One man movie studio (for pennies)

Here's the brutal truth about screenwriting that no one talks about:

If you're done writing a book, you're done. You can hold the finished product in your hands. You can thumb through the pages. You can even one-click Amazon and list it for sale, in the marketplace.

But screenplays are different.

If you write a script, it's still just a blueprint. You can print it out (and that certainly is rewarding) but it's still just a piece of the whole. No collaborator has filmed it. No actors have spoken the words. No audience has seen those words come to life.

That used to be the end of the story. Not anymore.

Whether you're making a look book, a vision board, a teaser, a trailer, a short, the full feature or just a social post, you can literally greenlight your own project — for pennies — by becoming a self-reliant artist.

I've made trailers with iMovie (free), look books with Canva ($12), social posts with Grok ($8), posters with UpWork ($99), and shared viral clips on YouTube (free). And this is only the beginning.

If you have no idea where to start, here's a few pros I've interviewed recently who have found success by greenlighting their own projects.

• Julian Curi: From zero budget YouTube short to fans literally throwing money at him — and even a segment on Good Morning America.

• Luke Barnett: One viral short film on X landed him 6 agent calls in a single week, where he’s now turning it into a full feature.

• Freddy Macdonald: The unknown filmmaker who got Oscar-winner Joel Coen to watch his short — and parlayed that into a full feature deal.

• Philip Gelatt: How he bypassed Hollywood entirely and sold his documentary directly to superfans using nothing but Substack.

• Robin Block: From idea to 80,000 backers — the documentary empire builder who became Kickstarter's go-to success story.

If you're serious about becoming a next gen filmmaker, listening to these five interviews will do more for you than submitting your script to a contest or paying hundreds of thousands for film school.

Bold claim? Absolutely. But pick the one interview above that sounds most applicable to your goals before you continue down those overused, tired old paths.

The math is simple: If I'm wrong, you'll be out +30 minutes — not $400,000 and 4 years for film school.

The gatekeepers have lost their power. Greenlight your own work.

- Brock Swinson

P.S. If you’d like to join a tribe of like-minded next generation filmmakers, watch this.