The Minimum Viable Creation
How Perfection Kills Creativity
Note 1: For my readers in the UX / Product space: I discuss UX Design and Product Development in some detail below. Please feel free to roast me in the comments about how wrong I get that stuff.
Note 2: For everyone in the #FilmStack world, I recently created a database of FilmStacks on Substack. If you don’t find your FilmStack on there, please add it using the Google Form below:
In previous posts, I’ve outlined how and why creatives need to find their tribe, I’ve discussed shedding risk-aversion as a necessary part of both the creative process and the career journey, and I’ve emphasized the importance of finding your why.
These were all pretty high-level and philosophical, with only a handful of real pointers in each. Today, we’re going to dig a little bit deeper into the actual process of making stuff people (hopefully) want to watch.
Less spiritual guidance, more practical primer.
This post hopes to bridge the gap between the conceptual and the actionable. Between knowing what to do and actually doing it. I’m going from “talking about thinking about creating” to “talking about starting to create.”
I would argue the most important step in creating is the first step, and this is where most people fail. Not because they lack thought, but because they overthink things and never get started.
And while there are perfectly valid reasons to wait until this or that condition is “ready,” there are quite a few benefits to starting before the timing feels right.
A Lesson from Iron Man
Jarvis, sometimes you gotta run before you can walk.
–Tony Stark, Iron Man
I maintain the best movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is the first one. It creates a foundation for the MCU and confidently establishes Tony Stark as the bedrock of that foundation.
When we’re first introduced to Tony Stark, it’s easy to see why this character would go on to anchor the MCU. He’s brilliant, brash, confident and charming. He’s also a reckless counterpoint to the notion that geniuses can’t also have fun.
This is exemplified after he designs the Mk. II Iron Man suit and realizes that - after a precarious booster test - his suit is ready for flight.
Any reasonable genius would let Jarvis - his AI assistant - crunch the terabytes of data needed to prep for his first flight test, but instead, he chastises Jarvis for his caution, telling him sometimes, you have to run before you can walk.
With that, he rockets out of his Malibu mansion and after a few minutes of flight, encounters a critical error in the suit’s design that nearly kills him, but that he also uses to defeat the story’s villain later in the movie1.
If Tony had played it safe, he wouldn’t have learned this lesson firsthand, and he wouldn’t have known how to beat the bad guy.
Often, you have to experience a lesson yourself in order to really internalize that lesson. Visceral mistakes have staying power.
But you don’t have to be a superhero to learn and grow from your mistakes.
In fact, many creators have made starting quickly and learning from their mistakes a central part of their creative process.
Case Study: Peggy Dean
Peggy Dean, a self-taught artist and founder of The Pigeon Letters, exemplifies the “learn-by-doing” philosophy in the creator economy. Just weeks after picking up hand lettering, she launched her first online class (despite being a beginner herself) and earned $2,200 in the first month.
Her philosophy: you only need to be one step ahead to offer value. By creating, publishing, and adjusting in real-time, Peggy built a seven-figure creative business including online courses, physical products, and a thriving community. Her success didn’t come from waiting until she was “ready,” but from learning fast and launching faster.
This iterative learning process didn’t come out of thin air. Another industry pioneered it as a mechanism for moving fast and breaking things. I’m speaking of course about tech, which I’m sure will make some of you bristle, but please bear with me.
What we Can Learn from Tech
Many of my subscribers have strong opinions on what big tech - and its Frankenstein’s Monster AI - have done to creative careers (and the world at large).
While these opinions may be perfectly valid, we as creatives shouldn’t hesitate to understand why these tech companies have found such huge success among consumers and businesses alike.
Learning from the successful battle tactics of an invading enemy army doesn’t make you a traitor. It makes you a good general.
And willfully ignoring these same tactics doesn’t make you honorable. It makes you short-sighted and petulant.
And that’s if you consider tech to be an inherent evil, which, for the record, I do not. I promise a deeper dive addressing this AI-generated elephant in the room in a later post. Be sure to subscribe to get that delivered to your inbox.
For now, understand there’s one special tool in the tech product development toolbox that keeps buyers coming back:
The Iterative Design Process
The iterative design process is a methodology in user experience (UX) design that answers the multi-billion dollar question: How do we create products people love without spending years in development?
This process can take many forms: The Double Diamond, The Agile Framework, The Design Sprint. But the gist of it is simple:
Discovery & Definition - Research a problem space without an agenda, without being prescriptive. Uncover pain points. Form insights. Define exactly what the problem is.
Ideation - Think of this as a blue sky session to determine the best solution to the problem uncovered in Step 1, practicality be damned. After all, some of the greatest inventions in human history sounded crazy when they were first proposed.
Implementation & Validation - Build a version of the solution and validate that that solution actually does what it should be doing. Put the product in front of people and test that it - in fact - delivers real value.
