“Writing is re-writing.” How many times have we heard that phrase before? And it’s true. The first draft of a script is never the final one, and the real magic comes from looking at it weeks later from a different perspective, and reshuffling scenes, cutting some, and adding some more. It is critical.

And yet, conversely, the idea of “Re-shooting” is somehow a no-no. The standard mode of thinking is that, if a film has to be “re-shot” that means that something was wrong with the original shoot. It is a Scarlett letter on a filmmaker who attempts to do this.

This mode of thinking is outdated and wrong. A lot of that stems from the corporate backwards way most studios run. Every word, phrase, and story beat has to be planned and approved months ahead of time, with no movement or room left for improvisation. I find that the one of the biggest bursts of inspiration I get creatively is seeing the first cut of the film. When its on its feet and the characters are moving and talking one can instantly see what works and what doesn’t. One can easily cut the fat out of the scenes, and streamline the narrative. I find that the film is now “alive” and I get ideas for new scenes. I’m inspired by what the actors are doing, and get excited about new ways the story could go. These are things you can’t see on the page.

This is how the creative process works. It’s totally natural. And smart filmmakers should budget for re-shoots. Even if the first cut works perfectly (and it almost never does) there is a benefit to adding new cutaways, shots, and potential scenes. True, its difficult. Actors and crew are onto other projects. Hairstyles have changes, as have seasons, but its a challenge that is beneficial.

And the top filmmakers budget for this. Woody Allen always schedules at least three days of re-shoots on every one of his films, months after the original cut.

I did this on “Mayfarers.” In the original cut we never saw Porter Mayfarer, the grandfather. In re-watching the first cut I saw how much this phantom character affected the other characters’ lives, and thought how great it would be to have cut-aways to him, and eventually, episodes about him.

I hope that with new, cheaper technologies filmmakers will look at the filming process more like the writing process, and throw off the corporate rigidness that has dominated the field the last 100 years, and instead embrace the idea of re-shoots.

Re-shoots are not a dirty word. They are a necessity.

I’ve been juggling a lot of balls lately, gearing up to shoot episodes of our new show. I’m looking forward to it. Major goals for this go around for me is learning more about working with green screen, and expanding the characters we have in this new show.

Pre-production is the single more important key of production. I always like to be as prepared as I can possibly be, so that when I’m on the set I can quickly shift gears if need be. That’s another reason I love doing web shows. There is a level of playfulness and spontaneousness involved which is far more enjoyable than a feature. Also, instead of a mammoth month long shoot, they’re just weekend shoots.

In any case, other people can take the golf courses, ballgame, or beaches on their weekends. For me, shooting new films and shows is the best weekend for me.

Tonight I’m screening a double feature for the cast and crew - of both “Meet the Mayfarers” and my feature film, “The Wayfarers.” I’m excited to see so many friends I’ve made over the past few years with these projects. On both ventures, the cast and crew bonded together and became like a family.

On “The Wayfarers” it was over the course of a compressed focused period of time. A time where all of us lived in a seaside village, on a kind of film making vacation. On “Meet the Mayfarers” it was over the course of a year and a half, as we would gather together for fun weekends of shooting, an island of joy in our schedules where we could hang out and have a blast.

I think to an anecdote I heard about a filmmaker who is known for his semi-low budget movies. He met with a producer who kept telling him to hire all these other “professional” people. To which he replied, “If you’re not working with your friends, what’s the point?”

Well said.

I’m really looking forward to the screenings tonight. A great time to catch up with friends, reminisce about old times, and plan for future film making adventures.

As media people we often get really excited about images. My flatscreen TV is 1080! The Red camera shoots at 4 K! Marvel at how real IMAX can feel! Look at how beautiful and crisp that beach looks on the screen!

We often forget that beauty is right outside our door. Today is a beautiful summer day. Best to try to put the computer down and enjoy it while you can. Real life is much more more beautiful than 24 frames per second.

