Why I Think Most Networking Events Are Underwhelming.

I want to preface this post by mentioning the event I attended was not an indie film networking event but an industry event hosted by the BC Film Commission

Recently I went to a film networking event. It was a really nice evening. Great people, some familiar faces, ran into a few old friends from my years on set. To be honest, I’d gone in with a bit of an agenda. I was hoping to have a few conversations about Vancouver’s independent film scene, or more about the lack of one. I wanted to talk about what happens if our service industry slows down again. What happens if another strike hits, or the tax credit advantage weakens, or American production pull back, or the volume of work drops below what’s needed to keep everyone stable. And yet I left with that same familiar feeling. No one wants to build a life boat if the ships not sinking

When our service industry’s busy, life is good. People are working, getting paid and there’s momentum. The future feels manageable because the prospect of a next job exists. But then it slows down and suddenly everyone starts asking the same questions. Where’s our local work? Where are our Canadian films? Where are the producers building companies here? Where are the directors with slates? Where’s the audience? Where’s the infrastructure? The problem is, these question usually arrive in the nick of too late

That was the vibe I was picking up through out the evening. The service side is busy enough that nobody really wants to talk seriously about independent film. No one was dismissive, it just felt more like the way people avoid uncomfortable subjects once immediate danger has passed. There’s lots of pleasant conversation. A lot of “we should definitely talk” and “something needs to happen here.” But nothing that felt important, urgent.

That, to me, is why most indie film networking feels underwhelming. The events are typically designed for vague social contact, not serious creative alignment. They’re built for mingling. They create motion without much actual building behind it.

A fantasy I think some film networking events run on: put enough filmmakers, producers, actors, funders, and crew in a room and something productive will magically happen. And I’m sure sometimes it does. Somebody meets the right person at the right time, a conversation starts, a project moves forward. But most of the time the event runs the same conversational loop. We ask what someone’s working on. They give us a slightly polished version of the truth. We say it sounds great. They ask what we’re working on. We give our slightly polished version. They say it sounds great. We swap contact info. Someone says “let’s grab coffee.” Maybe we do. Usually we don’t.

Nobody’s bullshitting, but nobody’s being all that honest either. There’s too much performance in the room, a lot of professional optimism, pretending every half-formed project is one meeting away from happening. That type of networking is great at building morale (it reminds people they’re part of a community), but it rarely builds anything more than that. And we don’t need more morale. We need working infrastructure.

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I know I’ve said this ad nauseam: Vancouver is one of the most experienced production cities in North America. That’s the good news. The bad news, most of that experience was built in service of other people’s projects. I’m not trying to be rude or insulting here because service production has fed families (including my own), built careers, trained crews, supported vendors, and made Vancouver one of the most capable production centres in the world. That’s not up for debate. But service production and a local creative ecosystem run in two different lanes. A service industry lives or dies around who’s coming here to shoot. An indie ecosystem lives or dies on what we’re building here that belongs to us.

When American production is healthy, it’s easy to overlook that gap. Everyone’s busy, the system looks like it’s working, and people lose the appetite for long-term conversations because the short-term reality feels good enough

But honestly, that comfort is fragile. It’s happened here before and it’ll happen again. We lean too heavily on incoming production. And incoming productions rely on the dollar to make sense, for tax credits to stay competitive, for studios to keep spending, for labour conditions elsewhere not to shift in just the right way. That’s a fragile web holding it all together. And when the work suddenly disappears, the same people who didn’t want to talk about local infrastructure realize they need it.

We can’t keep treating independent film like an emergency shelter we only think about when the service industry slows down. If we want an ecosystem, we have to build it before we’re desperate for one.

This is why I feel the usual conversations go nowhere “We need to support local filmmakers” is almost meaningless at this point, primarily because everyone agrees with it and it asks nothing specific of anyone. Support how? With money? Space? Mentorship? Distribution? Audience-building? Crew deals? Equipment access? Legal support? Producing capacity? Marketing? Development labs? Screening infrastructure? Actual buying behaviour?

The moment we get specific, the conversation changes, because now we’re not talking values anymore…. we’re talking commitments. And that’s usually where it falls apart. People like the identity of being community-minded. They like being seen as supportive, adjacent to a new energy, but…

“building an ecosystem takes more than just liking the idea of one.”

It takes people willing to say: “this is the kind of work I want to help make. This is what I can offer. This is what I can’t. I’m not available for endless coffees, but I’ll read one pitch deck a month. I don’t have money, but I have a location. I can’t produce your film, but I can introduce you to someone who might. I’m looking for two serious collaborators, not twenty-five casual contacts.” That’s the level of clarity most networking events lack, which is probably why it feels good in the moment but leaves us feeling empty the next morning.

Pseudo enthusiasm is a tax on serious people.

One of the more exhausting parts of our film culture is the pressure to sound excited about everything. Every script is “really strong.” Every idea “perfectly timed.” Every filmmaker is “one to watch.” Every meeting was “fantastic.” Every project is “soooo close” The fog of art. And it gets harder to tell who’s serious and where the legit work is happening.

