This is one of only a few physical copies of Sprouting Orchids, my first attempt at
a feature film.
It was a failure.
I’ve covered the ups and downs of its production on my channel before.
If you want a thirty minute rundown of what happened, then feel free to check it out.
Although I haven’t watched this movie fully in almost five years, I keep this copy on
my bookshelf as a cautionary warning for the next time I decide to take such a creative
risk.
So, in my late teens and early twenties, I participated every year in a 48 Hour Film
challenge.
It's a contest for filmmakers in which they make a five minute short over the course of
a single weekend.
One of the rituals that my friends and I would take part in just before each event was the
annual watching of the previous year’s entry.
It's tradition!
The idea was pretty simple: in order to curb our expectations, we would sit down and we
would force ourselves to watch the short we made during the last challenge to completion,
just before we headed out to shoot the new one.
As any creator knows, watching old stuff you made can be incredible uncomfortable, embarrassing,
and a quick way to put your ego in check, because you’re watching something you have
grown beyond.
It’s a harsh but powerful reminder of where you have come from, and a testament to not
think too highly of your current self, either - because invariably, whatever you are right
now will (by definition) be less of what you eventually become.
That’s the idea with this DVD.
Keep it close, so that if the NEXT attempt ever materializes, I’ll have something to
buffet me, lest I exalt myself beyond measure.
Oh wait, I still need this.
I made a lot of mistakes when creating this, but I’ve also had the benefit of time to
(hopefully) learn from those mistakes.
I know that a lot of YOU have projects you’re working on - maybe even a movie, like this
- and perhaps you’re seeking advice on how to accomplish the task at hand.
So, today, I’m going to share with you a handful of the many reasons why mine failed.
#1: I had a poor story.
The screenplay is the blueprint of your film, and if the core concept itself is flawed,
the film will fall like a house built on a poor foundation.
If I’m honest, I was pretty stupid at 23.
While I had a lot of tough life experiences, I hadn’t quite figured out a way to process
them and extract out the relevant information and wisdom needed to craft together a meaningful
story.
Instead, I just knew I wanted to make a sci-fi romance that involved a young couple and an
alien trying to take over the world.
That’s not a story - that’s a list of plot elements.
There was no overarching theme.
There was no founding principal and no moral.
I approached it from a poorly-devised, and solely technical perspective, concerning myself
WAY more with the superficial stuff when I SHOULD have focused on the POINT of the narrative.
Looking back I think I was operating under too low of a resolution - my headwas filled
with thoughts like, Well, “I can afford 3 actors - so it needs three main characters!”
“I’ve got permission to shoot in a local greenhouse, so I need a pivotal scene to take
place in that location!”
“I've got some cool 3D animations of alien worms - they should be the bad guys!”
I thought of my movie like a puzzle of various resources that just needed to be assembled
in the right way, which it was, to an extent, but I had forgotten to make sure that the
completed puzzle would actually have a sense of thematic coherence to it.
The lesson was this: just having the tools to make a movie isn’t enough!
I needed a story - a good story to act as the bedrock of everything.
There were plenty of stories about the human condition, about life, about death that I
could have told, but I got in such a hurry to start shooting that I didn’t take the
time necessary to actually write a compelling tale.
This is an indication of impure motives.
I've talked about this before, but the point is: I didn’t want to make a movie because
I had something I was burning to say...
I wanted to make a movie to SAY that I had made a movie.
That’s vanity, not art, and it’s one of the key shortcomings of what I eventually
produced.
So before YOU ever for even a second think about putting a production schedule together,
make sure it’s in pursuit of telling a story that your spirit is desperate to share with
others.
#2: My production suffered from a lack of collaboration.
If I had shared that awful script with just one person outside of the production, they
would have been able to read it and easily tell me that it stunk.
While making this film, I utterly failed to understand the importance of getting a different
set of eyes on it.
When you’re in the trenches putting your movie together, it’s easy to get tunnel
vision... to fall in love with everything you're shooting, with everything you make.
I remember when I completed the the film's first cut, I was thinking to myself, "THIS
IS THE GREATEST THING EVER."
It was only after I had some time away that I was realized it was utter trash.
I should have shown every revised cut to a large group of people and gotten feedback,
but I became so enraptured with the idea of doing it all on my own.
This is a HUGE mistake!
Filmmaking is a collaborative medium, and it is a collaborative medium for a reason.
Putting a movie together requires knowledge in all different kinds of areas, and not just
knowledge, but, if you want to succeed, an expertise.
Despite my stubbornness, I can’t be the master of everything, and Sprouting Orchids
might have been salvaged had I possessed the courage to seek feedback from others, and
to accept that feedback once it was given.
The problem that happens sometimes is that you’ll share your work with somebody who
loves you, and they don't want to hurt your feelings, so they’ll overlook all the flaws
and they'll tell you "It's great!"
"It's awesome!"
"It's the best thing you've ever done!"
And they are not willing to tell you the blunt truth.
I think I got a lot of that, production side.
My movie failed (partly) because I failed to get that blunt but necessary criticism
by an outside observer as to the whole process.
From prepoduction to post, it is essential to not only seek feedback, but to hire people
more talented than you in various areas to take your project to the next level.
#3: HIGH EXPECTATIONS
I set my expectations with this thing way, way, way too high.
Very rarely is your first movie going to knock it out of the park.
