I've been told I need to have an epiphany, but how I?

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Okay thanks. It's just other people say I am desperate and in over my head, and more famous examples of people failing and it turned out everyone told them so, are Ed Wood and Tommy Wiseau, so I guess I am afraid that others are right, and it is a huge risk.

Imagine your future if you don't do this, how does it feel?

Do you feel disappointed in yourself or relieved?

hmm. how are you going to sell your film, once it's done?
the industry changed dramatically since robert rodriguez started.... arthouse cinemas are gone, and so is straight to video. so. streaming...?

I'd suggest you either do, or get someone to do the whole social media thing, and think about releasing on vimeo on demand- an online platform where people actually pay.
OR you do all that with a short 30 min. version of the project, and look for a producer who has some experience in getting funding, or who can pitch it to amazon or netflix.

making s4uff has become incredibly easy, but getting your money back and finding an audience that will pay as much as one dollar to watch something has become incredibly hard, sadly.
partner up with someone who has earned money with a film before, is my advice.

You do need to have an epiphany. That most people don't endeavour for great things, such most people never do great things.

If your dream is to make a block buster movie then go for it. Just understand that, as with all business ventures, there is a risk. You can fail completely or fail to be profitable and what you are doing has to be valuable enough to you such that those failures don't matter.

That is what I tell to people who with poor job prospects who want to move to LA and become actors. You have to love acting anough that it's worth it to you to risk poverty and homelessness for the chance of making it big as an actor.

That being said here is some pointers.

1. If you intend this to be an independant film, they are often financially set up as an LLC. Limited liability corporation.

2. It pays to hire SAG actors unless you are aiming for cult horrible status like "The Room".

3. If you are pedaling a screenplay, don't send the entire thing. Some agents are untrustworthy and will repackage it as their own and sell it to a big studio.

4. It pays to hire a good cinematographer.

Okay thanks. I live in Canada, so we don't have SAG but we have something similar. Do you think I have to hire union actors though? The thing is, is that there are actors I have worked with before, that I would like to again, and I wrote character parts, suited for them in mind I felt.

If I decide to tell them I've changed my mind, and I'm going union, then I gotta go with all these strangers I've never worked with before. But maybe this is a good thing?

Also I guess I am just getting constantly worried cause I keep being told that my work sucks by people in the industry and that I am wasting my money, before I'm ready, and things like that really scare me away.

The reason I said SAG actors was because, in most instances, they are professional and are good at acting. If you wrote the parts for specific people though and you feel they can act the parts to your liking, then by all means, hire those people.

I mean it's just two a couple of the main parts so far, but still need to fill other roles. But the union has this rule, where if you hire union, every actor in the movie has to be union and the price goes way up. I haven't really explored the rules that thoroughly, but that's what I was told.

I'm actually really scared and full of anxiety over this and feel like I could be throwing a lot of my savings away and making a mistake. Especially since so many people I know are trying to stop me cause I don't have near as much experience as others, and they think I've gone nuts and just trying to make up for the past.

How do I stop all the negativity from the world, trying to stop me?

By remembering that all human progress has been achieved by people doing stuff that everyone else thought

was stupid. Also if you end up back where you started, it's not the same as if you hadn't tried because you'll know

you had the bottle to try.

Okay thanks. Do you think it's bad that I decided that I just wanted to do this later in life, and trying to rush it and short cut, rather than making a lot of short films for practice first, where as shortcutting is doomed to fail like people say?

Everyone here is saying ignore your critics, but I think a central question is, who is telling you to have the epiphany and give up?

It seems to me that people who know you well in real life, and are generally well intentioned, MIGHT be better advised than a bunch of Internet people who haven't seen how you fare in general.

So we have no business telling you to go ahead and spend your fortune. Easy for us to say that, hard for you to recover if in fact it turns out to be grandiose and a waste.

I don't know you at all, so I won't venture an opinion one way or another. But I do recommend you consider each person's opinion in light of their degree of knowledge about you and the industry, their past history of good or bad recommendations, and what you suspect their motivation is.

shortcutting doesn't sound like a good way to approach something this important.

Well I don't have the money to go to school for years and do it the longer way, or make a lot of short films for practice, cause I need that money to make the movie. So should I still do it if I have to take the cheaper way out?

If people in the industry tell you that your work sucks, maybe you should study and practice more before doing a major piece of work. Is there anyone in the industry who can coach or mentor you?

Well I have people at the film school such as my professor, perhaps, but he just said to go out and make the movie if I don't have the money to keep doing short films for such a long time.

I feel that my work wouldn't suck if I could get better people to work with. Not that I place blame or anything, but I have told that the acting sucks, the cinematography sucks, and the sound sucks.

So maybe if I had better people to work with in those fields than the work wouldn't suck and perhaps maybe shine, cause all my problems would be solved, if I just had better people in those fields. Which is why for the feature film I was thinking of paying for them to fly in from different cities, rather than hiring locally.

But will this be enough and solve my problems, I hope...

Can you team up with somebody else? Could your professor recommend another student?