Be Wrong ASAP
When I was starting out in filmmaking, I made a pact with myself that I would intentionally choose projects that will allow me to learn something new in each one. Although I had learned video editing before I started directing, I did not know anything else about making films. There were too many things that I had a steep learning curve for such as how to write a screenplay, how to capture footage, how to work with actors etc.
In order to satisfy this learning appetite, I chose to shoot one of my very early projects on 16 mm film because I wanted to learn about how a film camera works. I planned extensively for this project, put in a lot of engineering efforts. Since I was on a student budget, I had bought the film from Kodak only enough to last for the planned duration of the movie and no more. Therefore I did not have a luxury of the second take, everything had to be shot in one single take. This project, although being a technical and engineering marvel for me, tanked horribly at the preview screenings. People absolutely hated it because no one got the story. My very close friends laughed it off as just an enthusiastic piece of film that someone would do in their free time. I had one of the biggest failures of very early on.
When I pondered over why I failed, I realized that it was very natural for me to get attracted to the technical side of filmmaking. I was doing my PhD in Engineering, and solving technical problems was something I did on a daily basis. Therefore, understanding the mechanical nature of the film camera, the aspect ratio of the gate, converting the feet consumption meter of the film into number of minutes for the shot (see picture below) was like jamming for me. I immersed myself in understanding that and completely overlooked the story that was eventually going to connect to the audience emotionally. I realized that the emotional journey of the characters in the screenplay moves the audience, not the calculation of feet to minutes of the celluloid film. After this failure, I very much had the option of leaving the filmmaking passion altogether. It was only my second project, and also a short one, therefore, the time, money, and energy investment from my part were not significant. I could have easily backed out and not look at filmmaking as a passion at all.
I had a feet to minutes calculator (formulated by linear regression) on my shot list to know how much film I had consumed during filming.
However, that failure taught me a lot. It caused me to go the root of the problem and ask myself, why was I doing this? What did I want to achieve by making films? Should I just keep wondering about the equipment, aspect ratio, and frame rates, or something larger than life that moves the audience emotionally? Every single piece of formal education I had until that point was technical for me. But after this failure, I stopped learning about the technical aspects of filmmaking and spent my next three years learning how to write a screenplay. The library at my University had a film section, where I used to spend hours reading books about dramatic writing. I remember every free library around the area had a DVD rental section, where movies were arranged in alphabetical order of their titles. I used to start from A, and used to rent almost 10 DVDs per week, and just watch one film per day. A new Barnes and Noble opened at a nearby mall, and I spent multiple weekends over there just reading newly released books about screenplay writing. After this exercise, I started realizing the structure of a story, the journey of a hero, and how characters could be made relatable. With this new learning, I made a movie called “The Script” which was a critical success and went on to get selected for the Cannes Film Festival.
Here is the trailer of that film. If you want to see the full film, watch it here.
The story structure for “The Script”, the fruit of the learning I underwent for screenplay writing.
The biggest thing I learned from this exercise was being wrong as soon as possible. This offers you to make decisions that are reversible in nature, and not commit yourself to something you cannot undo. One of the great tools one can employ to be wrong as fast as possible is to break down the project you are working on into a bunch of smaller projects and complete them one by one. While completing the initial smaller projects, you are not yet invested significantly in the project, and therefore can gauge for yourself if you are taking the right steps towards your final objective. In addition to this, it is a great confidence booster because completing the initial smaller projects motivates us to complete the next steps and gives us good progress tracking.
When I started my technical career in the engineering industry, I employed this learning in almost every project I took on. Whenever I was expected to create a presentation, I used to just sketch slides by hand on a piece of paper, and quickly go to my manager in a matter of minutes and tell him my idea for the presentation. If there was a misalignment in the thoughts between my manager and me, I wanted to know that right when I started investing efforts in the presentation. If I was wrong, I wanted to know as soon as possible. Aligning the ideas over pencil sketches worked wonders because both of us knew right from the beginning the path we were treading towards a common goal. The next step was to scan the sketch, and then create some blank slides in PowerPoint, and just add the sketches and corresponding text on the slides to create the first draft of the presentation. Eventually, those sketches became elements on the slides. This way, the presentation was ready in no time, and already full of value and great inputs from both of us.
Be wrong ASAP.
Would love to know your thoughts.
