Photo by the blowup on Unsplash FAILURE Failure is the path to success - so long as it doesn't take you out of the game. Failure can be one of the greatest teachers in the creative industries, whether you’re an actor, writer, director or producer. But only so long as it doesn’t take you out of the game. A better way to view failure comes from someone who knows alot about taking risks and failing: Denzel Washington. He suggests that failure is a required part of success and

Photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash TIME Where productions really lose time - and how to protect it and your budget There are a number of sayings related to using time wisely: "A Stitch in time saves nine." - A traditional proverb in which fixing a small problem immediately prevents a massive, time-consuming repair later. "Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe." Abraham Lincoln on how preparation makes the actual work faster an

CREATIVE LEADERSHIP Creating the conditions for people to do their best work. When it comes to showrunning, directing, producing or being number one on the call sheet, craft and skill are essential. But they are not enough. The biggest requirement is leadership. Leadership is a skillset developed over the long term. Without it, a project brimming with creative potential, can flounder and fall apart. Leadership is about people, and about developing the capacity to build trust

Scale What changes when a project gets bigger (and what shouldn’t) - Lessons learned moving between indie, mid-scale, and larger productions. Scale is one of the most important concepts to understand, not just in business, but in storytelling. It has been expressed in many ways over the years, probably most clearly in Tom Hardy’s observation: “there is no difference between a five-dollar performance and a hundred-million-dollar one—it is the work that matters.” At the creati

Taste and Talent Taste and talent are skills - and they can be trained Early in our forays into the industry, some of the best advice we received was simple: go out and see things. Watch plays, films, television, commercials. Visit galleries. Experience other art forms. It was emphasised as being just as important as learning the discipline of acting itself. Part of the reason for this advice was to challenge a persistent myth—the idea that taste and talent are innate, that y

Seeing Process as a Creative Tool Not a Constraint It's often the case that those on the business side of a project wish the creatives would just get on with it and have a finished product ready to take to market. And those creatives on the other side can see process as an obstacle to getting to that finish product. For everyone, process isn't the obstacle. It's the thing that protects the work and the upside. Across every discipline — writing, directing, acting, producing, d

Why Playing It Safe Can Be the Biggest Gamble in Film, TV, and Theatre In entertainment, risk is usually framed in financial terms, rarely in creative ones. Real risk is when a filmmaker bets on themselves and a vision almost no one else believes in, or comes up with something unique against time and money constraints—like George Lucas with Star Wars, or the Fargo TV team leaning into a single gunshot sequence that defied TV convention. (see it below) Safe choices can feel re

Why you should stop trying to please everyone - and start writing and creating for one Around many executive meetings for film and TV there are usually thoughts and conversations about how to broaden the audience for a project, in order to maximise revenue. Appeal to a wider audience and you should be more profitable. This can backfire when we start out developing our projects. Getting clear on clarity of our audience, which is 1 and 1 (explained below) improves storytelling

How to learn from the New Years Goal Setting and Quitting cycle New Year is a moment of reflection—and often, resolve.“This year will be different.”Cue the New Year’s resolution: Next year, I will finally do X. X might be a goal around fitness, health, career, relationships—or something bigger. Creatives do this too. Not only in January, but at any point in the year, there’s a moment when we decide: I’m going to write that script. Produce that project. Start on that new direc