There’s a lot of overlap between the video and tech industries. Both industries chew through hardware, software, and data. We might be the only two industries that are comfortable with updating firmware, or for that matter, even know what firmware is.
I came from the IT industry, and I still follow app developers and tech industry culture. I’ve admired John Saddington for quite a while. He’s an entrepreneur who has launched and sold a bunch of companies. He recently wrote an article about starting his latest venture: How to Start a Company in 72 Hours
What struck me were the similarities between starting a company and launching a new movie, tv show, or – even better – a web show. Ideas are plentiful. The real challenge is putting them into action. A lot of those early tasks are the boring building blocks of business structure, culture and marketing. If you can just push through a long weekend getting those things done, you can build a lot of momentum – and building momentum early can help sustain you through the deep valley of making the thing you set out to make.
I remember when I decided to start on this documentary project. The initial brainstorming sessions were great. But I didn’t follow through and build the momentum to continue into production. Now I’m having to spin everything up again, and it’s kind of like walking through knee deep mud.
That’s one thing I appreciate about the 48 Hour Film Project – there’s not enough time to get bogged down. It works better if you have some systems worked out ahead of time, but when it comes down to it you just have to go as fast as you can.
So I’m taking a page from Saddington’s playbook, and I’m setting up the systems that should have been set up back in April or May. Whatever, better now than not at all.
(Image by Jannik Selz via Unsplash)