Getting Started as a Creator: A 30-day Action Plan
A Simple Plan to Start Creating, Learning and Growing
“A man, a plan, a canal, Panama.”
–Leigh Mercer
This palindrome has nothing to do with today’s post apart from the word “plan,” but maybe I’ll ADHD a way to connect the two things while I’m writing it.
Last week I promised to bridge the gap between the conceptual and the practical. Today we’re going to cross that bridge together. I’ll give you a plan to start ideating, executing and learning from the projects and ideas that might otherwise be gathering digital dust on your hard drive.
Don’t think of this as a curriculum; think of it as a crowbar, a way to break out of the loop of:
I don’t have a creative track record so…
I’m never given an opportunity to prove myself so…
I can’t gain traction as a creative and thus…
I never build a creative track record.
I’ve heard this vicious cycle described to me by countless writers and other creatives I’ve spoken with. I’ve felt it firsthand, and I know how debilitating it can be. But there’s another type of cycle that creatives can leverage to break free…
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Re-Iterating
In my last post, I described the concept of an MVC or “Minimum Viable Creation,” which uses The Iterative Cycle to make the smallest executable version of the story you’re trying to tell. This can be a piece of a larger project or a self-contained micro-project, but the important thing is to start small, test, learn and iterate.
In other words: Aim for progress, not perfection.
I think a lot in terms of cycles, so forgive me if I sound like I’m on a bit of a cycle treadmill. You’ll probably recognize that within each of the larger cycles I describe below, there exist smaller cycles. This nested structure is by design. Each step in the iterative cycle should contain its own, smaller iterative cycle, which in turn contains an even smaller iterative cycle, and so on, like a Mandelbrot set cascading down to infinity.
As
discussed in her piece on producers trying their hand at YouTube, this action plan will only work if you commit to the iterative process. To do that, you have to radically redefine your relationship to the projects you make. Instead of making one $10,000 short, think of how you’d go about making 100x $100 shorts.By starting with much smaller budgets, you’re giving yourself a couple advantages:
You’re de-risking your investment in terms of your own money and - if you were planning to raise money via crowdfunding - social capital.
You’re setting constraints, which force you to think creatively about how to execute the project, the benefits of which I discuss here.
But most importantly, you’re reframing the process of creation as an opportunity to learn instead of a do-or-die high-stakes gamble. Instead of sinking money and opportunity cost into a single endeavor that has a high chance of failure (because, let’s be honest, most do), use your time and resources to give yourself a (mostly free) education on audience preferences and production processes.
Unless, that is, you already know everything, in which case what are you doing reading this?
Who Can Benefit From this Plan
This plan is designed for anyone who is new to the creator economy and wants to tell stories. This includes TV & film professionals who may be accustomed to the modus operandi of traditional media, with its hierarchical structure, endless development process and insulated culture. These could be development execs, writers, directors, producers, or anyone else who sees the tides shifting to a make-it-yourself model and doesn’t want to be left behind.
But it’s also for emerging creatives who are new to writing / directing / producing and are deciding whether to pursue a more traditional studio track or go the independent creator route.
And while I could write a whole book about how to achieve success in the creator economy1, understand that this is Step 1 of Many. This guide just scratches the surface and I plan to dig a lot deeper in subsequent posts.
Some Ground Rules Before We Dig In
To get the most out of this guide, I recommend the following:
Commit to the process - Make a promise to yourself that no matter how hard things get - and they will get hard - just keep going. Even if you don’t reach all your initial goals right away, everything you make is an opportunity to learn, and everything you learn is an opportunity to grow. And there are worse things in the world than personal growth.
Set a regular output cadence - It may seem arbitrary, but one thing that’s helped me start building an audience and learning from my creative output (whether it be for Substack or LoFi) is a deadline. There’s nothing like a little pressure to move the ball down the field.
Be flexible - At the same time, give yourself grace and space. If life or work gets in the way of pursuing this creative path, remember that that’s okay. We all get busy and we all have bills to pay, and the wellbeing of our family should always take precedence over our creative pursuits.
Don’t overthink things - While it’s okay to let life and work derail this process, try your best not to let some imagined ideal of perfection do the same. The whole point of the process is to learn and grow, and you can’t do that if you’re fixated on the minutia that comes with perfectionism.
Ignore your inner critic2 - Whenever you do something new, your inner critic is going to be there screaming at you as to why it’s a bad idea. But try to remember that your inner critic is a vestige, a relic from 75,000 years ago, a time when public humiliation frequently led to being cast out of a tribe, which usually meant starvation and death. This bears repeating: If a friend or colleague criticizes your creative work as silly or meaningless, remind yourself that you are not going to die. In fact, this is usually a blessing (for lack of a more secular term), because it reveals your true tribe from the unimaginative phonies.
