8 lessons I learnt from the Cannes film festival about being a successful creative

"8 lessons I learnt on being successful from the Cannes film festival, a Marysia Trembecka podcast fro Love Your Creativity " [ 33:58 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I have just returned from 10 days at the Cannes Film Festival and this podcast and blog applies to all creatives as it very much covers some of the ‘rules’ of being a successful creative, whether you are an actress, filmmaker, musician or indeed photographer. (Yes that is me singing in French on the podcast)

The lessons:

• It’s a business – the fashion, the mystique, distributor, sales agent to the short filmmaker
• Surrounding yourself with people who dream & take big action makes you dream bigger
• No room for perfectionism – be like Picasso
• You have to do the work or someone else will grab the opportunity / from script to pre sales to press
• Some live to party, others live to dream. some go to work. Blagging  can be an artform but it’s your choice on how you want to use your energy  Would you rather be at the Vanity Fair party as a success or as a ligger?
• Someone out there will love your work
• Get your elevator pitch updated
• It’s reconnection, not desperately shoving business cards in peoples faces.

Here are some of the highlights  of the podcast (this is not a full transcript)
Lesson 1
It’s a business, it is the business of making movies from producers, sales agents, distributor, the circus of the red carpet, the mystique of the business, the press, to how the public perceive
This creative thing we do I have to understand myself as a cog in the wheel, as a  brand. We have a responsibility to understand the workings of the business, the main players and how we can circumvent the gatekeepers if necessary by making our own work and where we can display it for maximum effect. You need to know the rules to break them

Question for you: What area of your business do you need to know more about. Licensing? Press? The Legalities of contracts.

On the red carpet Cannes 2014 Marysia Trembecka

Lesson 2
Surrounding yourself with people who dream & take big action makes you dream bigger
when you are with people who don’t just talk about their dreams but they make them and then they go out to the marketplace and sell their art. Plus while they are in the marketplace selling their current film or art they are already talking about collaborating for the next work.
I went to Cannes as an actress but I left with knowing I will start producing films of projects. I am already working on my next solo theatre show but I now looking at making it as a short film at least.
Deepak Verma, from Pukkanasha Films said to me, ‘You should be a producer’ and I went from initial horror to a short film and now I am thinking feature length!

Question for you:-Who inspires you to re-size yourself, to see yourself as bigger.

at the Ken Loach premiere of Jimmy’s Hall

Lesson 3
No room for perfectionism – Picasso
I had a short but valuable conversation about production with  director/writer/producer James Hacking  The Website. When he first started he made 4 or 5 shorts and then finally made his first feature and has moved forward since. He said he now knows he should have been making a short film every week and that all that fiddling round with the editing, the extra 100 hours to make 0.00001% difference is a waste of time and energy.
He said that

‘Picasso had the right idea, he made 35,000 works of art in his life’

We all are prone to hanging on to the perfectionism of our art.
(Added Note James Hacking actually got back to me after I wrote this post and said

As a matter of interest looked up his number of artworks ( I  have a habit of talking out of you know where…)

His output estimated at…

13,500 paintings
100,000 graphic prints or engravings
34,000 book illustrations
300 sculptures and ceramics

But doubt even that is accurate, point is, be free to make mistakes….

His film Love’s Kitchen has a serious cast in it, I have just discovered: Dougray Scott, Claire Forlani, Simon Callow to name a few 😉

‘Art is never finished, only abandoned’ Blog post

Lesson 4
You have to do the work or someone else will grab the opportunity / from script to pre sales to press

Edward Rastelli-Lewis the producer I mentioned in my blog post here

‘‘every time we miss an opportunity someone else grabs it’

What is the thing you are thinking of doing, but too scared to ?

At the Scottish party at Long Beach, Cannes 2014, taken by a director who kept talking about the light

Lesson 5
Some live to party, others live to dream, some go to work. Blagging  can be an artform but it’s your choice on how u want to use your energy.

Would you rather be at the vanity fair party as a success or as a ligger?

