My name is Jon Young and I am an amateur filmmaker. I have made 6 special low-budget indie films and directed a feature. Unfortunately I have most of my time writing phase. unfortunately I did, because not all my scripts filmed. Screen writing is really nice, but the goal is to end up with a feature film. There are many reasons why a script does not get filmed.

The most common reason for the script to get made because it is not good. They say you really need to write three scripts before you do anything good enough to film. I worked with a ton of partners on the year and many times the ideas seem good when we work on them, but when assembled into a finished project that they just do not work. Sometimes our ideas are kind of boring, but if the larger whole they work, you never know until you’re ready. On the property that I actually filmed after I finished the rough cut of the movie I realized what we were doing wrong when we wrote the script. The best thing I can say is to do a lot of rewrites and rewrites do as much as you can stomach in the treatment phase. Once you’re done get as many people as you can to read your feedback.

Today I met with one of my two new partners to write. He came with a bunch of really good ideas since our last meeting. And when we went through them I explained to him that our story is not low budget anymore. The ideas are actually quite good. They remind me a bit too much of the matrix, but it worked for our concept. The problem is that there is no way I could film the script without a lot of money. Our original goal was to something we already do on the green screen to write. My idea was to make the story a space to draw. Anyway it has become a monster of a project with guns, chase scenes and numerous locations. He even added a dog. I assume that next week he will a child as one of the characters and actually save us all no no for a small budget.

It was a struggle today, because I wanted to go through the four page treatment he emailed me last night and he wanted to talk about movies and other fun stuff. I know he already knew what was on the four pages, but I wanted to go through them with him. I wanted him feedback. I also wanted to put my ideas in the story and see what he thought about them. He put together a pretty interesting first half of the story of many conflicts, tension and mystery. Three key elements for a good story. We ended the meeting with a debate on how interesting it would be to the movie in 70 years. He told me that it is so unique. My thought was definitely the matrix stuff was unique. I told him to go to goodwill and to start to find props and fit now and I will cast actors who fit in them. When I counted the number of characters we have in the 70′s stuff and I came up with 15. This is in the first half of the movie before you realize that we are on a space station. So add up the signs on the station and we are well on the ideal number of actors on a small budget film. Oh and retro sets are a no no for a small budget, because you have hairstyles, clothes and props.

So my debate tonight is how do I deal with this problem. I love the story. It’s not what I originally envisioned, but it’s really an interesting story. Can I convince this man that the story first and then try to sell it? I would be happy to sell it to one of the studios for six figures. I know the reality is that it would be like winning the lottery. The initial goal was to make a small budget, that was worthy of celebration and submit it to write at the Sundance Film Festival. Frankly, this is a commercial story that probably does not play so well at film festivals. It is a story that probably requires a star or two to get it to work.
My personal goal is to get a movie into Sundance. That is on my list in my life time to do. I go looking for another writer to begin a different story. something that can be filmed with a small budget for the film festival circuit. Maybe I’ll go with this guy and finish the story for Hollywood. The moral of this story is to stay away from concepts like sci-fi, space stations or something that could end up as a big budget if you have a story to the film itself.