Deadlines for movies

S

strange m1nd

Let's talk about having a deadline for a movie.

Personally I think it is the worst thing. It is setting yourself up to fail.


Anyone else agree?
 
I'm not sure what you mean? Are you talking about.. I need to get this done by this time? or a deadline for a competition?

I think that a deadline for production is helpful. It can always be pushed, but it gets people on the ball and more communication the closer the deadline comes. BUT if you miss the deadline it can't be the end of it, it's a new beginning.
 
even if you don't factor in the days = dollars issue... deadlines are necessary to prevent endless tinkering. Get it done and move on. It's only a movie.
 
I set deadline because of the need to get things done, as I realized, most of us like to procrastinate to the last minute, setting myself deadline, it forces we all to push as much and early as possible to get things done right... In many corporate businesses, there are deadline, clientes want you to have it done by such and such day, so you must do it or you lost your client and the payment, etc. So, deadline is good, it's healthy.

However, like corporate businesses, deadline are set within a 'reasonble time period' you don't set a deadline of making 10000 CD by tonight :) (bad example, but you get the picture).

The only thing about deadline with filmmaking is sometimes, a filmmaker make an impossible deadline (like 2 weeks before the late deadline for film submission), they want to shoot a feature... that's hard and it will rush you to get the project done right... not to mention, wasting you money for submission fee and then not being accepted and blame everyone else...

Like Will said, the more time you spent on a project, the more expensive it becomes (dollar and sense).

Johnny
 
I think that deadlines are absoluetly neccesarry, no matter the size of your project.

For my first project, we allotted ourselves 12 months to take it from script to screen and I know for a fact that without self-imposed deadlines we would still be working on it. No one wants to put a finished stamp on something that they are not 100% satisfied with but at the same time what good does it do you to spend 3 years working on one project? At this level of filmmaking, it is all about learning and putting what you have learned into practice. We met our deadlines, finished our project and sat down to talk about what we learned. Now we are knee deep in another poject with more self-imposed deadlines.

Just my 2c.
 
strange m1nd said:
Let's talk about having a deadline for a movie.

Personally I think it is the worst thing. It is setting yourself up to fail.


Anyone else agree?
Click to expand...
Not me. Not having a dead line is the worst thing. In the professional world you will always have a dead line. No company or producer is ever going to invest in your project and then say, "Finish it whenever you want." So setting a dead line (and meeting it) teaches the new filmmaker the discipline you will need when working with other peoples money.

A deadline doesn't set you up to fail. A deadline is the first step in achieving your goal.
 
they are, but never think of them that way...have I mentioned I'm 4 months behind schedule? Our schedule slipped a couple of times for various (legitimate) reasons, and the whole shooting match fell into the realm of ok, now I can't schedule anyone to show up as they've started back in school and so have their kids, etc, etc.

Make a deadline, know in the back of your mind that you can always reschedule...but stick to it and avoid the rescheduling if at all possible.

4 months, 18 days of shooting.
 
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