Directors Notes

In conversation with MarBelle

Co-founder of Directors Notes and Curation Hour network member

“What brought you to filmmaking? Why are you a director?” Over the years, these apparently naive questions have become a key interviewing tool to set a more genuine and thoughtful mood for the Editor in-Chief of Directors Notes.

MarBelle co-founded the platform in 2006 as a way to make filmmaking more accessible by sharing useful knowledge on how to make films. To do so, he went to the directors whose work he connected with and interviewed them for his podcast. Back then, filmmakers were still rather nervous about sharing their work online, so he often featured clips in the podcast feed but only to provide context for the listeners. Sixteen years later, Directors Notes has become the home for thousands of short films and features looking to premiere online. However, the first question in his Q&As remains unchanged – What brought you to filmmaking?

“It has always been really important to find out how filmmakers made the films, how the ideas developed. I’d love to say that I ingeniously planned [the first question] so that the interviews would be better, but it was just that that’s what we were interested in when we first started because we wanted to make films ourselves…A lot of people, because of timelines and deadlines, end up just asking generic questions. They get into that kind of mindset. But then when you ask a filmmaker that first question of, why are you a director? What brought you to filmmaking? You can almost see the cogs in their head reset. I found it makes the rest of the interview, the answers that you get, a lot more thoughtful and they’re not just off the sheet.”

MarBelle’s journey into the film industry began in 1999 when he enrolled in a media production degree at what was then Luton University. By chance on the same course he met Rob Monday, who later co-founded Directors Notes with him and who now is the managing editor at Short of the Week. Around 2003, after MarBelle finished his studies, he moved to Brighton and started working at Showreel Magazine taking over a section called Directors Notes. Filmmakers would send through mini DV tapes to share their work, with MarBelle watching every single one of them, running interviews and preparing write-ups. In October 2005 he left the magazine and in June 2006 he co-founded Directors Notes as we know it today.

“There was no real Vimeo then. YouTube was very much in its infancy. Nobody was putting their films online. When we launched Directors Notes on Wednesdays we’d put out a clip from the film, I would rip a mini DV at work into a glorious 320x240 frame, and then it would go in the podcast feed along with the synopsis. And then on Thursday was the interview. If you subscribed to the podcast, you could watch on your iPod and then listen to the interview.”

He stayed faithful to consistently putting content out for at least six to seven years, not missing a week. As of now, he can’t let go of the 500+ episodes that serve as a reference point for future articles. This includes some great, early interviews with Ben Wheatley for his feature debut Down Terrace and his sophomore breakout Kill List, Jeanie Finley on her early BBC 4 documentary Teen Land, who later helmed the Games of Thrones behind-the-scenes documentary The Last Watch, and an interview with Oscar winner Barry Jenkins for Medicine for Melancholy (which also ended up on the DVD extras for the film). Day by day, interview by interview, Directors Notes built its presence.

“I think last time I looked there was something like 5,000 posts, so at least 4,000 interviews on there. But it’s just day by day. So at the time you don’t see it, but then you look around and then have this vast body of work…One of the first interviews we ever had on the site was with Mark Jenkin and actually before that I had featured him in Showreel for a film called The Man Who Needed a Traffic Light. And now he’s making music videos for The Smile and has directed Bait, which has done amazingly. His new film Enys Men has also just played at Cannes...As these people come through, the respect of the site grows because it’s as if you were launching them – but we had nothing to do with it, we just liked their early work when not many other people were paying attention.”

However, the platform isn’t just about championing emerging filmmakers. The focus lies in providing a holistic view of a filmmaker’s career. In fact, we’ll find several interviews on the same director focusing on different productions and on different stages of their career. If we take as an example director Rob Savage, MarBelle first interviewed him when he was only seventeen and continued to feature his short films and music videos over the years, including a piece on Host - the Zoom horror film that went viral during lockdown.

With a profound experience in reflecting on thousands of remarkable independent films interwoven with the stories of their creators, MarBelle has also been sharing his knowledge by lecturing at universities.

“I always say to the students that all you need to do is to make a lot of work. You need to find your voice, to make all of the mistakes, to fail better each time. One of the things I point out to them is that a lot of the filmmakers we’ve had on Directors Notes are working with equipment that is way below what you have access to now at university; they were making these fantastic films because they were going out and doing it again and again and again. Do what you’re assigned to do at film school, but also do stuff on the side because it’s going to be a shortcut. It’s going to help you find your voice a lot faster, making all the mistakes before your grad project. Likewise, if you’re outside of the film school system, then you need to build up a body of work.”

Something else that came up during our conversation in relation to tips and advice for filmmakers is the need for an understanding of how to prepare for the promotion and marketing of a film. That means working on a director’s statement and synopsis, as well as providing stills, behind the scenes, trailers and social media cuts.

“People think they have made a great film and that it will stand by itself. But that’s not true at all. You have to be active in its promotion and provide materials and information that makes that as easy as possible for the people covering it. If we take the example of film stills for DN articles, we’re more than capable of grabbing screenshots but I didn’t dream of your film, I didn’t bring it to life, why would you have me choose a still that represents your film? It’s your film, it’s your vision.” 

With this mind, MarBelle then reinforced the need to build a community to reach out to and share your work with: “Go on Vimeo, filmmaker channels on YouTube, Indie Wire, Slash Film and Directors Notes and sites like us and when you see a film you like, comment and share it on your social channels.” He explained this idea as becoming a part of a wider community, where with consistent engagement you can steadily build credibility as a member of the film community and in turn be supported by it once you release your work online. As a general piece of advice, in terms of placing films online, MarBelle also suggests owning a website to collate all of your projects in one place; you would still host your work on your preferred platform and make use of your social media channels to engage with your audience, but it’s always best to point back to your website where you are still fully in control.

In terms of visibility, in MarBelle’s opinion and as a result of his experience, the growing number of film festivals has meant an increase in networking possibilities for emerging filmmakers. He has been collaborating on an ongoing basis with a range of festivals, including being a programmer and advisory board member at Aesthetica Short Film Festival, an advisory board member at National Film Festival for Talented Youth, a voter for the British Independent Film Awards, and jury member and panelist for events such as The Shark Awards, Bolton Film Festival, Berlin Commercial, The Shiny Awards and Paris International Film Festival.

As a closing point of discussion, we asked MarBelle how Directors Notes relates to specific video trends and themes. And whether as a director you should also try and be part of that conversation or stay true to what you know and are passionate about.

“I do notice trends and themes as they kind of come through, but I would say unless you’re on the vanguard then what you have to think about is by the time it comes to me, I would have seen a lot of those films. So you are going to have to of made the best film on whatever the current trend is because I’ve seen all of the other ones by that point and whether you want to or not, I’m comparing your film to all those other films I’ve seen. And also, it’s not even just that particular trend that’s bubbling up now - I’ve been doing this since 2006, so that’s sixteen years of not even just what I’ve programmed, but also what I’ve seen at festivals.

It’s such a cliché, but the idea of being authentic, telling a story that only you could tell, or telling a story that we’ve seen a million times but through the eyes of a different character, all of these ways that shift the focus - that’s what we all want to see. Paradoxically, it’s the specificity of something that makes it more universal and capable of appealing to the parts of you that resonate with the story.”