A few years ago, a loose alliance of regional movie makers started meeting monthly. Somehow, Dan Kelly assumed responsibility for three initiatives as the self declared evangelist for said loose alliance 1) enhancement of Michigan’s Film incentives 2) deploying a regional talent database and 3) writing a business plan to fund a Traverse City based film office. Some might call these ill conceived experiments, half baked proposals, unfunded mandates.
If these 3 initiatives truly represent the will of M3, they are going to require more than part time effort. Maybe I COULD magically manifest them for the entire community, but SHOULD I? If the community feels these initiatives are worthwhile, then more folks need to figure out how to make them happen. That’s my latest epiphany, probably obvious… I am remembering to go with the flow. If we aren’t all fired up by these outcomes, who am I to advocate them?
I enjoy connecting with my peers. Rather than just develop and maintain my own private network, I invested time and money into the idea of a community. We have meetings, this web site and a bit of progress on zany initiatives, eg the crash of the LinkedIn gambit and my subsequent report.
In summary, I believe we would all be better off with strong affinity, I think it’s worth doing. Perhaps M3 is not the vehicle, or maybe we don’t have quite enough momentum for a viable regional industry. In any case, I’ll be busy in my own sandbox for the foreseeable, no longer the Don Quixote of M3. I will (probably) continue to host the Micro Movie Marathon and occasionally post on the M3 site. Organizing meetings and realizing grand initiatives are up to you all now. Let’s see what happens!
Hi Dan! Don’t give up yet. I just got here! I’d love to get involved. I think I could definitely help on the Talent database area and I could definitely help with rallying people to our cause. I feel like we need more of a call to action here. One idea – I was wondering why the 48 Hour Film festival never occurs here. I think we should implement it and maybe that will help drive the filmmaker traffic to action. I know it did for me in the past. Made me itching to film my next film. Hope to see you all at the next meetup. I can’t wait to meet you all! Jen C.