Editing is Pain

For a minute here I want to change gears and talk about the writing side of film.  This probably applies to other kinds of writing as well, but primarily I write short screenplays so that is where this is coming from.

I have been working on a script for my next short for a little while now.  Usually I write something and almost immediately get to work on filming it never looking back.  It is great and rapid fire and has helped me learn a lot about producing and running a team.  But it has resulted in so-so stories and dialogue.  Fun certainly, and things I am proud of and that I hope the other people who worked on them can be proud of too.

But today I am working on the script for Robo-Butler.  I wrote the first draft months ago and made some minor alterations and changes for the weeks after that.  Already it had more thought and time go into the writing than any of my previous projects.  Then it went into a drawer, and by drawer I mean I un-starred it on GoogleDocs while I concentrated on other things.  Now I revive it in preparation of producing it in the new year and I have realized one thing.  It all has to change.  All of it.  Every last scene needs a major overhaul.  Had the holiday season not happened right smack dab in the middle of my production process I would already be done this film, and only now realizing the glaring flaws that need correction.

So in response to realizing that my entertaining fun story needs to have all of the dialogue cut and replaced with images that get across every feeling and word just as vividly what have I done?  Buckled to writers block.  The kind where you decide that you have other things you need to write, like blog posts.  Because it feels as though I am going through the script and removing all of my hard work.  Lines I loved, moments I cheered for when I came up with them.  They are all gone and being replaced.  Editing is like not just leaving your baby up for adoption, but deciding their circulatory system is just not good enough and replacing it by hand yourself.

But this has revealed to me something far more important.  I was about to set my baby out into the world with a flawed circulatory system!  What a callous and careless parent I was to this story.  It is not easy to go through and fix the problems, but it would be harder still not to find them until the opening screening in front of family and friends and the public.

Every time I make a film I come to that day and the same thing happens.  There is something new that I did not see that I think "Why didn't I fix that?"  I hope that feeling never goes away.  But I do hope that by working on my scripts over a longer period I can be sure that it takes until a 3rd or 4th viewing before I can find those problems.