“That often happens when you make films. If you try to make the film to accommodate something outside yourself, or please an audience or please the critical community  or for commercial reasons or even artistic goals - if you’re doing it for some calculated reason that you’re not comfortable with and you strike out with it, you feel really bad.”

- Woody Allen

This is a quote that I knew of, and failed to listen to on a few occasions. And he’s right. The only thing that matters is passion. You can’t control the response to your film, you can’t control what happens when it goes out there to the world. The only thing you can control is the passion for your project. And in the end, that’s all that matters.

I’ve been doing something startling to myself over the past few years - I’ve been watching TV. And I rarely, if ever, watch movies. And from talking to friends and audiences, it seems I’m not the only one. And this isn’t necessarily an issue of the hassles of “driving to the theater” or theater prices, etc  - but more of storytelling in general.

This is most surprising to me. As a filmmaker, I’ve always loved film, and for me, TV was always in the backseat, or at least riding shotgun. But over the past five or six years that has completely changed. I enjoy the long, drawn out story arcs. I love getting lost (no pun intended) in a multitudes of characters’ lives. With the rare exception, from a writing perspective, even the best movies are quite easy to see the strings of the narrative structure behind them, and where they are going.

Of course this is nothing new - serialized content has been around for decades on film, and even before that. Star Wars was a reworking of a lot of Flash Gordon serials, and was in it’s own way, a log story arc.

Yet in TV I am constantly surprised. Surprised both in narrative - with many twists and turns, but even in more straightforward shows, surprised in the different type of characters, with various degrees of morals, who are more true to life and fascinating than most movie characters.

I always find it frustrating in even the most laugh out loud comedy feature films where the characters have to change in the end to become “good.” While sometimes this works, often times in a very funny broad movie it throws the tone off - and yet filmmakers and studio execs feel compelled to do this because they have only two hours with the characters, and they need to please the most amount of people.

I certainly don’t mean to say that TV is the death of film - but the many amazing shows should force filmmakers to be more unique and innovative. And I wonder where will audience’s tastes be in ten years from now? Will we all be loving watching ten second story arcs? For my part at least, I’ll continue to try to go to films, but my true joy is spending a weekend burning through a season’s box set worth of my favorite shows.

And I don’t think I’m the only one that feels this way.

So I’ve got some great news. I’m excited to announce that we’ve partnered with Koldcast.tv in a deal to distribute “Meet the Mayfarers.” Koldcast.tv is an innovative company that is dedicated to releasing and supporting online episodic content on the web. They realize that the future of entertainment is online. After many discussions with David Samuels, who owns and runs the company, I am convinced that they have the passion to push our show onto the next level. In the next few months “Meet the Mayfarers” will be available on Tivo, and the Microsoft Zune player, as well as other outlets. That’s right - Mayfarers can be watched right on your TV screen.

Koldcast.tv is re-launching the show today with the first three episodes. Next Wednesday, they will release episodes 4 & 5, and will continue the pattern of releasing one episode every Wednesday for a year.

The show can be found on http://www.koldcast.tv/

Thank you everyone for your help and support over the years. And even if you’ve watched the episodes already, I invite you over to Koldcast.tv to check them out again. They’ve got some great things in store.

One of my favorite quotes regarding both creativity and film making is from writer/director/everything Robert Rodriguez.  He always shoots multiple projects at the same time, and appears to be in constant motion, from a creative and filming perspective. When asked about this trait of his, he responded by saying:

“I always pack one or two projects in at a time. If one is not successful, I won’t question my instincts if I’m already on to the next thing. A career is like a train. You have to keep laying that track in front of it. I read about this art class once. If half the class made 50 clay pots, they’d get an A. The other half had to make one perfect pot. As the one half cranked through their 50, they made 10 perfect pots because they figured out how to do it. The people concentrating on the one pot turned it to mud because they overworked it.”

I tend to agree. Perfection in creativity is stifling, and can kill momentum. In turn, perfection kills making mistakes. And mistakes in any field, especially the creative ones, are the only way we learn and become better.