We recently connected with Owen Hollander and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Owen thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

The best education for a filmmaker is failing. It seems intuitive, but it’s very true. The moment I began learning from my failures was the only time I was able to evolve. I gained the most knowledge from all of the small shoots where everything went wrong, which greatly prepared me to not make those same mistakes again on our independently produced shorts with budgets of a few thousand dollars. I also try to watch a minimum of 365 movies a year because it is truly the best education you can get as a storyteller. I try to consume everything from Howard Hawks to Michael Bay, Hitchcock to Jordan Peele, Billy Wilder to Emma Seligman. It is all beneficial to learning what styles and genres interest me as a filmmaker and what I can be inspired by to continuously grow my own directorial style.

Knowing what I know now, I think I could have sped up my learning process by asking more questions to more experienced people than myself. I already did a good amount of networking on LinkedIn or at small film festivals, but I think I could have sent even more emails and even more inquiries to those that I admire. I’ve since learned how reachable most people really are through an email, a DM, or a LinkedIn Request. People are always more gracious than you would believe with their time and will really want to help teach you whatever you want to know if you show them your passion.

The most essential skills for me were resilience and resourcefulness. As a director and producer, the workload of indie filmmaking can often be overwhelmingly challenging. This is why building up a strong willpower and motivation is so crucial in surviving the obstacles that you’ll face. Within filmmaking you can expect almost everything to always go wrong, but you will always find ways to pivot around these issues through your drive to keep pushing and your resourcefulness. Oftentimes, the film was meant to have these changes that are created through this problem solving and I am a firm believer that the film was supposed to be made however it gets made. I’ve never been disappointed in a project that I didn’t give up on.

The major obstacles that will often stand in the way is money, of course, but there are ways around this. There is always a way to work around not having a big budget to make this explosion or book this perfect actor. You can always fix all of these problems with the creativity and ingenuity that led you to wanting to tell this story in the first place. This ability is innately within you as a storyteller and it is up to you to use it in the most productive way possible.

Owen, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Owen Hollander, and I am a senior film production student at Savannah College of Art and Design who specializes in writing, directing, and producing. I am currently working on my capstone film, To Those Who Fear Him, in which I will be writing and directing. It is a psychological thriller about an impressionable young man that interviews with a pharmaceutical corporation that may be more sinister than meets the eye. When I graduate in May, I will begin working on my MFA in Creative Business Leadership at SCAD with the intention of becoming a feature-film writer, director, and producer.

I worked at Motion Picture Corporation of America in Film Development in Los Angeles for a few months, which taught me a lot about industry standard procedures in the screenwriting, producing, and production side of the business. It was extremely inspiring and educational to view the process of filmmaking first hand on films with budgets of millions of dollars. It was also fascinating how the processes were relatively the same for my independent productions just on a much larger scale. It made me feel confident and professional in the films that I am creating now while at school.

I just wrapped production on a 20-minute short last month called Christian Brothers in which we were able to raise $7,000 for production. It was the biggest film that I have been a figurehead on thus far and was a very rewarding experience to have completed it successfully. Each project gets continuously bigger and better, which makes me so excited to be shooting my thesis film in February of 2025.

I have won numerous awards at various film festivals nationwide for my films, such as Best Documentary at Victory International Film Festival, Semi-Finalist at Student World Impact Film Festival, Best Comedy Film at Sunset International Film Festival, Third-Place at FIFES Comedy Film Festival, and more. Currently, I have three more short films in post-production, which I wrote, produced, and directed that will be wrapping up soon to begin their film festival runs.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

In my opinion, the best thing society can do to support artists and creatives is to engage with their art. A simple sharing of a film on social media or small $5 donation to the fundraising can make a world of difference if enough people get behind the project. I have seen projects go from daydreams to award winning pieces because enough people have been able to get behind it with passion and motivation to see it succeed. The biggest thing is choosing to invest in the stories of artists and give them a chance. You never know what perspective or viewpoint might speak to you on a personal or philosophical level. It is important to stay open minded amongst experimentation and recognize that different is not necessarily scary. Keep trying to digest new media from emerging auteurs and explore what might stand out to you before it becomes ‘too mainstream’ to be cool.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

The biggest goal that drives my creative journey everyday is the idea of one day being able to inspire other budding filmmakers like the ones that inspired me. I truly don’t know who I would be today without my inspirations and I owe a lot of my artistic styles and passions to those pioneers before me. My biggest mission is to be able to be that individual for other creatives someday and know that my stories were able to move people the way I’ve been moved time and time again.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://owenhollanderfilms.wixsite.com/owen-hollander-films
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/o.hollander/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/owen-hollander-83782a262/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@owenhollander
• Other: Film Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/owenhollanderfilms/

Image Credits

Headshot – Chris Seinn

BTS Photos – Ollie Moore, Gabe Gorsuch, Evan Skovronsky, & Jared Patriarca