Want to make a better film? Collaborate with a writer

[Feature photo: David Gardiner]

When you’re just starting out, making videos is often a solo endeavour. Maybe your friends have no interest in helping you, or you’re traveling alone, or you don’t want someone else changing your vision.

As your filmmaking evolves, your vision may become too complex for you to handle alone. The writing of the “script” of the film is one of the hardest things to let go of, but it’s one of the things that bring the most improvement to a project by collaborating. Even if you’re a great writer, you may not have the experience to bring words to the subject. Other times, you’re just too close to the project to think objectively. Whatever the case, getting someone else to pen those lines can make the project pop.

Check out this short film produced by Fitz Cahall of Duct Tape then Beer.

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Cahall had a bunch of climbing footage that he was having trouble making a complete film out of. An accomplished writer himself, he recognized Brendan Leonard’s writing about getting older would create a solid backbone to the project. Cahall and Leonard put the film through many revisions and ended up winning at the Banff Mountain Film Festival.

With MatadorU’s community of creative people, there are literally hundreds of people to collaborate with. What projects are you stuck on that might benefit from collaboration?