You know how much I love Great Gerwig and her films (I spent a full 13 months being excited for Little Women after the very first announcement). Greta has done something very specific in her career that has skyrocketed her to work with actors like Meryl Streep and established her as a skillful writer-director.

I touched on this hack during the first part of my workshop but want to delve into it more and help you uncover exactly how you can use it to get to the next step of your career.

The Background

For some context, Greta had been in the industry for a good 10 years before she made Lady Bird. She did a bit of everything – acting, co-writing, co-directing – and made a name for herself in the American mumblecore world. But none of this was major stuff… until Lady Bird.

The film was made for $10 million but made $79 million at the box office – this is especially impressive considering we’re talking about an independent film that didn’t have a huge marketing campaign to get people into the cinema.

Not only did the film do well financially, but it also launched Greta’s writer-director career and she managed to do this in a great way. Her film was being talked about everywhere but she managed to gain this profile without losing any of her privacy. Unlike the actors and many other directors, everyone knew Greta for her film, not for ‘her’. 

Read more: The Basics: 3 essentials for making your own films

The moment I knew how huge Lady Bird really was, was when my 70-year old auntie mentioned she’d seen the film with my uncle and adored it. She said: “That scene where they’re shopping for dresses and start an argument that’s immediately derailed when they find a dress? LOVED it! It was so like me and my mum!” To think that this scene didn’t only resonate with me, who’s the exact target demographic for that film, but also my auntie and countless other viewers is a testament to Greta’s work.

Lady Bird was bigger than anyone had expected, but it would be foolish to think that any of that success was accidental.

Greta’s next film was Little Women – made for $40 million and making $209 million at the box office. That’s one hell of a leap and didn’t just happen because Greta was lucky.

Her insane level of financial profit showed that Greta knows what she’s doing and this is a big deal to a lot of people in the film industry. If you’ve made your own films before, maybe even written and directed your first feature, you might be wondering “what makes her so different from me?”

How it applies to you

There’s one thing that Greta gets absolutely right: Passionate, pure storytelling.

Lady Bird resonated with so many people because it was a personal story. Because Greta understands what stories she can tell and knows how she wants to tell them, she can tell them in the most impactful way. And this is what allowed Greta to move up from a $10 million drama with a few named actors to the much bigger adaptation of Little Women.

You too should be making films you care about. It is easy to start making films just for the sake of getting into festivals, but your passion is much more important than catering to a festival jury or having an A-list cast.

Think about the following things:

What are you passionate about?

What stories do you want to tell?

What characters do you care about?

Once you know this, and apply it to your work, big things start happening to your career

Read more: How to Find Your Filmmaking Niche