I run 17 West Productions with my business partner and fellow director (better director I might add) Eric.
When we wrapped The Climb, it became clear that we would have to change our approach to producing short films. In the past, I would write scripts and every once in a while, we would pick one to be made. However, in the last 2 years, we’ve only produced 3 shorts. Playing Through, Tactics and The Climb. That’s not too bad but only one of them had a substantial budget.
It’s time to expand.
We had a big meeting a few weeks ago to discuss a more efficient way to evolve our company. The answer we came up with is to develop and line up dozens of stories and truly have a slate of shorts waiting to be budgeted and filmed.
We can then schedule and produce them with a set goal in mind.
What’s the goal?
To produce more films and keep increasing our companies awareness. Every small company wants to gain enough credit to gain funding for a feature film. We’ve reorganized with that central goal in mind.
What happens now?
On my end, I’m currently developing 2 new shorts with totally different styles. (I also just finished a new one!)
I try to write as many shorts as possible so that Eric can choose from a variety of stories to direct. Even if he doesn’t spark to the material we can still put the story on the shelf for another day.
At the same time, Eric is developing stories on his own that he can pass to me to write.
We recently added our third and most exciting option:
Story Mondays
We now force ourselves to pitch a concept to each other once a week. It doesn’t need to be a fully developed idea by any stretch, just a good starting point. These ideas are random and usually based on a single aspect or idea.
These stories have already sparked a few solid ideas for future shorts. One of the pitches has even made it to scene by scene descriptions and looks like it may be a fully formed script in the near future.
The point to all this is to always have at least one project that we are actively producing. Right now, we are still involved with the upcoming musical Strings as well as two ambitious projects that Eric will direct. I’m officially liking the direction our company is headed!
What I’m excited about is that we basically launched a story department. A way to continually challenge ourselves to come up with better stories and films.
PS: Yes I call it the Story Department! I don’t care if it’s super nerdy… I really don’t feel bad either…
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