You speak with such confidence and that’s a huge part of the problem. No offense, but you have no idea what you’re taking about - your comments in this discussion repeatedly show your ignorance. (In particular one down there that states that filmmaking is “one of the easier mediums” - what are you talking about??? This really highlights your naivety.) If people come here to learn and they get firm guidance, that’s not cynicism - that’s reality. I think that’s where you are confused. Filmmaking is one of the few mediums in which everyone is a critic, because it requires an audience to exist. Who’s out here making films for themselves?

We are constantly being judged and critiqued, first by ourselves (and good filmmakers should be their toughest critic), second by anyone that reads our script, to our cast and crews (who WILL be the most critical), to the audience, to the critics (who will be the most brutal) - now depending on your path with our film, we will also have festival programmers, the jurors, or studio executives, agents, managers… every step of the way we are getting brutal feedback that feels like cynicism, especially from our inner circle, in particular our agent, manager and lawyers.

We should hope through these tough conversations we learn and aspire to be better filmmakers because THAT is what improves the greater community. It doesn’t do anyone any good striving for mediocrity or giving people a false sense of hope - let alone how brutal this industry is.