If you have ever worked to launch a project or product, you know how different it feels than when you’re working on something that is well-established. I like this “Done Manifesto” as a way to capture the need to work and think differently in the wild days of beginning something new – like at the beginning (and at various stages) of a film project.
Click here to see the full graphic from FastCoDesign:
Infographic Of The Day: 13 Rules For Realizing Your Creative Vision | Co. Design.
But the funny thing about realizing a creative vision–whether it’s a startup or a personal project–is that it requires a set of working rules that is almost the opposite of the slow, careful deliberation that typically rules our working lives.
Examples of principles they suggest:
#1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion
#8. Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done.
#10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
In a filmmaking process, I’m trying to think of the dividing point when a project moves from the startup phase, where rules like this apply, to the stage where something is established and you need to begin to shift your thinking. I know that brainstorming and the first stages of scripting benefit from these rules. Even the first stage of rehearsals with actors and the first assembly edit of the film.
I find myself needing to shift back and forth during the course of a film project – from being a pirate and letting the chips fall where they may (The Done Manifesto stage) to the obsession stage where I am looking to polish and perfect.
If you’re an indie filmmaker, you probably need to learn to function in both modes. Not always an easy thing to learn.
MindSoulStory 