When in doubt, pursue a path of fearlessness. The most successful creatives dismiss the critics - both internal and external - and rarely obsess over looking cool (though some - like Timothy Chalamet - end up looking cool without even trying).
Always allow space for constructive criticism, but learn to distinguish between the people who believe in you and want you to do your best work and the people who just “don’t get it.”
Okay, with that disclosure out of the way, let’s begin.
Week 1: Resource Checklist, Ideation & Planning
Resource Checklist
(Nothing like a good checklist to get you excited about the creative process.)
First, take stock in the resources you have at your disposal. These resources fall into 3 buckets:
Bucket 1: Creative Resources
More than just the projects that you have in various stages of development, consider creative resources sort of like your brand. What are you good at? Are you a horror aficionado? Do you excel at dramatic dialogue or character-building or world-building or story structure?
Write down your talents. Sure, the aforementioned dialogue/world-building proficiency etc., but also: Do you know how to direct? Edit? Act? Are you a talented cinematographer or dancer or musician? These are all things you can use.
Write down ideas you’ve conceived in the past. This isn’t just ideas for stories. If you’re a comedy writer, you probably have a long list of funny scenarios or dialogue disconnected from a specific storyline (I know I do). Don’t be afraid to start with something like this and then build the context around it. You’re a storyteller. This should be second nature for you.
Write down projects you’ve developed in the past - regardless of their level of completion - and write down what about these projects excites you.
Bucket 2: Technical Resources
These are the things that you can use to execute on a given Minimum Viable Creation (MVC). Make a list of things you have access to. Things like:
Camera/lighting/sound equipment
Props
Costumes
Makeup
Access to interesting locations
Software for creating visuals (yes, including generative AI software)
A built-in audience. If you have an existing social media presence, don’t be afraid to use it!
Perhaps you’re handsome and beloved Hollywood Superstar Timothy Chalamet. If you’re uncertain how to use your creative skills to build a career in the creator economy, reach out and I’ll help you with that.
Anything else that will make ideating, producing or distributing this MVC easier
Bucket 3: Human Resources
As I talk about in my post on building your tribe, collaboration with others not only makes producing projects easier, but it almost always makes the finished product better. Plus, working with other people is fun!
These people can come from anywhere. They can be friends, colleagues, randos from the internet, Timothy Chalamet… anyone!
You’ll probably be surprised to discover how many people just want to create. Writers, actors, cinematographers, even production people are excited to make stuff, especially right now, when there are a lot fewer opportunities in traditional media for people to be creative.
Once you’ve taken stock of these resources, it’s time to ideate!
Ideation
Either by yourself or with a group of likeminded creatives, ideate on which projects / ideas / themes you want to explore.
Start with a “No bad ideas” mindset and don’t worry about constraints right now. Just jot down as many shorts / sketches / scenes / scenelets as you can.
Important Note:
Put a clock on it. Set a 15-minute timer. Nothing like a little pressure to get your brain moving. If this is a group activity, everyone should write their ideas down separately and not talk during that 15 minutes.
Right now the goal is quantity. You’ll have plenty of time later to suss out quality.
When the timer goes off, pencils down. If it’s a group activity, everyone share their ideas with the group and refrain from commenting while others are sharing.
After you’re done sharing, sort the list by the ideas that are most exciting and fun. That’s important, as excitement often breeds motivation. Assign each item on the list a value of 1-10 with 1 being “I don’t care about this at all” and 10 being “We have to make this right now.”
Once you’ve done that, assign each item a separate value from 1-10, with 1 being hardest to execute (with the resources at your disposal) and 10 being the easiest to execute. If this is a multi-person exercise, some basic arithmetic will be involved with calculating the top scores. There may be some addition involved and perhaps even some division. Do not be alarmed. Use a calculator if you need. I believe in you.
Pick the 3 projects with the highest combined scores. These will be the ones you make first.
The 3 projects you choose should ideally be pretty different from each other in either tone, subject matter or theme. If they’re too similar, the lessons you learn from them will be less varied and thus less valuable than if they were meaningfully different.
By the way: You don’t have to approach the process with this level of mathematical rigor. For my own sketch comedy channel, we go after projects that are easy-to-execute and speak to us in some way.
It becomes evident pretty quickly if there are technical hurdles that make a particular sketch impractical to produce, and there are some projects that are so easy to make that even if they’re not the most exciting, we do them anyway.
The key is to start by prioritizing projects that are easy to execute and exciting to produce.
LoFi Lessons: Write A Script
Even if the shoot is super short, even if there are no lines of dialogue, even if it’s just a single shot, do yourself a favor and write a script.
