# 3 of ~ “ The 10 things I learned making a short film that took 10 years to make that I finished 10 years ago.”
To read part two go here
~ engage the flux-capacitor ~ whhhhhooooosshh — — 10 years ago ~ 2009
3) Goals Goals Goals.
Without deadlines you will make the film forever. First you should have an overriding goal, an uber-goal, the emotional goal. It should answer the question “Why am I doing this?”
Secondly a completion goal, “In five years I will have the film done to show at Annecy!” Truthfully working on the side, after hours this will double or triple. If this were the Apollo Moon Goal it would be “By the end of this decade we will put a man on the moon and bring him home again.” So what date, event, arbitrary or not, are you shooting for? Write it down. The first step to achieving any goal is to write it down.
Now you need to breakdown the completion goal into the major events. For the moon mission this would be; learn how to send men to the moon, Gemini program, build the LEM, etc. For animation it could be learn to animate but assuming you know that it would be make a storyreel by a certain date, design characters, begin animation, etc.
This is all still pretty overwhelming so each of the major events, ie Gemini or storyreel, are broken down into very doable little goals leading you to “ little victories.” During Gemini they had a checklist of things to do to prepare the astronauts and NASA to know they could get to the moon and back. Spacewalk — check. Rendevous and dock with another capsule — Check. Test out the Luner Module (LEM) — Check. By doing this your little victories will build your confidence and momentum not to mention keeping you fired up to get through the long lonley slog of making the thing.
10 Years Later
In re-reading this I am surprised I didn’t elaborate on the overriding personal goal. The question of — Why you are doing it in the first place. Making the Leonardo short was an exercise in testing myself to see if I could actually make a film largely on my own. Tell my own story, my own way and what that would be. Most of my career has been helping others to tell their stories. Which has been very satisfying and has lead to a wonderful career but as the great writer / director John Sayles said, “Sometimes you want to be the architect and sometimes the carpenter.” John Sayles, who has made a career of writing and script doctoring for mainstream films like Apollo 13 and others, a “carpenter”, would take that money and then make his own indie films, Matewan, Lone Star, The Secret of Roan Inish and many more, and be the “architect”. Essentially meaning there is nothing wrong being a carpenter, a highly skilled, craftsman preforming a job that you can take enormous pride in but you are following another person’s plan and responsible only for your part; putting on a weather tight roof or putting in windows or making beautiful cabinets. Then, sometimes you might want to be the person with the plan, the architect, and with that be responsible for the whole house. So for me that was the goal. It wasn’t about the end result it was about putting myself out there as an artist and making it happen. The whole film was up to me. You could have other goals, maybe it is to learn something new — a technique or program or skill or to work with a certain group of people, but generally I think it goes back to doing something bigger then yourself. Challenging yourself in some way, absolutely putting yourself in a somewhat uncomfortable position.
next post :
4) 5 minutes a day
I hit upon this idea when I was really down about getting the film done.
