I'm glad to say I completed the first draft of my feature screenplay, written with the limitations for cast and locations as AJ suggested. Limitations seem like things that can stop your progress at first, but they definitely give you a focus for your creativity. I wrote throughout September and finished on the 1st of October! So I just wanted to check in and let you guys know that I found the discipline of writing an enormously fulfilling process in itself. 📽️✍️

Will I use this strategy? Yes. It's sure filled in a few gaps in my approach and I don't anticipate roadblocks, it's all about working within limitations and I always use my creativity to overcome them - I'll come back in 90 days and let you all see the finished production! 📽️😃

Well, my biggest takeaway is the important point about developing your unique mechanism, or 'voice', via your production - which threads through future work. If nothing else it's being drawn to the sort of projects you're enthused by. AJ is right when he says, there's only one Tarantino. It's true there's only one Spielberg too! So like Coleman the Butler says to Billy Ray Valentine, "Just be yourself sir, at least they can't take that away from you". My biggest concern however is not paying people. If you want people to work for you for free, then they might not get anything from it at all. At least if they get paid they aren't made to suffer. So I pose the question, why should they be struggling to pay the bills just because they worked on your film? This happens too much in the film business. I actually know someone who worked on the James Cameron film, Titanic who had provided services for one of the departments for the film and she NEVER got paid. She was given excuse after excuse. That movie had a massive budget and was an all-time enormous global box office hit! It's daylight robbery not to pay people for their work. I made a short film for less than $2k shot in just two days and I paid everyone at a price they were happy with, in addition to providing Catering for them, plus fresh Coffee on set if they needed it too. One of them even waived being paid to help me out, but he needn't have! I wouldn't want them to be inconvenienced because of me. Everyone, I'm glad to say, had a positive experience making that film and on wrap everyone was smiling. 😊 I even managed to get a bump up on the budget after production to cover flights to the film festival in Paris. So I don't think it's a great idea to see money as an obstacle. Think positive and if the need is genuine, you'll get the money.

As for "Networking" AJ is totally right - handing out business cards, 'speed meetings' etc. - usually ends up in no connections or follows ups. I joined Raindance in 2010 from Ireland (joined online) and moved to London in 2011, and attended a regular night they called "Booze 'n Schmooze" to 'network' my Rom Com project I wanted to produce. I was hoping to attract Crew and maybe Cast too. I knowingly risked telling people everything about my new spin on the Rom Com genre and one Writer who was bemoaning her lack of progress out of TV writing let me tell her the whole story and how I was going to make it - at the end of which she said "no" - which was weird given the level interest she showed in it all. Then a couple of years later, I see "my" movie as a trailer on TV - a Rom Com, set in London, with a chance meeting on the London Transport system and the couple lying to each other throughout to get through - so I go onto IMDb and there's the Writer I met at that networking night photographed on the red carpet for the premiere. When I wrote my script and 'pitched' the project, I couldn't get anyone to come onboard with me on the project and so wasted countless hours and time and energy on it. I registered the script I wrote with Raindance, but when I asked for the CD-ROM containing the file to be returned (when their script reg service I'd paid for expired), it had mysteriously vanished from their vaults!! The 'sharks' in this industry aren't just in established businesses like agencies and studios, but are among all the actors, writers and directors who all want a shot at the big time, the glitz and glamour as I call it. So I don't condone stealing, even though Brit probably means it as a metaphor in her 'kingdom' story. The biggest takeaway I have from the "The Lie" is that I'm not the only one who thinks Networking paying to enter Script Competitions is largely a waste of money, when producing your own projects is a better way to get things done and your career doesn't hinge on relying on someone else to let you in through the gates of the kingdom at the top of the hill.

What’s one “Lottery System” you’ve tried? - Proof of concept! I've made pilots and even got $150k funding to make a 13 min POC for a sci fi movie - and it never got further than that. It cost us YEARS because my husband who is a dop never got over not having it happen and after so many projects failing to launch (I wrote a few scripts after this) you get demoralised. Biggest takeaway - it's a very good video with advice I kinda already knew but it crystalized my own lessons in a thought provoking way. Proof of voice, not proof of concept. Create your own routes in, which has been our preferred MO anyway. I regret should have hustled more and got the low budget feature done ages ago.