Some people at Cannes only want to party like crazy, crawling through bushes to get to parties. Some learnt to read guest lists backwards, there is an entire blog post in there that I am choosing not to write on how to get into Cannes parties – focus is all people 😉

In the past I have wasted my energy on the party but now it is about a good blend of both! Who are you choosing to spend time with and are you focusing on your art.

Hunger Games, Cannes 2014,

Lesson 6
Someone out there will love your work
On the first Thursday of Cannes I had one of the funniest nights of my life with Casey Edwards and Leonardo Re, both directors. (Pictures below!) We ended up having a lovely chat with the wonderfully gregarious and funny Stephen Gaydos at the L’Oreal UniFrance party on the rooftop of the Martinez (best canapes of Cannes in my opinion)  who has written and produced and is now VP of Vanity Fair. He had just come from being co-host with Cate Blanchett at the Chopard Film Awards. He told of the time he first met Quentin Tarantino who t the end of the meeting said

‘i love your film Iguana’

This is a film that Stephen Gaydos had made and he joked that  he had only ever sold 5 copies of it and by the sound of it Tarantino had bought all 5 copies. Tarantino went on apparently to accurately describe some scenes he loved from the movie.

His IMDB

L’oreal Unifrance party on the Rooftop of the Martinez, Cannes 2014,

It reminded me that someone somewhere will love your work and the great thing about Twitter and hashtags is that you will find your tribe, or if not you can easily build your own! Have you found and connected with your tribe yet? Do you spend time finding them?

French ladies hoping to get invitation to the premiere that night, Cannes 2014 This is the morning crew, the evening ladies have much more makeup, less clothes and in their teens and 20s.

Lesson 7 Get your elevator pitch updated

I did an entire blog post on this about the first Thursday I was in Cannes! Make sure you have one or two concise and inspiring sentences that says what you do other than ‘I am an actor!” which does not say that much.

So when someone says to you ‘What do you do’ make your response interesting, open ended, say a little about your current project and successes’

Lesson 8 Networking is all about reconnection.
It’s reconnection, human being to human being,  not desperately shoving business cards in people face.
At Cannes you arrive at a party and people literally start firing cards at you. I chose not to do this, I chose to have actual conversations with people, although admittedly in the first week we all were talking about where the best canapes we had had were and who had served the best champagne . (The Macedonian pavilion always had gorgeous cheese and wine, the Hunger Games party won both my ‘best dessert’ and also ‘worst dessert’ award, the Scottish party ‘most random outfits’ and ‘greatest networking’ awards and Ken Loach’s ‘Jimmy’s Hall parties (I went to all four of the Ken Loach parties in one evening) won ‘best all round night’ and ‘nicest production people!’ awards)

I bumped into so many people I had worked with, producers including one I had not seen in over a decade but she still recognized me. I also saw a director I had not seen in 14 years whose feature fulm I had done. Alex Kaufmann who now has a great online database that is free to join for all creatives in the film industry www.screenlights.com and Linked in
I am not sure how many new projects I have walked away with but I am sure that there will have been a meeting with someone new or from past work that something will come fruitful of moving forward. People see you, they know you, you are not just there to get trashed n the free wine, it is about the conversation. They may not see me for another year but our careers do get built in steps.

Who is worth you sending a ‘hello, not seen you in a while’ email?

Hunger Games party Cannes 2014, yes we danced til closing at 3am

If you, as a listener would like to ask myself  a question on creativity or marketing just email us or call my Speak Pipe. The advantage of leaving a message on my Speak Pipe is that of you leave your blog details etc we can play the call live.
marysia@loveyourcreativity.com

If you like this podcast please rate us or subscribe on iTunes, it’s free and will help others find it.  Or you can just go the website for the blog and you can subscribe there via your email if you dont want to miss a post
Love Your Creativity.com is dedicated to all creatives trying to make great work and make a living from it.

About Marysia and Love Your Creativity
I blog at least three times a week on creativity and techniques to get your art on.
Whether you are a musician, an actor or a choreographer I endeavour to make https://loveyourcreativity.com is a place to come for inspiration and motivation.