The first shoot we ever did was a sketch about an internet salesperson who breaks into a house to talk about some scam, except we never had a script written for the actor who played the part. We thought we could just wing it, and we were wrong.
While the actor was a trooper who ad-libbed some decent stuff about crypto, we never established a satisfying story arc with a proper ending, something that’s worth its weight in gold. And yes: You should allow for some creative freedom on the day, but in the immortal words of Yogi Berra: “If you don't know where you're going, you'll never get there.”
The ending beat doesn’t have to be more than a reaction or a moment of reflection, but you do need to think about the conclusion. It can’t - in the immortal words of Dennis Reynolds from Always Sunny - “just sort of end.”
Try to use this script as a story framework and a way to ensure proper coverage, not as a must-complete checklist. I’ll discuss this later.
Project Planning
Most people coming from traditional entertainment will recognize this as “Pre-production” / “Pre-Pro”. Just because it’s a lot smaller in scope than a TV show or movie doesn’t mean you can ignore this part. The more you plan, the easier and faster it will be to actually make the thing.
Make a list of things you need for the shoot. This includes:
Scripts - Even if the project is short, print out a few copies on paper. Way easier to read than using your phone, and performers will want to refer back to the script.
Locations - Try to stick to a max of two locations per project and be economical in terms of the number of shots / scenes per project.
Props
Vehicles
Actors
Production hands
Camera gear
Lighting gear including reflectors
Sound gear
Food and water (don’t skip lunch and stay hydrated)
Any Timothy Chalamets you may require on the day
If you absolutely need to, purchase gear, props, etc. for the shoot(s). But set reasonable spending constraints, and don’t fall into the trap of thinking you need expensive, specialized equipment to make your MVC. You probably don’t.
If other people besides you are working on the projects, set expectations re: schedule - the “when” and “how long.” Give yourself more time than you think you need. For LoFi, We’ve been spending an average of 1 hour per 30 seconds of finished sketch (depending on complexity and any location changes), so a 1.5 page script in Final Draft format will equate to approx 1.5 minutes = 90 Seconds = 3 hours of shooting. We run lean, primarily shooting on iPhone and capturing sound on DJI mics that connect directly to the phone.
For filming picture for LoFi, I use the Blackmagic Camera App - which is free. This allows granular settings control, but you should use whichever camera app (or camera) you feel comfortable using. Be sure to check your camera settings before the shoot and double check them on the day. This could save you hours of headache in post.
Cap each project at an average of 3 hours of production time, though understand that some smaller projects will only require half that time. Don’t equate the time spent making the video with its potential success. LoFi’s best performing video took all of 90 minutes to shoot, including travel time.
Communicate the location and call time to your team, and if people can’t make it, cut them some slack, they’re helping you without pay.
LoFi Lessons: Set Expectations and Boundaries
From my experience with LoFi, I cannot overstate the importance of communicating properly and setting expectations and boundaries early. With multiple creative people working in a freeform collaborative environment, it’s easy for there to be a misalignment on who’s in charge of what and who controls what aspect of the creation process.
This happened with us. Because I didn’t properly convey chain of command and development processes with my early creative collaborators, I ended up putting my friends in an uncomfortable position of having to confront me about bringing new collaborators into the mix who they didn’t know.
It was always my plan to increase the number of collaborators in LoFi as we created more content, but I didn’t communicate that to the original team and when I set a call to introduce them to other potential collaborators, they were caught off-guard and felt betrayed. These types of miscommunications can be expected when starting something new with others, but it’s best if you can get ahead of any potential conflict by setting clear guidelines for how things should operate.
Week 2: Shooting, Analysis and Adaptation
Shooting
This is where you get to execute the vision written in the script.
Before you hit record, block out the scene’s action. Play the scene / scenelet / sequence out beginning to end, including action, dialogue and any camera moves. Get everyone on the same page with how the scene plays visually, and make sure it “works.”
Shoot with intention but also with speed. Your goal here is mostly to learn.
And remember to have fun. The creative process shouldn’t be a chore. It should be a blast. If you’re a creative who doesn’t enjoy the production process, well, that’s a separate conversation that I’ll write about in the future, so be sure to:
Once the day’s footage is “in the can,” thank everyone who helped for their time and pat yourself on the back.
I mean it.
It takes courage and determination to do something like this. Be proud that you’ve taken the first step of many towards an independent creative career. It won’t be easy, but nothing worth pursuing ever is.
When you get home, back up the footage to a separate drive. Remember that nothing digital exists if it doesn’t exist in at least 2 places at once (ideally using the 3-2-1 backup framework).
If you’re simply too excited to wait, you can watch the dailies - go ahead, you have my permission to call them “dailies” - at home.
