I have a ton of ideas for movie premises, more than I could ever possibly hope to make. So how do I decide what to actually follow through on? The answer has to do with what makes something a viable film project that I could reasonably achieve and feel good about bringing into the world.

The idea for a film project is distinct from the idea for a film premise. A premise is the diegesis of the story whereas a project is the who, what, where, and how of the story’s creation. It’s the relationships, both interpersonal and institutional, that allow the film to actually get made. It’s the contracts, negotiations, trades, sacrifices, and deals you make in order to pull off the near-impossible. It’s the method by which you fund the movie and the method by which you monetize it. It’s the distribution plan. It’s the way the process of making the film intersects with (and changes) your actual life and the lives of those involved.

Everyone who makes a film has to make a series of decisions about what the project is. Every film has a project, even if the choices that define it are so unconscious as to be mistaken for objective and inevitable. Big budget directors get their money and business practices from studios/financiers and insist there’s no other way to do things. Everyone who doesn’t have access to these resources has to make a series of alternative decisions, though many people stuck in the Hollywood mindset insist they aren’t making choices or “have no other choices” when they mindlessly emulate the ethos and conditions of studio productions even without the material conditions underpinning their logics.

Because making a movie requires manipulation of the actual world around you, stylistic concerns become inextricable from socioeconomic ones. Will I cast professionals or amateurs? What will they wear? Where am I going to shoot? What camera will I use? How big will the crew be? A knowledgeable viewer could point to the finished product and elucidate both the material circumstances that led to some of these choices and their aesthetic implications. But there are also directorial decisions that, though they might be harder for a film critic to pin down, are equally important in defining a film’s project. How much is everyone getting paid? Are we using any volunteer labor and/or labor barters? How will profits get shared on the back end? Will anyone be disturbed or displaced by shooting on location? How will I gain access to the equipment I don’t already have? Over the course of a career, questions like these become inextricable from an overall practice.

The financial/logistical questions are fundamentally questions of creative/professional relationships, which then become questions of creative/professional influence in a more expansive sense. Collaborative relationships bound by aesthetic and ideological alignment are, for me, what end up determining which premises become fully realized projects.