For the first few minutes, I was livid. I spent a ton of time working on this, as did all my friends that are helping out. We had been writing the story for a couple weeks, then spent about 25 hours total working on it in a period of two days. We finished filming at 3am one day and woke up at 6:45am the next day. It was physically and emotionally exhausting for everyone. Then to have my friend essentially say that we’d have nothing to show for our work was really disheartening. We didn’t have enough filmed to slap something together; everything we shot was at random parts of the story and couldn’t be edited into anything cogent. I think I’m pretty decent at editing video, but I definitely know my limits.

There are two ways to react to this situation. I could say “screw it” and just focus my energy on other projects. I have a lot going on as it is, and this film was just for fun anyways. Or I could convince myself that this is a minor setback and continue pursuing my goal. I now realize that I had made some mistakes and could have prevented this mess. For instance, my lead actor just got a full-time job that’s five hours away from where we were shooting. Even though he told me he was willing to work hard on this, I should have realized how difficult it was going to be for him to find time to play a big role.

I’ve decided to start from scratch and make something new for a different festival (Starz Film Fest). Their deadline is in a month, which will give the other people involved some time to cool their engines and come down from the frustration they’re going through right now. I had a long talk earlier with another one of my friends who’d put in a ton of hours acting. He was very reticent about starting something new because he’s understandably angry about the situation.

Sometimes you put in a ton of effort on something and have nothing to show for it. There’s a good chance that we’ll never finish that movie. But we can give up or carry on. Forgive the corny metaphor, but I’d rather play with the cards I’ve been dealt than just walk away from the table. Failures happen and it’s easy to quit. But I want something to show for this, no matter how many times I might fail.

“The Way of the Samurai is in desperateness… Common sense will not accomplish great things. Simply become insane and desperate.” – Hagakure: The Book of The Samurai

For the past two days, two of my friends and I have been desperately trying to get as much of our movie done for the TriMedia Film Festival. We worked for 12 hours on Monday, and 8 hours on Tuesday. We also went to bed at 3am on Monday and woke up four hours later to keep working. Needless to say, it’s been really hectic and very time-consuming.

One of the funny things about participating in this particular film festival is that we’ll be competing against movies with substantial budgets (up to $2 million dollars), experienced crew members, expensive cameras and software, and story lines written by professionals. For the most part, it’s just been me and three of my friends working on this thing. We’ve spent less than $60 total, we have very little experience, my camera sucks, I use iMovie to edit (compared to the industry standard Final Cut), and the script was written in just a few hours.

All of us are really busy and our schedules conflict. We rarely have time to sit down and work on this project together because we have jobs and other commitments. So when we all can work at the same time, it’s a mad rush to get as much done as possible in a few hours. This creates a huge sense of urgency, and that’s what makes us great. If we started working on this months ago, we’d feel that time cushion and never work hard. The project more than likely would have been abandoned because we’d spend our time talking about things instead of doing them. Since we only have 10 days left to slap this movie together, we work our asses off and come up with the best work that we can.

I’ve really learned the importance of time constraints in the last few months, especially when you’re working with a group. In my last semester of college, I never once wrote an essay earlier than the night before it was due, whether it was two pages or 12 pages. Waiting until the last minute would force me to get everything done all at once. In spite of working all night non-stop, my grades didn’t suffer at all. They actually improved. It’s hard to find ways to keep a group on task, but having that imminent deadline does the trick.

Procrastination gets a bad rep. Force yourself to work in desperation.

After we talked in person the other night, it was obvious that we could have had a script done a long time ago. I know that it’s possible to generate a lot of great ideas online (e.g. Seth’s virtual internship, The Big Think, etc.), but it’s so much more dynamic when you’re bouncing your thoughts off a person a few feet away. All it takes to get a solid free flow of ideas with someone is to be in the same room with them.

The reason I’m writing about something that’s seemingly obvious is because it’s actually not so obvious anymore. I work so much on a computer that I find myself acting like all communication can be done online. But it can’t be done that way a lot of the time. Aside from body language, inflection, volume, and all the other things you need to see and hear to communicate, you also need to feel and develop an energy that’s conducive to creativity in the room. It’s much, much harder to create that type of energy in an exchange of emails.

I know this seems like it contradicts what I said a few days ago. But when you’re generating ideas and really want to move a project along, it’s sometimes necessary to meet in person. The hard part is controlling the group and making sure it stays productive.