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Larry Meistrich knows movies better than most people.
He's produced and/or directed almost 50 films, including critically acclaimed Oscar nominees You Can Count on Me, Croupier and, most notable of all, Academy-winner Sling Blade.
More importantly, the 42-year-old filmmaker knows how to sell and market a movie after the final cut.
It's insider information the Hollywood heavyweight is going to share with budding new Spielbergs and Scorceses when NEHST Studios brings its Aspiring Filmmaker's Boot Camp to Ottawa this weekend at Conduit Solutions.
The intense three-day workshop, which costs $395 to attend, covers the how-tos of the film business, from scriptwriting and casting to producing and pitching potential story ideas to industry professionals.
"We call it a boot camp because you have to be tough for this business," says Meistrich from his New York office. "You have to be armed with as much technical skill and financing as you can find.
"Filmmaking is a collaborative process, not just one auteur director. It takes a lot of skilled people to make a movie."
Meistrich says the biggest drawback for most aspiring filmmakers is they're impatient. They'll start shooting after the second draft of the script when it needs four rewrites, or start with $500,000 when they really need $1 million.
"You don't buy a car with three doors and you don't get two chances to lose other peoples' money," Meistrich says. "You can't put the art ahead of the business. Artsy directors rarely get their films made because they're too busy being precious and pretentious to spend the time necessary to raise the money to finance the film."
Naturally, Meistrich has seen a lot of good and bad talent in his film master classes over the 20 years he's been in the business. The worst idea a student ever pitched was a film by Stevie Wonder, who is blind.
But more often than you'd think, he's given a script with real potential.
A recent student, who was also a former Marine, pitched a Black Hawk Down-type story about members of two of L.A.'s most violent gangs, the Crips and the Bloods, who take gang violence to a whole new level when they join the Marines. Meistrich is already developing the story into a film.
He's come a long way since graduating from college, when his college roommate dragged a reluctant Meistrich to be an extra in John Waters' 1989 comedy Cry Baby.
Right from the start he was seduced by the work, the charged sense of anticipation on each location and the interesting characters working in front of and behind the camera. He couldn't get enough, so he'd volunteer to help techies, clocking in more than 18 hours a day sometimes, to learn everything about making movies.
After freelancing for three years, in 1994 Meistrich opened his own film studio in Manhattan, Shooting Gallery Studios, for $7,000.
"I saw too many people who had no business being in this business making movies. I had to get out on my own," he says with a thick Jersey drawl.
Shooting Gallery became a great centre for new American cinema and home to young filmmakers such as Hal Hartley, Gavin O'Connor and Billy Bob Thorton, who made his breakout movie Sling Blade there. The movie won an Oscar for best adapted screenplay, made Thorton a star, and Shooting Gallery a bankable studio.
But by the end of the '90s, the U.S. film industry was bleeding to death, thanks to the exodus to Canada and offshore locales. Shooting Gallery closed its doors in 2001. Meistrich re-emerged last year with Film Movement, a new DVD distribution service.
His advice to aspiring filmmakers is to embrace the future. Think beyond the cineplex screen. Big movies, he believes, will combine the huge visuals with the interactive thrills of video gaming. Imagine watching Rambo when you can control the character.
There's also incredible opportunity to market short films on the Internet.
"When I first began, there was only one way to get into movies -- that was on the set, working for peanuts. But now, with digital video technology, YouTube and the Internet, almost anyone can make and show a film. It's the wave of the future."
Interested? You can sign up for this weekend at www.filmboot.com.