Is holding on to your best ideas a good approach?

J

jghenderson

Well-known member
Hey everyone. Hope y'all are having a great new year so far and have lots of good projects in mind for this year!

I am currently writing a short film I hope to shoot in the spring. As I was writing, I realized there's an image I have in mind for a feature that would fit perfectly in this script. It's one of my favorite images i've ever thought of, and i've always imagined it in the feature idea I have, but is it really worth holding off on? I don't know if I would ever even get to make the feature, and even if I do it certainly won't be for at least 5 years, so perhaps I would have thought of something better by then? I just feel this sense of wanting to hold onto the image for it's original purpose, but I also feel it would genuinely make this short better.

This also is an important question to me because i've started to get into music videos, and i've realized that some ideas i've had for short films could actually work very well as music videos. I'm wondering whether if i'm given the opportunity I should go ahead and tell those stories in whatever form possible, or if I should hold onto them in the hope I can make them as originally intended.

So what say ye? Is it valid to hold on to your best ideas, or should you always take the approach of "i'm going to make this project i'm working on right now the best I possibly can"?
 
Always put your best foot forward. Honestly, I'd use the shot now, and use it again, if/when you direct that feature. For starters, you're doing a short film, not a feature, and there's no law to art that says you can't use the same color twice. It's not like you get ONE Dutch Tilt, and that's it for your entire career. Granted, if a shot becomes iconic in its own right (Goodfellas dolly/zoom), I wouldn't recommend using it again, but like I said, you're talking about a short film which will be a non-issue when you go to do the feature five years from now. Good luck!
 
Use it. You will have better ideas in the future and if you don't use it now you may never do so. Who knows, life may happen and this might be the last film you make. Or it may be a pivotal moment in a lifetime of work. And if it is a really good idea you can revisit it later. You could expand your short into a feature film like District 9. Or, as many filmmakers are known for you can explore favoured elements (themes, symbology, imagery, techniques, characters, music) throughout your body of work, reusing them again and again like Kubrick and the Blue Danube waltz. No moment in a film is in isolation, the context of each application of such a favoured idea allows you to explore the idea thoroughly in the course your body of work. Or the idea may not be as great as you thought and not deserve an entire film built around it but may work perfectly in your present piece. If it works for what you are doing now then use it.
 
use it. great ideas aren't great unless able to be appreciated.

Plus, shorts and features don't play in the same ballfield, many people who might see something in a feature will never have known it to be in a short
 
Your best idea is always the next one, but it won't come if you're holding onto other ideas. You have to make room for it by clearing out your current ones.

Never hold onto an idea as precious. Put it to use and get ready for the next.
 
Use the ideas however they work, and if you repeat yourself now and then, so what? If it works, it works. Every great master repeats himself.
 
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