Dear Young Creator,It’s taken me thirty years to really be conscious of how I approach making films, and my process changes all the time. But the one common thing, which I believe deeply, is that making something is a discovery. I’m trying to find ideas from beneath—or beyond, or wherever they come from—so that when I’m done with what I’m making I have found something greater than what I already knew. Here are a few things that have helped me.
- 1
Start with whatever shows up. Go as far as you can on that initial confidence and enthusiasm.
- 2
Start fast and rough; worry about details later.
- 3
Each day, start by pretending you’ve never seen it before, with no expectations or preconceptions. Take it in as your audience will: see what it is, not what you HOPE it is. Then change or add to make it better.
- 4
Don’t try to MAKE and ANALYZE at the same time. These are two different processes. Analyze can easily strangle make, which is actually more useful.
- 5
Expect to get lost. You’ll get too close to see objectively and lose your initial enthusiasm. Keep going!
- 6
If you’re stuck, change up the way you’re working:
- Go for a long walk and ruminate on the most important part.
- Settle for lousy. Do something so you can change it.
- Show what you’ve got to someone who’s never seen it.
- Go do something irrelevant. Sometimes inspiration comes from a seemingly unconnected place.<br>(But this only seems to work after you’ve struggled for a while.)
- By now the idea should inhabit your subconscious. Use your night brain and wake up with anwswers.
- 7
Every so often, back up and describe the project so others could finish it. Describe WHY it should be made, not HOW. Hopefully by now there are deeper layers to what initially got you excited.
- 8
After two or three days of being stuck or lost, work on something else for a bit. Still stuck? Make major changes. Still stuck? Put the project on a shelf and move on.
- 9
Give yourself a real deadline, ideally that someone else controls. When you run out of time, you’re done.