Rinse & Repeat - This is the important part. The iterative design process should be just that: Iterative. Keep moving through this cycle, keep improving the thing. Keep discovering and testing and building and validating.
This is how the most intuitive software was built. This is how the best hardware was built. This is how tech has eaten the world.
What can we learn from this?
For starters:
Perfect doesn’t exist.
Tech companies never, ever start with “the perfect version” of a product, whether it be hardware, software or services. And not just because that would be a terrible business model.
They don’t start with the perfect version because by the time they execute on “the perfect version,” a faster upstart will have usurped the market with a smaller product that does enough of what people need it to do.
But more importantly: There is no such thing as “the perfect version” of anything. Society changes, compute changes, needs change, tastes change. The perfect of today is the obsolete of tomorrow. Even in a vacuum, where tech companies have no competition, no natural predators, their customers inevitably change.
It’s exactly the same in making entertainment. You can spend 10 years working on your magnum opus, and by the time you finish, what might have been considered a masterpiece when you started is no longer relevant, or peoples’ tastes have evolved in such a way that it just doesn’t hit the same way.
I mentioned in my post on how I would run an entertainment studio that nothing kills creativity like time, and I meant it.
Ignore perfect, aim to get a version of it done quickly.
Then iterate, refine, improve. Your career - and your wallet - will thank you.
Why Starting Small Works
In tech, there’s something called an “MVP”, or “Minimum Viable Product” that serves as a first working version of a digital product. The idea is to build the smallest, cheapest, most-quickly-deliverable version of your solution that still provides value to the end user. That way, you can start learning what works, what doesn’t, which features people are using, which ones they aren’t…
The main goal of this exercise isn’t necessarily to build a huge customer base, though it’s great if you can do that too. In theory, the main goal of building an MVP is to learn about your customers.
Based on the concept of an MVP, I propose a new concept called a Minimum Viable Creation (MVC). This is a version of whatever it is you’re working on - be it a pilot, a feature, a docu-series, a web series or something else - that is small enough to execute quickly and within a limited budget.
And because everyone has a different set of time and money standards, I’d like to clarify: When I say “quickly,” I mean within 1 half-day of shooting, and when I say “limited budget,” I mean under $2002.
Now, before you tell me to fuck right the fuck off, I’m not saying that you should be able to shoot your pilot or feature within a half day and with less money than your monthly coffee budget. I’m not even saying you should be able to shoot a scene from your pilot or movie within those constraints.
But do try and think about one of your recent projects. Go back to the reason you wanted to work on this project in the first place. Think about how excited you were when you were coming up with the characters or a particular scene or some other aspect of the project, and try to remember exactly where that excitement came from.
Was it the tone / style?
Was it some deeper theme you explored?
Maybe it was a relationship between two characters…
Or a line of dialogue…
Or hell, maybe it was the title of the show/movie.
Side note: These are all valid reasons to start a project, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. The best pilot my writing partner and I have written started as a title and nothing else, and through ideation and discovery we found the titular character and the premise for the show. BTW if you want to read it, please ping me:
Point is: Remember what made you fall in love with the project, then brainstorm ways to demonstrate that aspect of the story quickly and easily.
Maybe it’s a short scene showcasing the tone, or a series of TikTok videos from someone playing one of the characters. Or a brief podcast demonstrating the story. If you approach this process with the same creativity as you apply to your craft, you should have a few options.
Some Ground Rules for Making an MVC
Rule #1: Adopt a flexible view of production value
I’ve spoken before about the shifting definition of quality in my post on misconceptions in getting started as a creator.
Audiences have gotten used to stuff shot on iPhone, and the lines between iPhone video quality and cinema camera video quality continue to blur every day. But beyond audience expectations, there is one benefit to staying small that people don’t mention:
Bad stories have nowhere to hide
A high-end cinema camera, professionally-scored music, impressive locations, these things can often be smokescreens that obscure a lack of quality in storytelling.
Back in college, I remember a film professor of mine telling us to watch the final cuts of our thesis shorts without any music. A score can smooth out rough edits, bad direction, even bad acting. Just like a fancy camera can obscure a story that isn’t very interesting.
Did I listen to him? You tell me:
Believe me. I get it. In the edit, it’s comforting to see a beautifully shot short that’s kinda maybe a little bit boring. Like, at least it looks cool, right?
But no amount of gloss is going to fix a sub-par story. Audiences won’t give you a pass because your work is beautifully shot.
And never, ever forget that if your goal is to become a creative in TV or Film, you’re doing this for them3.
Imagine shooting something for $10,000 and it’s polished and shiny and well-scored, but the story is just meh and doesn’t really speak to people.
Now imagine shooting something for $100 and the audio is shitty, the camera work is rough, the score is just someone belching over and over again… but the dialogue is punchy and dynamic and the characters leap off the fucking screen…
For a multitude of reasons, I know which one I would pick.
