When is enough enough?

"Art is never finished, only abandoned" - Leonardo da Vinci

As we get ready for MIPCOM and AFM, I cannot help but think about deadlines and the nature of this business and art in general.

When I was making my short films, it was easy to keep editing and re-editing. Unfortunately, the law of diminishing returns means that you get less and less of a benefit the more you tinker with a film. At a certain point, you need to say to yourself, this is probably the best it is going to get. There will always be those problem children, the scene that doesn't feel quite right or the awkward edit. Eventually you have to learn to look over those small little details and look at the bigger picture. There are tons of little goofs and mistakes in most films. Heck, imdb.com has a whole section devoted to mistakes in movies. Some of my favorite ones:

1. Star Wars: Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When C-3PO and R2-D2 are in the control room of the Death Star, as the storm troopers get the door open and go storming in one of the storm troopers hits their head on the door. This goof was highlighted in the remastered version with a comedy "donk" sound effect.

2. My favorite movie Harold And Maude: Crew or equipment visible: When Maude pulls the banjo out of a cabinet, you see the reflection of crew and lights.

3. There's even a whole debate about the bandage on Ving Rhames' neck in Pulp Fiction.

But the point of this post isn't about pointing out goofs in films. The point is that you eventually have to stop tinkering and get on with things. The same can be said of scripts as well. You can tinker and tinker away at a script until it doesn't resemble the original script. And usually, by that point, the thing that made the script interesting in the first place is gone. It's a delicate dance to know when something is done enough to start showing it to people. Show it too early and you've made a bad impression. Take too long and you've lost all your original passion and excitement over your project.

I know there are a lot of writers out there that have been tinkering with their scripts, changing a page here or there but never getting anywhere. When you are lost like that, it may be a good idea to step back and try and take an objective look at the script.

There's also the story of Wong Kar Wei, who was supposedly in the middle of a long drawn out editing process on his film Ashes of Time. It was dragging on so long that he decided to go out and make a simple and quick movie in order to clear his mind and rediscover his passion for filmmaking. The film was Chungking Express. He shot it in 23 days and it wound up being the film that was his big break on the international film circuit.

Ultimately, I guess my point is to be careful of being too much of a perfectionist. Your script will never be 100% perfect. Your film will never be 100% perfect either. Films are messy things. And it's those little imperfections that make films so interesting and intriguing. So get it as good as you possibly can and then move on to the next project.