FIRST STEP: A Story.

    One of the first things Jonny said that he was adamant about was that the movie have a story.

    Let me explain:

    It should be OBVIOUS that the movie should tell a story, but after viewing a number of short films at a number of festivals and online, we discovered that a shockingly high number of films DON'T! At the very least, a story should have a Main Character, a Journey, a Change, and an earned Ending. Do I sound pandering? Well, good, because that means you hopefully don't have this problem and can move on to other sections.

    This is reinforced by almost every Film Festival blog, vlog, and website "Q&A" that I found, which surprised me, but was a welcome reminder. The most important things most festivals looked for when choosing films:

- Good Sound
- Good Acting
- Good Story

    Even if the movie was shot on a flip phone, if the sound and story were good and the acting wasn't unbearable, the film was at least considered. Which is why I am not only shocked to find out that tons of movies don't meet this criteria, but why I am very glad to not be working as a programmer forced to watch hundreds of these things.

   So we worked for a while crafting the story and finding a way to tell it in the most interesting but simplest way.

    The story always gets told at least three different ways. First, there's the screenplay. That can change a dozen plus times on it's own, but it's where you want to nail down everything vitally important. Next is in production - you may not have enough money, enough contacts, or enough time to shoot the story the way it is written or the way you imagined it would look. So you find new ways of telling the story based on the realities of your situation. Finally, editing: chances are, once you've shot everything in the script with the perfect storyboards and cut everything together for the first time, it doesn't work the way you thought it would. Beats are missing, angles don't work correctly, acting moments aren't cutting together well, a million other things that you thought you nailed on set but, alas, no.

    Don't skimp on the Story. It's the cheapest and sometimes hardest part of a movie. If your film is supposed to simply be a special effects spectacular like the PIXELS short film, okay, but even that had a beginning, middle, and end. Again, I feel ridiculous mentioning this, but it's the most important part of your movie.