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6 Filmmaking Tips From J.J. Abrams

J.J. Abrams directed one of the biggest movies of all time, ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens.’ Here’s some advice from the man so you too can be so successful.
By  · Published on April 6th, 2016

Learn What to Make Movies About

From a critical standpoint, it’s more important how a movie is about than what it is about. For filmmakers it might be the other way around. Abrams thinks so, based on advice he received from his father (TV movie producer Gerald W. Abrams) before he decided on an academic college (Sarah Lawrence) rather than film school. “‘It’s more important that you go off to learn what to make movies about,'” he quotes in the below interview (at 5:45) with BAFTA Guru, “‘than how to make movies.'”

That’s certainly true for filmmakers who want to write their own material. You can’t write things you don’t know about. You can’t tell a story or create characters you don’t understand. And you can’t just make a lot of movies about movie directors. You need that broader education and cultural experience.

Find a Community

Yes, Abrams grew up in the business. Not only is his father a producer, but his mother (the late Carol Adams) became one, too. As a kid, he hung out on the Paramount lot. He watched what his father did. But he didn’t totally take advantage of the nepotism angle when starting out. “I mean, my dad’s a television producer, and I knew I could get a job as an assistant or a reader with one of his friends, but it wasn’t exactly what I wanted to do,” he told Movieline magazine in a profile on him way back in 1992.

It was nepotism that got him his big break, however. While still a senior at Sarah Lawrence, he co-wrote a treatment for what became Taking Care of Business with Jill Mazursky, who passed the idea on to her father, filmmaker Paul Mazursky, who turned it over to Jeffrey Katzenberg at Disney. “I owe everything I have to Jill. She, like, totally made my career,” he says in the Movieline interview, and he’s acknowledged that connection — which also led to them collaborating on Gone Fishin’ — many times since.

But Jill could have been anyone. When he spoke at Loyala Marymount University in 2013, Abrams talked of the importance of just meeting people and is paraphrased in the school’s magazine as saying, “someone will get a job, and it may be a friend.” He grew up with guys like filmmaker Matt Reeves and actor Greg Grunberg, both of whom he’s continued to collaborate with in adulthood. He told the LMU students that the great thing about Hollywood is there’s “no clear way to get in.” And it doesn’t matter how much education or training you put in. “There is no moment when you become that person you want to be,” Abrams said at the school. “You are that person right now. The key is to find a community.”

Keep Your Excitement In Your Pants

This tip may seem very specific. Abrams grew up a huge fan of Star Wars and then he got to make a Star Wars movie. But it’s actually becoming more and more common in Hollywood that everything is a huge tentpole resurrecting a classic franchise or adapting a popular comic book character or a video game, and a lot of today’s younger directors go into their projects as fans of the material. And that’s not even actually that new. Filmmakers have always developed projects based on novels or stories they love and are passionate about. So this tip, from an interview with Wired ahead of the release of The Force Awakens, should be relevant to nearly anyone:

The key to doing this movie, for me — and I think ?I share this exact sentiment with everyone else in the crew — was to acknowledge, embrace and appreciate your fandom, and then put it in your pocket. I couldn’t be on the set and be a fanboy. I needed to be a director. Harrison, Carrie, Mark, Anthony [Daniels], Peter — none of the original actors wanted a fanboy to work with. They needed someone who would give them criticism, feedback, notes, ideas. So while there were moments — almost every day — where I would find myself gasping that it was happening, I would have to suppress that and do the job required, because no one, and certainly not the movie, would benefit from my being blinded by the love of Star Wars.

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Christopher Campbell began writing film criticism and covering film festivals for a zine called Read, back when a zine could actually get you Sundance press credentials. He's now a Senior Editor at FSR and the founding editor of our sister site Nonfics. He also regularly contributes to Fandango and Rotten Tomatoes and is the President of the Critics Choice Association's Documentary Branch.