Dear Earl,
My biggest challenge is getting started. I know I have the talent, but

• I just can’t start start this script OR

• I just can’t finish this script OR

• The script tries to bite me when I touch it.

Signed,
Almost Everyone In the World

There’s no shame here, Everyone. This is a completely natural part of the process. Here’s what you have to do.

Put away your script. Jump on the Internet. Tell everyone you know that you’re going to have a big premiere party for your new film in three months. Talk up the awesome. Cake and pie and balloon animals.

Now look at your script. You have approximately a week to get it in shape, because this thing won’t produce itself. Fix what you can, then start calling actors.

POINT: The fastest way to improve as a filmmaker is to see your movie walking and talking on-screen, with an audience. The fastest way to get your movie on-screen is to get the audience first; fear of public humiliation will do the rest.

(Hint: I’ll bet you can name ten filmmakers right now with decent careers who, in your opinion, haven’t ever found a great script. It didn’t stop them, why should it stop you?)

“P.S. BUT, BUT, BUT…”

Yes, Everyone, your first screenings might be embarrassing, but improvement is built into this process.  I promise, no one will remember it ten films from now. You won’t even remember it ten films from now.

Making movies is about inertia.  More movies die in gestation than ever died in front of an audience.  Start your movie, keep it moving, and finish it.  Everything else is the small stuff.

• • •

Dear Earl -

It’s us again. What we meant to say was, we WOULD get started, but we don’t have

• the right location OR
• the right cast member OR
• the right size pile of money

So, things are really more difficult than you originally let on.

Sincerely -
A Slightly Smaller, More Experienced Subset of Almost Everyone in the World

This argument is basically logistics: you don’t have access to some element the script requires. Reasonable.

But who wrote the script? Get the writer on the phone! You don’t have a skyscraper to shoot in, set it in a sweat lodge. Or a garage.

This sounds like Roger Corman talking, right?   Keep these two things in mind, Subset of Everyone:

• First, being professional doesn’t mean having the perfect set of resources,

it means delivering a decent product with the tools available. Michelangelo didn’t use CAD, and Da Vinci never had access to Photoshop.

• And second, it doesn’t have to look perfect, it has to look planned.

If you write a great movie about a yacht and you shoot it in a canoe, the audience will cry “suck!” If you write a great movie about a canoe and you use a canoe – that’s great production value!

The lesson to be learned here? The audience only judges you based on what you’ve told them to expect.

It’s about telling a great story. Your production elements don’t need to be out-of-this-world, they just have to believably fit.

Let’s put the idea in practice:

So cut the shipwreck. Set it in modern day. Lose all the cannibals and the sprawling island paradise. What do we need to make this movie work? A beach, and some kind of shelter for him to sleep in.

That movie is called Cast Away. (I’m presuming a painted volleyball is not outside your budget) A brilliant movie, simply told, cheaply shot (Tom Hanks notwithstanding).  Their chief set piece, the thing the movie couldn’t work without, was empty solitude.  Zemeckis took nothingness and made it a prop.  You can, too.

POINT: Your production elements are only there to serve the story, and story is the only thing you can control completely. Do more than just butcher your story to match your resources; take whatever you have and make it dramatically integral to the story.

• • •

More real problems from fake people to come.

Related posts:

1. Study Everything
2. Test-Screening Your Screenplay
3. Are Awards Worth It?