Short answer: it’s not. Longer answer: see below.
The original plan
When this year started I was dead set on finishing at least the filming part of my short film during the autumn and then start the post-production process at the end of the year so that it would be ready for a premiere somewhere during the first half of 2020.
But as you already guessed, that is no longer the case. So what went wrong?
High amount of work
At the high level the story I have written is pretty simple, it has two characters, it is set mostly in one location (well, one location that can look like multiple locations), it happens during the night and relies mostly on sound to create a world that feels dangerous. However, it contains quite a large amount of worldbuilding which means building a lot of custom things almost from scratch so that the characters would have props that would feel believable and fitting. For some props, like the guns I tried to take a shortcut by buying some sci-fi looking toy guns and painting them black but as my vision for the world and the style of the film has started become more clear I decided to go with an entirely custom scratch built prop gun so that it would better fit into the world (there is a separate post coming about this process). So, adding custom things, while they do increase the production value and make the film more unique they also increase the time needed to craft them to suitable standards.
Many people have asked me the question “why do you try to do all of this yourself?” and I have to admit that it is a pretty good question :D I do have an answer and it might even deserve a separate post.
Being out of my comfort zone
Like, 90% of the time. I’ve never done anything remotely of this scale and many of the things that I am building, I am trying out for the first time ever. While it is of course fun to learn new skills it is also very stressful when you are trying to push towards a deadline. Also, I’ve learned that while I do like learning, I just don’t like the part before the learning happens :D ie. the frustration, not knowing what is the right way to do certain things in the beginning, false starts and failures.
This did in the end teach me some valuable lessons and strategies on how to tackle some completely new tasks to me. I learned to consciously shut off the part of my brain that tries to go for perfection and instead focus on just getting something small done, however simple or crappy it might be and then continuing from that. I found out that this way I rarely got stuck on starting some new project and it gave much more ideas than what I could have gotten if I tried to figure the perfect implementation in my head or on paper before committing to the building process.
Growing ambitions
As my skills have gotten better and I have started to see how the props and creatures start to look I find myself being flooded by new ideas to make something more impressive than the original idea. I suppose it is a good thing but once again it adds more work on the already crowded list of things to do. In the longer run I am sure that these additions will make the film feel much bigger and more lively, it will just mean that more time is needed.
Starting too late
During January - March of 2019 I was still tweaking the story and doing revisions on the script. While that was necessary to do, I should have started already on the prop building process. The reason I did not do it was because I was sort of afraid that I might create something that was not in the end needed in the film if I would cut it from the script. In the end this fear did not materialise and also it was an unnecessary fear because if I had started earlier, even if some of the props would have been scrapped, I would have already gotten some experience on the process of prop build which would have sped up my work during summer.
After the writing was finished and I was happy with the script, I started to practise drawing in order to draw the storyboards. While a noble pursuit, it did not get me closer to having anything “real” done.
Once the summer finally arrived I had huge amount of work ahead of me and most of it did not have any kind of pre-planning or prototypes done so I had to start from scratch with each of them.
The final blow - trying way too much
I welcomed August and my annual holiday with big hopes for pushing the film over the prop building phase. My big plan was to finish all the missing props during the holiday and then cruise straight into casting, finish the missing storyboards, prepare the locations and shooting plan and get everything in the can during September - October.
Needless to say that this did not happen or you wouldn’t be reading this post. Also needless to say that this plan was insane from the beginning :D Already after less than a week of working desperately on one creature effect and seeing the time slip away and my stress levels go up I woke up to the situation that 1) I am not enjoying this 2) this was supposed to be my dream project 3) I am on a holiday and I feel like I’m about to have a burnout.
So something had to change.
It was a painful decision to drop the original plan as I had fixated on the goal of filming in the autumn of 2019 and made it the biggest milestone of the year. In the end it was the right decision though. Theoretically I could have hardened myself and pushed through but I am pretty sure that the result would have been a film that I wouldn’t have been happy with quality wise and a burned out me.
The revised plan
The new plan and approach is to keep on working on the missing parts while maintaining a balance and a sense of fun. So, in a nutshell:
- work on the missing props and creatures during the winter and spring
- storyboarding and location scouting during spring / summer
- starting the casting during spring
- shooting in September - October 2020
- post-production 2020/2021
- premiere 2021
And if all goes well, I might have time to do some smaller unrelated sketch-like pieces during the winter as weekend projects. But we will see.
What did I achieve in the end?
Failing my plan first felt like a huge disaster but after a day or two of distance and reflection it started to feel anything but.
I think in our culture we tend to like and reward the heroic stories where the creatives, business folk etc. tell how they destroyed their mental wellbeing, relationships, health, wealth and everything that stood in their way as they pursued their goals. Having gone through similar paths in my professional life as a software engineer I’ve grown to reject that kind of mentality of the “heroic creative”. Early on I made a promise that I would not sacrifice my health (mental or physical) or my relationships because of this project. I almost failed on the second point and caused some grief to a dear friend which I regret a lot and that made me realise how easy it is to slip out of these principles when the going gets a notch harder.
Having enough sense to put the breaks on was the big achievement that I am proud of. Having friends and family who were supportive when the decision was made is wealth that I really treasure.
Yeah, yeah, enough with the syrup, what else did you achieve?
Well, quite a lot actually.
I tried 3D printing for the first time and after plenty of Googling, watching Youtube tutorials, trial and error I started to get things done with it. During the winter I will take a couple more tutorials to better handle the basics of 3D modelling so that I can model and print parts for one of the custom guns and also for some animatronic effects that I am now developing. It is a very useful thing to learn and my little Ender 3 printer will surely earn its price back very soon.
As mentioned earlier I learned some skills on how to approach the unknown and as this project has many many unknowns it will be a useful skill.
I finished the first iteration on one of the creatures. I might have to do a round of touch ups next year but the basics are already figured out so that’s a lot.
One creature reached a viable prototype stage with the help of my friend from Austria. It was a tricky thing to figure out but together we arrived to a quite simple solution that not only is dead simple but also looks creepy as hell in real life and on camera. Next I just need to build it from scratch using the lessons learned during the prototyping phase but that should be much quicker now that I know what to do and can trust that it will look cool.
And also a huge thing was the test shoot of the climax scene of the film using an early version of the main creature and a set that I dressed up in under an hour. To me that was a huge turning point as it finally proved that when I put together all the elements that so far I’ve only had inside my head like setting the film in a dark forest, lighting only some areas and using practical creature effects (as opposed to CG) it will all work together. I was smiling and laughing like crazy when we shot those test shots and again when I reviewed the footage the next morning. A rain of joy and happiness after all the stress and doubt, it is the drug that makes me go back each time and bang my head against the wall while trying to figure my way into the world I created on paper.
I think I’ve just got started.