all these years, I remain absurdly optimistic about independent cinema.
Not because filmmaking is getting easier. It isn’t.
Not because technology will solve everything.
It won’t.
But because I’ve watched ordinary people do extraordinary things for more than thirty years.
I’ve watched them refuse to quit.
And that may be the closest thing to a miracle I’ve ever seen.
Your Sunday Challenge
Before Monday arrives, ask yourself one simple question:
What pair of work boots do I need to put on this week?
Maybe it’s finishing that screenplay instead of talking about it.
Maybe it’s finally sending your film to festivals.
Maybe it’s making the phone call you’ve been avoiding.
Maybe it’s introducing two filmmakers who ought to know each other.
Maybe it’s simply opening your laptop and writing one page.
Whatever it is, do that.
Miracles have a funny habit of meeting people who are already hard at work.
I’d love to hear from you.
What looked like a miracle in your career, but turned out to be years of quiet work?
Leave a comment below. I read every one, and your story might be exactly the encouragement another filmmaker needs this Sunday.
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I miss that office of Berwick. I remember the first time going there and being awed and the combination and creativity and chaos.
It’s funny that you talk so much about faith—I’m an agnostic, yet I feel I have more faith today than I did years ago, back when I didn't know what career path to take but still prayed every day.
I’ve been working on a very personal film for four years now; since then, I’ve made many other videos, shorts, and music videos, collaborators have come and gone, I’ve changed gear countless times, and I’ve nearly given up just as often... Ultimately, one of the few things that gets me out of bed these days is the dream that one day I'll see a film of mine on the big screen.
Greetings from Brazilian Amazon!