Knowing What Season Your Film Is In

"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven..." (Ecclesiastes 3:1 KJV)

"While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease." (Genesis 8:22, KJV)

There's a famous proverb that you've probably heard - "Rome wasn't built in a day" - it means things don't happen overnight.  And this is a really hard thing for some of us in this day and age - especially when it comes to dealing with one of the Fruits of the Spirit - "patience" or "longsuffering".

As a filmmaker living in the 21st Century- if you've not grown up in a 3rd World Country - you've most likely been incredibly blessed to have access to technology that  includes such luxuries as high speed internet, microwaves, fast food, digital downloads, cell phones, and the list goes on in relation to things that help us bi-pass time for waiting.  Even access to running water and heat are technologies where there is no need to wait or dig or pump something or kindle a fire.  

I grew up with 8 track players where you had to wait for your song to come around.  I grew up with having to wait for film to be developed.  I also grew up having to find a phone to call someone and needed a quarter to do so (there were no cell phones) and I doubt anyone reading this remembers what it was like to have a pulse or rotary phone where you had to spin the dial rather than just hit a touch tone button.  You had to wait a whole lot longer to make a phone call.  And I can remember how annoying it was when internet was only accessed through dial up which was extremely slow even when it was new.  Remember that annoying shrieking sound it made?

Even for filmmakers making movies in the 80s and 90s - back in that day there was no uploading to youtube - you had to show your film to people that were invited to a place or rely on festivals.   And most filmmakers who have grown up in the 21st Century have no clue knowing what it is to have to wait for your film to be developed before you can even watch what you shot.    There was a time when every filmmaker  had to send their film to the lab to be processed and then wait to see what it looked like... unless you were working with video and it certainly didn't look anything like film -  Now fewer and fewer professional filmmakers are shooting on film due to technological improvements through digital media.  But back then - there was perhaps a video assist - but that was nothing like what we can do today with our films.

If you haven't grown up on a farm - you probably don't consider the concept of waiting for your food to grow.  You probably don't understand the work that goes into seedtime - preparing the soil, planting the seeds, watering it, and watching it grow, and continuing to wait.  And then the things that go into harvesting are just as important - at the right time - at the appointed time - at the right season - you harvest the crop you've been growing.

Now some folks have a garden and get this - but for many young kids today - there is no planting food and waiting for it to grow - your parents just go down to the grocery store and like magic - the food is there.  Today we think we're bipassing this important principle called "Seedtime" and "harvest" because as you can see - the technology allows us to get things at the snap of a finger or the touch of a button or just driving to the store.

But the principle still remains.  Seedtime and Harvest still exist - it's just that we have become impatient and sometimes tricked by the technology that is supposed to help make things easier for us in the process of waiting.  Yes, we may save time and not have to develop film and we can upload things to the internet faster, but we still have to understand what season we are in as filmmakers (in a metaphorically speaking of course)

We still need to take time to go through a development process (not processing the film at a lab sort of development) - but working out the story, getting it written, preparing the soil, so to speak.

We need to go into preproduction and begin shooting, like planting the seed in the soil

We need to edit the film, like watching the crop burst forth and grow as we continue to water it.

Then we need to distribute the film and promote it which is a lot like the harvest.

For every thing we do, must be done in the right season.  There is a time and a season for everything.  The trick is to know the season you are in and don't try to rush it.  And don't get frustrated.  Know what season you're in, whether it's seedtime or harvest and give it your best until you get that part completed to the best of you're ability.

Consider this:  If you wait too long out of laziness to harvest your crop,  it will be overripe and even rottten.  So if you wait too long to share your film with others, people might lose interest int he film you're making or people may not be available anymore to work on your film - important people like actors, for example... or even a location that you had access to on a given date.

Consider this:  If you harvest your crop too early out of impatience - your crop will not be ready and will not be ripe.  Ever eat a piece of fruit that isn't ripe yet? Usually bitter. So if you get impatient and show people your unfinished film because you can't wait it could risk giving a bad impression of you and your film because it will not look its best technically.

If we don't know what season we are in it can trip us up.  If we understand that there are seasons for each of our films it will help us to be patient and wait for the right time to harvest the seed we planted that seems to be taking longer than we anticipated. -When  we stay on target, we can reap the blessings from an audience hopefully responding to our film in a positive way.   This comes only if we've done our best and followed the principle of seasons, seedtime, and harvest.