By Seth Worley
You’re reading an archived article from Plot Devices, a company that created analog storytelling tools for writers and directors. While the business is no longer active, we’ve preserved these posts as part of its archive.
It’s an all too common story — an untested filmmaker, in an effort to get their untested feature idea off the ground, resorts to making a proof-of-concept: a short film created to prove the value of a feature concept. But is it worth it doing? Could it potentially devalue the entire idea in the process?
I asked myself these questions every day while I was making DARKER COLORS, my new proof-of-concept short from Red Giant. The idea of taking this thing that I’ve been pouring myself into for the last three years of my life, and potentially devalue-ing it by (ironically enough) setting out to demonstrate and prove its value, does not sound appealing.
So why did I do it? I made a video to help answer that, and hopefully help you answer some of your own similar questions.
As mentioned in the video, I used my Storyclock Workbook to help me turn a scene from my feature script into a more stand-alone cohesive short with its own beginning, middle, and end. Here’s the short’s structure laid out in a storyclock:
