Creativity and Execution
We tend to think of creativity as a skill of the imagination. There’s a special cultural mythos built around “idea people” – those who can envision something extraordinary – and there’s some validity to that. The ability to stretch your mind outside the ordinary, to dig deep in your imagination and find distinct things there, is a valuable skill to cultivate.
But it’s a tiny part of the battle. Most of the creative process – especially if the idea is particularly original – is translating the idea into something that exists in the world. In other words, as you’ll often hear around the LampHouse offices, “ideas are cheap”
When you have a concept, the real work lies in turning it into a filmable script. When you have a script, it lies in turning that into a shot list, scheduling it, and inhabiting it with cast and crew. When you have those things, it lies in committing the story to film in specific shots that look great and performances that ring true. And then of course, when you have those shots, the real work lies in editing them.
Through the whole process, the creativity and ideas that have been achieved are only as good as the craftspeople putting in the hard work on the next step.
Everyone has good ideas. Creative excellence is the ability to preserve a good idea through every step of its execution.
From Good Idea to Great Film
To concept this film, we shut ourselves in a room, and by the time we came out, we had the story mostly written on the whiteboard. The process of scripting it, from there, was mostly about expressing the pacing, the specific beats, and the emotional moments that reflected the journey the main character took (her name is Emma, if it matters to you) through a series of magical doors. The script is more than a checklist of shots, it’s an emotional roadmap and tone blueprint for the film. It should be the closest you can get to watching the film before the film exists.
The team we assembled took a script jam-packed with complicated scenes and ambitious settings, and turned the character’s wacky adventure into reality. Every film is a tribute to the cast and crew’s ability to translate concepts into reality, but this film presented so many unique challenges, it’s worth reflecting on how far the concept came, from lines on a page to scenes in a film.
Thank you to the dozens of people who turned our idea into something more beautiful than we even imagined
Script to Screen
These are a few lines from our original script, paired with how those scenes look in the final film.