Partly because a first movie usually indications youth and naivete - the assumption that you’re
the “next big thing”.
The belief that you’ve got a line on the world, the system figured out, and a way to
transcend the artistic ancestors that you’re really not even familiar with.
Whatever expectations I may have had during its production, I can promise you the way
things ended up was nowhere near what I had planned.
Orchids was supposed to be my ticket to breakout Hollywood stardom.
Like Clerks, Reservoir Dogs, and Primer before it, Sprouting Orchids had entered my head
as a low budget picture by a first-time director that would tear through the film festival
circuit and net me both a modest fortune, and career.
I could make it in a year, and spend age 24 collecting offers from big-name studios.
By thirty, I’d be on top of the world.
All of it went wrong, of course.
By the time the film had its first public screening, I was so disillusioned and utterly
spent that it took three years of aimless wandering and wondering before I eventually
reinvented myself as a sort of underground/unclassified/occasionally-entertaining YouTuber.
There were no phone calls from studios.
Hollywood never came knocking, and when all was said and done, my modest fortune from
box office and home movie revenue amounted to less than the price of a Double Quarter
Pounder meal at McDonald’s.
In other words, I failed to set REALISTIC expectations.
I SHOULD have reduced my vision and targeted a less-lofty goal.
A BETTER plan would have been to use Sprouting Orchids as an opportunity to tell a long-form
story meant for a limited market - forget Sundance - if I had made a small town movie
meant to be watched by a small town audience, I could have capitalized on the numerous small-town
festivals desperate for original programming, and toured some modest venues to make connections
and improve my filmmaking.
I didn’t do that, so this thing quickly became a failure in my sight.
So, for YOUR project, maybe resist the urge to imitate big-budget, big-profit productions
and instead, embrace your limitations, and let the flawed edges give your work character.
#4: I rushed Production.
Even looking back through rose-tinted glasses, I remember rushing into things way too quickly,
and not giving myself the proper time to be diligent in my work.
The storyline?
Rushed it.
"Just get a script together.
No time for revisions!"
The cast?
Rushed it.
One day of auditions, just pick who looks the part.
Shooting?
Rushed it!
Less than a month
Big action scene with lots of moving parts.
Didn't take our time with it because we only had the location for a single morning.
Just try and cram the whole shoot in!
Editing.
Rushed it!
Gotta meet that festival deadline.
Distribution!
Rushed it!
Told people it would probably be out within a year of casting, so I’ve gotta keep that
promise...
What was I doing?
Did I mention that I was moving to a new city during production?
Making movies is hard... it's an ardent and tedious process at times.
You’re going to need to take your time to do things the right way.
If it’s a low budget affair like mine was, then YOUR film’s production deserves your
full attention, your full commitment, and often, full time to get made.
There are no half measures with these kinds of things, and attempting to rush to the next
phase of production before satisfying the current one will do way more harm than good.
In retrospect, I often scheduled complicated shoots too close together and with very little
time set aside to fix mistakes.
This was my first feature!
There were going to be technical issues, and days when things just wouldn’t work (both
in front of the camera, and behind it.)
I should have allotted more time to this.
I should have been patient, and kept my eagerness in check.
Plenty of times in editing I realized we lacked sufficient coverage for certain scenes, simply
because we didn’t take the time necessary on set to get as make takes and angles as
possible.
I needed to organize better, and I needed to prepare a contingency plan for when certain
things went awry.
Rushing production was one of my biggest failures.
But all of that PALES in comparison to reason #5...
My Terrible Attitude.
So we’ve all seen the after school special where a group of friends start shooting a
movie for a class project, and before you know it, the director turns into a total jerk
and control freak, and, although I’m ashamed to admit it, the truth is, that was me.
So I had this weird narcissistic belief that, if I was paying people, I could throw tact
out the window and demand total submission when it came to creative decisions on set.
So if somebody did a good job, my attitude was, "Well, they should!
I’m paying them."
[laughter]
If somebody showed up and performed their scenes to an acceptable level, I simply dismissed
that as them doing their job, and I’m almost certain I never said thank you EVEN ONCE to
paid workers until the very end.
In that sense I let money cloud my judgement, and I often let the movie’s production that
year get in the way of personal relationships.
My desire to finish the film at all costs led me to neglect others and burn several
bridges with friends, and even family - and for what?
If I had kept a level head, if I had turned the volume down on my own pretentiousness,
if I had remembered for even a single moment that everyone else on set had their own lives
and personal struggles that year to get through…
If I had remembered to be kind, to say please and thank you, to be a gentlemen (instead
of the volatile pseudo-film director that I ended up becoming), it’s quite possible
the movie’s production would have gone smoother, and the movie itself would have been better.
So, for YOU, dear aspiring filmmaker - don’t lose the thread on YOURSELF during the making
of your flick.
Treat people with respect, and maybe even be willing to suffer a little harm and poor
treatment, yourself, if it means maintaining unity on set and the completion of the picture.
There are a lot of ways in which my first movie was a failure, but if memory serves
me, these five played perhaps the biggest role.
You’re going to run into your OWN struggles while bringing your vision to life, but I
have faith in you.
I want you to make your movie.
I want you to tell your story.
And I share these memories and mistakes of mine with you now, only because I am convinced
that this knowledge can help you make a better film than I did.
The test for ME is to now practice what I’ve preached, because starting today, I finally
have occasion to watch this movie again.
After all - it's tradition!