March 17, 2006

•                                   Nothing on the Back Burner  

   

  I had met another film maker a few years after college. He had seen my seven 16mm action films.  And one day he said to me,"I knew you were a serious film maker when I met you." 

  "I thought you didn't like my action movies", I said. 

  He replied,"I liked them well enough, but it's not that.  It's because you had completed film, after completed film, after completed film."

   

  Yes, there are a lot of uncompleted projects in the film world.  It seems the film maker, the script writer, or even the novelist or short story writer runs out of steam after the first burst of honest passion.

   

  Once a very excited writer showed a three page short story to a group of us. After he left, one guy said, "He only wrote a three page story. That doesn't compare with my 300 page novel."  He had been working on that novel for two years.  I said, "Until you finish, his three page finished story beats your 300 page unfinished one.  He can now bind it and give it out. But you can't, yet."

   

  So leave nothing on "the back burner".  Finish it.  Even if it's shorter and less perfect than you intended.  Finish it.  Even a 17 syllable 'haiku poem that is finished, beats a 400 page masterpiece that is not.

   

  I had a 25 min. comedy that I shot in college, but hadn't got the actors together to dupe in the sound. Years went by and I was on my fourth feature and I finally cut the film on video to 12 min. silent (as I saw it could play that way) and added music.  I made video copies and sent them to the actors.  One of the actors became an art teacher and shows the movie every year to all his classes. He can show it because it was completed.     

   

  • 8:53 am
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