If the editor is you, you can take a crack at an edit while the shoot is still fresh in your mind. If the editor is someone else, upload the files somewhere the editor can access them.
Don’t spend a ton of time in post. Consider post production as part of the rapid iteration process; expect to learn from mistakes made in editing, sound, music, etc. just as much as you would learn from mistakes made in production/ideation.
LoFi Lessons: Be Creatively Flexible
While it’s crucial to have a script written so you know the structure of the project, and while it’s crucial to have scripts available to review while shooting, it’s also important not to get married to any particular line of dialogue or moment in the script.
We learned this when shooting our BMW car review sketch. The sketch involves a car show host rattling off specs - at first real, and then made-up - for the electric powertrain BMW iX and it was not an easy list for our lead to remember.
We started the day doing multiple takes of the first few shots to make sure that we got the takes as written, but as the shoot went on, we realized that the actual specs were less important than the feeling of the lines. There’s no substitute for a great, natural performance, even if that performance doesn’t adhere to the original script.
Allow your talent to make cuts and adjustments that improve the flow and feeling of the script, and don’t sweat if they forget a line that includes some “important” piece of backstory. 9 times out of 10, audiences don’t care about that shit. It’s the feeling conveyed that will grab their attention, especially in a piece as short as this should be.
If the performer is you, do a few takes where you think as the character would think and don’t even read the lines as written.
By the way: This is a lesson you can take with you to traditional production workflows as well. Remember the old Hollywood adage: The script is the recipe, the shoot is shopping for ingredients, and post production is where the meal is assembled.
Analyzing
Now comes time to analyze and learn from the experience of making and releasing these projects.
The lessons you learn should fall into two buckets:
Internally-Validated Learnings - These are subjective lessons that come from you. Evaluate your feelings on the finished product as well as the process of making it. Did the production process suck because you forgot some key gear or personnel? Lesson learned. Were you unhappy with the finished project? Try and determine why it didn’t turn out the way you wanted. Once you finish something, you’ll probably have a pretty good idea of what you like or dislike about the project and the process of making it.
Externally-Validated Learnings - These are lessons that you learn from viewership data and the subjective opinions of others who will either like, dislike or feel indifferent towards your project(s). This focuses less on process and more on outcome, but be open to whatever lessons come your way from audiences. This deserves a post of its own, so for now, focus on the basics like number of views and time spent watching.
Pro Tip: When analyzing mistakes made, try not to conflate development (ideation) with production (execution). There’s a difference between a great concept that was executed poorly and a bad concept that was executed well. Ideally you want both concept and execution to be great, but for now, try to be as objective as possible and focus on learning.
If you want, you can break this down into two charts: One that focuses on internal learnings and one that focuses on external learnings, with each chart tracking lessons you learned in both ideation and execution.
The charts should look something like this:
If this process feels somewhat stifling, you’re right! Always remember to leave room for gut feeling and personal taste in this analysis. Not everything has to be charted and tracked within an inch of its life.
Also, when seeking externally-validated learnings, try not to rely solely on friends and family. No one wants to tell you your baby is ugly, and people will almost always lie rather than hurt your feelings, and we want to avoid attaching ourselves to a false sense of security that we’re creative geniuses and there are no notes.
And remember, throughout the process, be kind to yourself. Your creative process might be messy at times, but like Timothy Chalamet's hair - which somehow looks perfectly windswept even in vacuum-sealed rooms with zero air circulation - your talent may just defy all logical constraints.
God he’s cool.
Weeks 3-4: Establish a Sustainable Production Rhythm
Once you’ve gone through the first Discovery → Ideation → Execution → Analysis process, all you have to do is start again from the beginning. Your learnings from the first cycle should inform what you do the second time around, but be careful not to grow dependent on these lessons. Magic comes from trying new things, even if those things conflict with the lessons you’ve learned in the past.
Plus, if you over-optimize everything and only make the kind of stuff that has worked in the past, you'll never give yourself space to grow. And no matter how the algorithm rewards us, it's that growth that keeps us going as creatives.
And just like Ferdinand de Lesseps - the original builder of the Panama Canal who had to abandon the project after high worker mortality rate led to a vote of no-confidence in the overextended project before it was taken over by the Roosevelt Administration in the U.S. - learned: sometimes the greatest plans require unexpected detours before they can truly connect oceans of possibility.
Nailed it.
Have a good weekend and stay tuned,
Jon
Okay, I couldn’t write this book, but someone much more well-versed in the space could.
I’m going to do another post on silencing your inner critic, so make sure you’re subscribed if you want to read that.
This is a great piece, and genuinely helpful. Thank you for taking the time to write this!
Yes, don't forget your T. Chalamets...super helpful piece, please don't ever put it behind a paywall!