Serious collaborators need information. What stage is your project actually at? Is there a script, a treatment, a deck, money, rights, cast interest, a producer, a festival plan, a distribution theory, or are you just a mood board and ambition at the moment?

There’s nothing wrong with early ambition. It’s an important ingredient in building a solid foundation. Every project starts off fragile. But telling ourselves that that “fragility” is the same as being ready doesn’t help anyone.

A realistic indie event should make it easy to say things like: I know this is early, ya, this is a bit messy, this needs a producer, this needs a writer, this needs legal help, I know this isn’t financeable yet, I think this short could become a feature, this feature should probably be a short first, this director has great vision but no production plan, this producer has discipline but no project worth fighting for yet. All useful information imho.

Its easy to say Vancouver has talent. That’s a given. But the reality is that talent on its own isn’t going to build an ecosystem. We need repeatable events, a development culture, small financing mechanisms, producers who know how to package and finish, filmmakers who think about their audience before the film’s finished, venues that will host work-in-progress screenings, critics and newsletters and podcasts and curators and local champions. Filmmakers who understand independent doesn’t mean underfunded, and people who can build companies instead of just chasing projects. A culture where local work doesn’t get treated like a side project.

So what’s better than another vague mixer? An event with purpose. Not “come meet other filmmakers” (too vague), but who has a feature script that’s ready for producer feedback? Who has a short that could get produced in the next six months? Who has access to a location that could support a micro-budget shoot? Who are the emerging directors in the city with a clear voice and no producing support? Who’s producing and looking for something contained and financeable? Who already has built an audience, even a small one? Who understands grants, or private financing, or delivery? Who can help build a screening series, or bring twenty people into a room reliably? (That last one might be more important than people think. A sustainable indie ecosystem gets built by people who know how to gather attention and turn it into support.)

Some networking events are lacking because nothing’s at stake. We show up, smile, circulate, leave, and nothing changes. An effective event should deliver some seriousness. You know why you’re there, what you’re looking for, and/or what you’re offering. You should leave with one serious next step in mind instead of fifteen loose possibilities.

Maybe that means smaller events or curated ones? Maybe events organized by stages: development, financing, production, audience, distribution. Fewer panels unless they lead directly into working groups, fewer speeches and more project clinics. People submitting what they’re building in advance. Someone responsible for follow-up afterward. It sounds less glamorous than a mixer. But the point isn’t to feel like something’s happening, it’s to make something happen.

There’s this myth that a (film) scene will just emerge once enough creative people live in the same city. Lovely thought but I don’t buy it. Scenes get built by repeated behaviour. People show up to each other’s work. They write about it, buy tickets, introduce collaborators, share resources, fight for venues, create deadlines, make taste visible, build trust over time, develop a shared language for what they value, and eventually stop waiting for permission (subtle NonDe plug). That’s how a scene evolves, not from a single event, a grant, a charismatic leader or one successful film that has everyone pointing to it as proof things are fine (I’m looking at you Obsession, Backrooms). A scene is a born from habit. Things that repeat. Right now we have all the ingredients, we just don’t have enough of the habit yet.

I know it’s hard to care about independent film when we’re on a show, tired, booked, and financially relieved. But that’s exactly when the work has to happen. You don’t build the lifeboat after the ship hits something. And again, in the spirit of clarity, none of this is about railing against the service industry. We all want Vancouver crews and crews in other cities working. We all want studios to continue coming and cities to stay competitive. But I also want us to stop confusing how busy we are at any given moment with security. A busy service industry doesn’t equate to a healthy local film culture. It just means we’re busy…for now.

So what can do we do? We can start by making the events more focused. Fewer vague mixers, more serious collaborator events. Fewer “great to connect” conversations, more “what are you building, what do you need, what can you offer” conversations. Fewer panels about the state of the industry, more working sessions that offer realistic next steps. Fewer abstract calls for community and more specific commitments.

A good indie event might end with ten useful outcomes instead of zero: a producer agrees to read two scripts, a locations rep offers a warehouse for one weekend, a cinematographer names three directors they’d shoot a proof-of-concept for, a venue that agrees to host a quarterly local screening night, a marketer who offers to help five filmmakers set up audience infrastructure, a lawyer running a basic rights and option workshop, a festival programmer explaining what’s actually missing from local submissions, a group of actors who start a table-read series, a newsletter committing to covering local projects before they’re finished. None of this is fantasy. It’s moving from passive networking to an active ecosystem by design.

My two cents.

The standard needs to change. A good networking event should be judged by what happened afterward not how many people showed up. We can gauge success by asking the questions; did projects move? Did collaborators find each other? Did anyone commit resources? Did anyone walk away with a clearer vision and a next step that that still made sense the next morning? If not, it was probably just another pleasant evening and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with pleasant evenings. We all need them. But we shouldn’t confuse them for infrastructure.

We need events where people decide what they’re actually prepared to do. Because, not to be the harbinger of doom, but another slowdown’s coming, eventually. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not in the same shape we’re used to seeing. But the idea that service production is going to remain stable forever isn’t a sustainable plan. When the next “hiccup” hits, we’ll either have spent the good years building something local or we’ll be standing around wondering why nobody did anything...again.

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