I wrote a few weeks ago about getting ‘a job‘ to help get me out of the house and a little less stir-crazy (one of the pitfalls of working from a home office). I expected it to be hard work, but that was kind of the point; it would hep my mental state, my writing and my honeymoon fund.
What I didn’t realise was that it would be such hard physical work and that as a consequence, I’d become stronger and fitter so much more quickly than I’d been planning on with my regime at the gym.
The unexpected benefits of the things we do in life can be some of the best. The same thing goes for business, writing and filmmaking, too. Sometimes we do things because we enjoy them, sometimes we do things because we think they’ll be good for us or for others and sometimes we do things because we feel we have to.
Whatever your motivation for doing something – positive, negative or self-serving – it’s always good to be on the look-out for those things we’d never have had access to or experienced had we not taken that certain task on.
I rarely give things up for Lent. A few years ago, I gave up going into hospital , but that one didn’t last, thanks to those pesky medical people trying to keep me alive.
This year, though, I’m vowing to give up the fear of failure.
Too many of life’s decisions are governed by the “what if it all goes wrong?” question or “what if I look silly for trying it?”. Too often we skip over great opportunities because we can’t immediately see how to make them work and we worry about what it’ll look like to our friends, colleagues and clients if they don’t.
So this month I’m going to enter into every project with a sense of the infinite possibilities as opposed to the dread of defeat.
That’s not to say that I will be hurling myself into projects willy-nilly. Fear of failure is very different to realistic expectations for the success of a project and if it doesn’t make financial (or time-cost) sense, then it will remain on the back-burner for the time being.
What are you going to commit yourself to for Lent? What are you afraid of failing? Announce yourself here – loud and proud – and we’ll all keep tabs on each other.
I’ve spoken on this blog before about Jon Reiss, filmmaker and author of Think Outside The Box Office, the authoritative guide for finding and building an audience for your low-budget indie flick.
Jon has now gone a step further and established the best iPhone app integration with your film. You can read Jon’s post announcing the app over on his blog, but here’s the key part of it:
This is an app to share the graffiti and street art you love with others. It is free – and is intended to create a broader community around Bomb It.
Rather than simply using the app as another platform for selling his film, what Jon has created is another way to engage his community. He’s adding value to his audience, giving them a way to talk, debate and share while still pushing (but not overtly) the BOMB IT brand out there.
By keeping the app BOMB IT-branded, the people who know him and his film will start to use it and share it with their friends (from with in their community and, thus, the target audience for the film) and spread the word. More awareness = bigger target audience = more views. But, significantly, Jon’s not trying to expand beyond his identified “niche” – he knows who is audience is and how to cater for their needs; textbook indie movie marketing.
Any producers out there looking to enhance their film’s brand with an app would do well to study what Jon has done here, which comes back to the same story we push time and again: know your audience, give them what they want and give them more than they expect.
Engage, converse, offer value. It’s a simple equation that too many filmmakers frequently skip over.
If you’ve established yourself a strict, productive routine, it can be hugely beneficial to give yourself some slack now and again.
As you probably know by now, I’m training for the 3 Peaks Challenge in June this year. Since I’m much further behind all the other members of the team, I’ve set myself a rigorous and punishing work, training and dietary schedule to get myself in shape.
Motivation for anything can be hard to maintain, but even more so when you’re limiting and/or being tough on yourself, restricting certain things and enforcing others. That’s why I’ve taken to giving myself a ‘cheat day’ once a week to allow me to indulge, slack off and generally slob around a bit.
Including a cheat day as part of your regular schedule – whether it’s a day off from work, a day with no internet, eating whatever you like or just enjoying something you don’t usually have time for – can be a much stronger motivational tool than a long-term goal; knowing that you’ve got a ‘rest day’ coming up can help you work harder and more efficiently as well as increase your positivity and productivity.
Don’t be so hard on yourself; cheating’s only cheating when it does you a disservice. Sometimes cheating’s just the best way to move forward.
Working too hard, not playing enough and feeling generally a little run down, I’ve been struggling to concentrate and get my head in order with no inspiration to get anything done.
Then, today, thanks to a friend on Twitter, I did the one simple thing that works every time. I got off my arse.
The simple act of standing from your sofa, your desk, your workbench and going and doing something can be all the inspiration you need to get back up and at ’em.
Next time you’re funking1, just choose something, get up and DO IT.
Anything that doesn’t go the way you intend may at first appear like an utter waste of your time, but it’s important to find the positives and ways to take advantage of a situation that may not be to our liking.
A Twitter buddy of mine this week posed the following question:
Would you use [product placement] to fund / part finance a film?
Followed closely by this Tweet, which makes no secret which way he’s leaning.
All this is, of course, highly appropriate just now with the UK about to start allowing product placement for the first time.1
I do think product placement has a place in helping to fund the TV and film industry over here. Apart from anything else, who are we to turn down sources of funding to get things made – not just for us but, potentially, more and better off-the-wall, risky TV drama and other formats it may help fund?
