Validating the idea

In the startup world, validating a new business idea before investing significant capital or time in a new product is hugely important. Either validating by performing the actions an app would perform manually, without hiring engineers to build a working prototype. Or by testing the marketplace with Facebook ads.

I don't see why this isn't more prevalent in film. In film, many times you invest a huge amount of capital and time in a film, all based on a hunch that you think it's a good idea. It's inefficient with huge potential downside.

Comedians frequently talk about not knowing whether or not a joke is going to be funny until they tell it on stage, in front of an audience. And they can spend years honing the joke, all based on a combination of feedback from the audience and their artistry.

I know musicians have been caught off guard, thinking a song wasn't that great, but it ended up being the most popular song on the album.

But when you talk about filmmakers adjusting their film based on feedback from the audience, people get squirrely. It's as if people expect a 2 hour story to come straight out of the filmmakers mind, fully and perfectly formed. It's unrealistic.

Comedians = jokes, worked out on stage
Musicians = songs, worked out on stage
Filmmakers = shorts, worked out online 

The only problem with this formula, is with comedians and musicians you've got a paying audience. And the behavior of a paying customer is much different than the opinion of someone getting something for free. They go over this in Eric Ries's, The Lean Startup. Paying customers for a new product are early adopters. And watching the behavior of early adopters, who are interested enough in your idea to spend their hard earned money is much different than getting the opinion of someone who has enough time on their hands to be part of a focus group. It's an entirely different set of people, in addition to watching behavior versus getting someone's opinion.

Maybe I should charge for the shorts, as a way to gauge interest and make sure I only get paying, early adopter behavior.

But I'm hesitant to charge for shorts. I'll probably end up testing both ways.

Picasso

I watched a BBC documentary on Picasso on Friday night. It got me thinking again about whether or not film is due for a revolution in structure and form.

Picasso started off as a classical painter, academic realism they call it. Then his work added a symbolist influence. Blue period. Rose period. And finally modern art transformed... cubism, crystal period, neoclassical, surrealism, and beyond.

Painting and novels were the primary art forms of the day (my guess), and it's obvious painting went through a revolution in the early 1900's, and from what Chuck said in his article, fiction is going through a similar crisis. And they could be much further along than film.

I know it's a common chorus, people have been proclaiming the death of the 3-act structure hero story since Aristotle. But maybe we could use some exploration like Picasso did with the bull, seeing what elements of traditional film structure you can remove while still maintaining the essence.

The problem is, I get bored with so many movies I see. I wonder if it's because I'm older and have seen enough to get all the tricks, or if it's because audiences are more savvy now. I'd like to believe it's because audiences are more savvy now (which Chuck stated in his article), because I'd love to see more exciting, experimental movies.

Picasso BBC doc: click here
Chuck Palahniuk article: click here

Sense of direction

A few questions from my journal this morning, looking for a sense of direction on a project I'm working on.

• Where do you want to put your camera and be with her? 
• What parts of her life do you want to live through with her? 
• Why did she do the things that she did? 
• What's really going on with her, inside? 
• Why? The real reason why..... 

Wanting to get this close to someone is disconcerting, even though she's dead. I want to give her privacy, not be intrusive. I'm being too polite. 

Chuck Palahniuk Thoughts

...fiction writers should abandon technically correct writing and experiment in the same way painters were forced to experiment in order to keep their medium relevant.

Chuck Palahniuk via LitReactor link

I've had the same exact thoughts for awhile now, about films. I know the 3-act structure is supposed to be universal, and the hero's journey has survived this long for a reason. But I struggle so much with films I see and films I'm trying to write being boring. 

Personally I love how Linklater plays with structure and time. And same with early Tarantino, you're putting the movie together as you go along, catching up with the storytelling. And Memento. 

We could easily be getting to a time in cinema, about 100 years in, where traditional narrative feels boring, tired, and worn out. As much as I enjoy many of the big tentpole movies, or studio pictures, there's a limit to how much I appreciate it. Because I know how it's going to end, and I know what I'm getting when I buy my ticket. 

I would like to be surprised more. I'd like to have to work harder to put the story together myself. I still want to be entertained, so you still need big action set pieces. And emotional journeys are still compelling, but it can be pushed into new directions. Maybe it's simply a symptom of high budget films needing to appeal to a massive audience and therefore have a simpler structure. 

But Chuck could be right, as the standard storytelling ideas get out there in the marketplace, filmmakers will need to push the medium into new areas to satisfy the audience. The internet is making this knowledge ubiquitous, and eventually it may not work anymore. 

Personally, I have very little interest in telling a standard 3-act hero's journey. Although I know this is a cliche place to be for a first-time writer. Wanting to reinvent the form. Many writers have been here before, and later learned to appreciate the timeless form. But I also feel things could be different now, due to the internet, free knowledge, and exponential growth. I think audiences will demand more from their storytellers. Or maybe they'll just want the same thing, only different, to quote Blake Snyder. 

Context in Storytelling

I listened to Gary Vaynerchuck's talk this morning, and it touches (tangentially) on ideas I'm interested in. The context in which the story is told - which I take to mean not only the medium, but telling personal stories. For instance in my project, since the story is loosely based on experiences from my life I think it's important for me to write, direct, and ideally act in the film. By doing all three as well as distributing directly to the audience - people will feel much more of a connection to the art. I've personally felt more connected to films in the past where I know the film came from a part of the actor or writer/directors life. Stallone wrote Rocky, and on a deeper level it was analogous to where he was at in his life (at least in my perception) and that's always made me feel a closer connection to the movie. Also see Hemingway and Farewell To Arms.

It's the same in music and stand-up comedy. The songs pulled from a musicians life or the bits pulled from a comedians life hit me harder than anything else.

The story behind the story, which connects the artists real life to the material, provides a context for the story which I think is essential for the kind of great, personal art which I'd like to create.

And I like the idea of storytelling in different ways. I've been thinking about different formats for my project, giving films to the audience in the way they want:

• Short films that add up to feature length when watched together


• Feature length film with associated shorts used to test the main thesis of the film before production


• Episodes that can be downloaded and watched on mobile apps where someone can pick and choose what parts of the story they want to watch, in whatever order they'd like

As far as marketing, he's spot on with speaking to the audience authentically and by adding value 75% of the time and asking for business occasionally. It's the same model I see with Joe Rogan, Austin Kleon, and many others.

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[via 99U & Filmmaker IQ & nofilmschool]