Feedback, Feedback, Feedback
How feedback saved my story - and can save yours too
Hey everyone! In this series, I want to share the behind-the-scenes of my thesis film - so you don’t have to make the same mistakes I did! If you just want to get to the good stuff, feel free to skip over to the end to see the 4 pieces of advice I wish I’d known before starting ✨
🐏 A quick update:
Lots of exciting stuff has been happening lately - some recent highlights include:
Working on my thesis film! I’ve been digging into optimizing my story process (something Raj has been (rightly) pestering me about since summer - my sourdough sequence took me 8 weeks to finish 😬). Let me know if that sounds interesting - I’ love to dig into it in a future post!
Reverse-storyboarding Jurassic Park with my friend Diana. Inspired by Joscha van Deijk’s post, we decided to reverse-storyboard the whole film! It’s been super insightful so far, and I can’t recommend it enough!
And a secret, NDA project that I’ll hopefully be able to share more about soon! Super exciting stuff, can’t wait to share my work from it!
Anyways, getting into the post!
⭐ Feedback Feedback Feedback
Getting feedback sucks! But it can really save you from getting lost on the way to a good story. Early on in the making of my film, I kept getting feedback that I didn’t agree with. While I wanted to make a film about hope and kindness, that just wasn’t what people saw in it - and if I had listened, it would’ve saved me a lot of work.
In the beginning, every time I pitched the story the overwhelming response was: “Oh, this is a story about anxiety”. But I ignored the feedback, thinking “They’re just not seeing it - I'll fix it in the thumbnails”, then, when it didn’t change “Surely they’ll see it in roughs”. And yet the feedback never changed. That initial issue - that I so stubbornly kept insisting was people just not seeing my point - never went away. Because, it turns out, you can’t fix foundational issues with surface changes.
So how do you fix those issues? In my case, I had to examine what I wanted the story to accomplish - and how I wanted people to feel after watching it. It turned out that while anxiety was a part of the film, it ended up dragging everything down and creating a different tone than what I wanted. It was only when I went back to the drawing board and sat down with people to brainstorm solutions that it all started coming together.
Once examined through a problem-solving lens, issues become easier to spot. Scenes that were just there out of necessity but I just couldn’t make work became grounds for great problem-solving sessions - “The main character has a phone call” became “What if everyone in the film holds hands and forms a line of people spanning the length of the city, then simultaneously jumps into space”. The changes you make don’t need to be this drastic, but being open to out-there suggestions can help change things for the better.
As things start to solidify within your story, you’ll need less and less feedback. But in the beginning, feedback is everything. I’m incredibly grateful for the amazing advice I’ve received from everyone over the last 2 months - this story literally wouldn’t be what it is without all of you.
🏗️ Four things I wish I knew before starting:
⚡ Get Feedback Early: Start gathering feedback as soon as you have a concept to share. Don't wait until you think your idea is perfect. Swallow your ego and show your work in progress. Treat story problems as just that - problems to be solved. Brainstorm with others - ideas seem much better in your head!
🏃 Pitch Often, to Different People: Don’t work on something by yourself in a cave for 6 months - share your work with trusted friends and mentors often. A fresh pair of eyes will see things that you did not. Things that looked obvious to you might be confusing to others. As your friends become familiar with your story, their perception of it will come to match yours - always look for a new perspective.
📝 Note Behind the Note: Something my teacher Calvin used to say - What caused the person giving feedback to feel the way they do? Often, issues that seem obvious (ex. “this is a stupid mistake for this character to make”) can hold a deeper problem (ex. “your character’s personality isn’t clear enough”).
🧗 Trust the Unexpected: Be receptive to feedback about the tone and direction of your work, especially if you disagree with it! Audience reactions can show you things about your story that you missed, which lets you adjust things as you go!
That’s it for this one! As the year comes to an end, we'll be entering major production - animation, backgrounds, and the like. Look out for the next one of these sometime in early 2024. Let me know if you liked this post! Thanks for reading:)