The issue for me always comes with the compromise that a filmmaker or an artist has to accept in order to allow for product placement. If you have to change elements of your script to accommodate a product you need to take a long, hard look at the reasons behind it and not fool yourself that it’s a “creative” decision.
That’s not to say all changes in the name of placement are a bad thing2 but I would always shy away from placement-based rewrites that affected anything more than a passing glance or irrelevant detail.
The key decider for any product placement-based changes has to be this: if someone were offering you the same sum of money without a product to push, would you make the changes they’re suggesting just because they’re giving you the cash?
If the answer’s “yes” then either a) they’re surprisingly good story analysts and you struck luck or b) you’re a sell-out and I wish you a long and happy career. Just don’t fool yourself into thinking you’re making great art as you pander to the the money-men’s whims.
It’s entirely possible to incorporate product placement in a creative and ethical way, but we should all beware of those people who will become slaves to the product, rather than serving their story.
The BBC have got a great article on it and its perceived impact here [↩]
you wouldn’t see a huge amount of harm in switching a character’s car from a Ford to a Seat, for instance, as long as it says the same things about his life, social status etc [↩]
Welcome to another new LOWDOWN, that part of the Production Office that brings you tips and tricks on all the tools you need to enhance your career as a filmmaker and creative.
Today, it’s Productivity.
Anyone who follows my blog will know I’m pretty hot on productivity. For far too long I spent my days being busy, but rarely productive. Since harnessing some of the tools I’m talking about today and putting some best practices of getting things done into place, I’ve become much more focused, much more productive and much more successful.
Let’s have a look, then, at some of the tools you can use to make your life easier.
EVERNOTE
Evernote comes at the top of the list today for two reasons: number one, it’s the tool I was most recently introduced to and two, it’s the tool I now find the most invaluable.
Evernote is a desktop and web-based app that you can also get for almost all smart phones. It’s free to get started, but if you go over a certain storage limit you have to start paying. That said, I’ve used it quite a lot and still not exceeded my free allowance.
What Evernote does is to collect together all those bits and pieces of things on the web that you want to take note of, as well as allowing you to compile your own To Do lists, projects and other notes. It’s the simplest, cheapest and easiest way of keeping track of just about everything you need to remember. The Evernote logo isn’t an elephant for nothing.
THINGS
The second tool that works hard to keep you on time and on-topic is Things. The biggest down side? It’s Mac-only. So all you Windows dinosaurs can’t take advantage of it. You also have to pay around £30 for it, which puts it a step below Evernote to begin with.
Once you get past those elements, though, Things is brilliant for tracking To Do’s, project files, notes and reminders. Most usefully, though – and what helps to elevate Things to a point worth paying for – is it’s interaction and syncability1 with iCal and iPhone. If you use Apple’s MobileMe syncing solution to share your calendar across all your home computers, like I do, Things swaps and shares data seamlessly with not only all of your computers, but your phone as well. An invaluable way of keeping track of everything you need to know when you need to know it.
BASECAMP
There are numerous online project management tools that help you and all your collaborators to keep track of all the strands that make up your project, but the best one I’ve found (and used) is Basecamp.
Unlike other, equally useful online tools like Huddle, it’s Basecamp’s pricing structure that really makes it stand out. You pay a flat monthly fee from $24 (£15) and upwards that allows unlimited numbers of people to join your project and work on things with you. Huddle, by contrast, charges you per user per month, meaning a major film or creative project would quickly rack up sizable fees.
Basecamp2 is best used for sharing documents and keeping track of project timelines and goals in a way that everyone involved can see. Not only is that a great motivational tool – if everyone know what you should be doing, you’d better be doing it – but also a great way of making sure key things don’t get missed and that everyone knows the timeline their working to and the goals their aiming for.
There are hundreds of different tools of productivity for you to explore, but I’d suggest you limit yourself to trying one or two at a time, otherwise you risk undoing all their good work by spending all day getting to know them and setting them up as opposed to using them to help get your work done.
For more o productivity, keep an eye on my blog here, as well as checking out the99percent and lifehacker, my two online bibles of productivity tips and tools.
Starting a debate is a great way to engage your creative muscles. Not only does it force you to examine your own perspectives, it also opens you up to taking on board new ideas.
Great debates create new angles to examine problems and new ways to solve them.
As a writer, stirring debate can also help you to write both sides of an argument. I frequently start writing scenes between two characters and realise that it’s totally one-sided because I agree strongly with one of the characters. By entering a debate with my friends and Twitter buddies, I can get different views and arguments that help me round out my characters in a much more successful way.
What debates have you used to aid your writing or creativity? How did you get them started – is the interactivity of Twitter the best way to go, or the public discussion of Facebook?
I wrote a few weeks ago about getting ‘a job‘ to help get me out of the house and a little less stir-crazy (one of the pitfalls of working from a home office). I expected it to be hard work, but that was kind of the point; it would hep my mental state, my writing and my honeymoon fund.
