It is possible to have too many ideas. Yes, even the root of all success and failure can be had in abundance. That, mated with a pencil thin budget (there are levels lower than a shoe string budget), no contractual agreements or studio backing will lead to a meaningful development process. One where the cycle of new ideas - initially received as improvements - are recognized as dead or bloated weight to the achievement at stake. Your script can become littered with too many references, puns or cliches; therefore becoming splintered into a hodge-podge of potential without any serious form taking shape.
Attempting to shoot with an ambiguous feeling towards the script--and overextending your plans for shooting,--will end with the crew, actors and story treading through Siberia in lead boots, going nowhere fast. If you're flying by the seat of your pants on a DIY budget and limited availability for shooting, you need to think like a stock broker at the closing bell and ask yourself question after question: What is necessary for this story to succeed with the time we have? What is expendable? Do we shoot to edit or do we pile on all the footage we can get and save the rest for the cutting room?
If you're able to answer questions such as these on the fly, your shoot will become more invigorating and the progressive ideas will flow like blood from a severed jugular. It will also signify confidence in the material and the direction the project is heading.
Having too many ideas (and trying to incorporate them) became the burden of the current narrative I am working to complete. Admittedly, I am not the ringmaster, but simply the co-Screenwriter, second camera operator and assistant director (gotta love the DIY credits). I won't bore you with the synopsis or how we came together to create this project or any of the gloating proclamations one would find in an interview on a “Special Features” block on a DVD. To say the least, I am working with two renowned photographers on a quasi-family drama concerning a mother's attempt to pass on her legacy through a traditional family recipe. Good enough?
Lest to say, the film started a year and a half ago. We aren't done shooting. And god only knows when editing will proceed.
Shoring up, even with a handful of people, a film's process can become subservient to too many damn ideas.
"What about this?" "Why don't we put the camera here?" "I see scene seven as a better lead-in to scene two than as a lead-out of scene six." "We can do this sequence in one take instead of three camera setups." "How about we have the girl have a handkerchief shoved in her mouth and dragged up the hill in her bra and panties?"
We have--and continue to--lumbered through several months of insatiable mental exorcism; going over everything from minute camera angles to blocks of dialogue until we believed we had the backbone of the film. Shooting the damn thing was another story (pun intended). The first day of shooting --last November --went well, but not great. Not where we wanted it to be. The project was missing many intangibles needed to catapult it into the experience we had intended.
All this coupled with unstable schedules lead to a hiatus on the project which took us from the fall of 2010 to the spring of this year (2011). Once again, back to the drawing board. Once we honed our sights and faced real obstacles after letting the production stew for several months, the project grew into something more established. We finally know what the hell we're (or at least we're damn good at pretending) doing, although we cannot project what may happen on a day-to-day basis.
Not being able to time the daily logistics got us in trouble in the first place, but it gave us great hindsight for the second go-round of shooting. As our director, Joseph Vogt, has stated --in one of his many analogies to American sports, "We're on the right path. We need to quit playing for the single game and look to play for the series. Now we're heading into the conference finals against a stellar team."
