You need a pair of fresh eyes...

When do you know that it’s time to get a fresh pair of eyes on your project?

With studio films, they will show cuts of the movie and will let those strangers determine the fate/ plot of the movie. But for the independent filmmaker, what do they do?

As a screenwriter with a writing partner, we sometimes will run into the issue where we have discussed and plotted out the script so much that we know why things happen- but on occasion we miss them in the script. You need to have a few people that understand how scripts/films work and can intelligently explain their feelings and opinions.

At RnD, we have a good cross-section of readers that we use to gather opinions of our scripts after our 1st drafts are complete. We are then able to take a brief break from our script for the week or so that we give the readers and by the time that we have their notes- but before we read them, we will re-read the draft and make our own notes. Then, we will take our notes and the notes of our readers and begin our editing process from there.

When we were working on Phobia, we didn’t have many people that watched the movie that weren’t involved in the filmmaking process. I think that was one of the things that slowed up our editing process; whenever we seemed to have a final version we would discover something new.

We needed to have our own independent reviewers. You need them too. Anyone with a set of fresh and independent eyes can do wonders for you project.

Don.