Rule #2: Plan to make A LOT of these MVCs
Understand that people who excel both in the creator economy and traditional media are relentless. They just keep making. That should be your goal when starting this process: Consistent output. Set a timeframe - e.g. I will release a new video every week - and try your hardest to stick to it.
This will keep you from over-indexing on a single shoot and it will keep you from spending a ton of money that you as a creative probably don’t have. In my experience, learning 50 lessons from 50x $100 shorts > learning a handful of lessons from 1x $5,000 short.
It’s like going to Vegas with a $200 gambling budget. You could always bet it all on a single blackjack hand in the first minute you step into the casino, but if you’re there to have fun and breathe in as much delicious secondhand cigarette smoke as possible, there’s a better way.
The benefits of making multiple MVCs becomes clear once you start to get a sense of what resonates with people (“people” being randos on the internet, your friends/colleagues you’ve shared them with or you yourself after seeing the finished product).
Remember: This is an iterative process, and in order to iterate, you have to save some gas for the next project, and the one after that, and so on.
Rule #3: Set your goals early, check back with them often
Clearly establish - and write down - what you hope to get out of these MVCs. I would cluster these goals into 2 categories:
Goal 1: Learning
Learn what works with an audience, learn the process of producing stories, get better at production, direction, writing. As demonstrated above, there is no substitute for learning by doing. I believe the primary focus of early-career creatives should be to get better at being creative. If the stuff you make breaks out, terrific, ride that wave, but like I said: Don’t assume that it will, and continually seek improvement.
I spoke with a friend after they completed a short that they had crowd-funded and produced and edited, and when I asked them how they thought it went, their response was: “I learned a lot.”
They weren’t unhappy with the finished product, per se, but after spending thousands of dollars - and a ton of social capital - on this project, their biggest takeaway was the lessons learned.
This is so common.
Many creatives - especially un-produced creatives - assume the first thing they make will be game-changing. It’s usually not, and - on its own - it almost never launches careers. Learn as much as you can without any other agenda. If you end up with a masterpiece, great. But don’t bank on it.
Goal 2: Building
I’d break this down further:
Building an Audience - If you start publishing your work online (written, audio/visual or otherwise), like-minded people will gravitate towards it, and by extension, towards you. This is your initial fanbase. It will start small - and niche - and that’s a good thing! Operating in a niche is a good way to grow a committed following. And once you have a devoted audience, you have a platform and a way to learn what works, make things better and grow your audience some more. It’s a self-propelled model by design.
Building a Portfolio - This is your calling card. I’ve mentioned before that people who have the option can and should occupy both worlds: Traditional Media and the Creator Economy. The great thing about this approach is that you can start to build an audience in the Creator Economy while building out a showcase of work for people in traditional media. Produced media - even cheaply-produced media - can set you apart from the stack of scripts that gatekeepers receive on a daily basis.
Building a Network - When I first started on Substack, I had a lot of preconceptions about what I’d get out of it: A portfolio of written work, okay. A loyal following, why not. But the thing that surprised me the most is the network I’ve managed to build. Of other Substack writers. Of subscribers. Of Hollywood professionals that - 10 years ago - probably wouldn’t have given me the time of day if I was some sad sack writer submitting yet another pilot sample. This is the power of making stuff that resonates: Eventually, you won’t have to knock on anyone’s door, because people - real, influential people - will come knocking on yours.
Starting Small ≠ Thinking Small
To paraphrase Harry Potter: Most great creatives started where you are now: At the beginning. They took the resources they had at their disposal and started by making something small before moving on to bigger and bigger projects.
The sooner you get started making, the sooner you can start that process.
As Jeff Bridges yells to a hapless scientist at Stark Labs: Tony Stark built his first Iron Man suit in a cave with a box of scraps. He didn’t start with the perfect suit because, well, such a thing doesn’t exist. He learned from his mistakes, iterating and improving his designs with each hard-won lesson.
Being a creative is no different. While conventional wisdom would tell us to wait until conditions are perfect, sometimes you need to run before you can walk. And perhaps - after enough running, enough learning, enough building - you might just discover how to fly.
Or whatever. I can’t live your life for you.
Next time, we’ll discuss a 30-day action plan to start making your projects a reality.
Stay tuned,
Jon
PS: If you made it this far, please consider adding a “Like” or a comment. Every bit of amplification helps.
Technically, Pepper Potts kills the Iron Monger by blasting him with the overloaded arc reactor core, but just go with it because I find that beat a bit redundant and this makes for a better analogy.
This is a sliding scale. If $200 per project breaks the bank, aim for a lower budget. If $200 isn’t enough to execute even the smallest version of your MVC, good for you, Richie Rich. Adjust accordingly.
I realize there are filmmakers who operate in the Avante Garde / Art Film space to whom this doesn’t apply, but I can’t imagine many of my readers belong to that classification of human (except you, Courtney).
love the idea of MVCs, thanks for the inspiration!!