How Compressing The Timeframe Of Your Story Can Make Your Movie 10x Better

Most micro-budget films fail for one of a few reasons:

1. They are attempting to execute on a level well beyond their scope

2. They drag or feel boring due to lack of resources

3. They are not specific enough to stand out

These aren’t the only reasons of course. Having a film with bad sound or poor acting can of course be detrimental too – among other things.

But I think that’s a given. And these days it’s not hard to achieve good production value – even with next to no budget.

The real challenge is making something people actually engage with and can’t wait to share with everyone they know.

If you can do that – you’ve succeeded. No matter the budget level.

Ultimately though, your success is made or broken in the writing phase. And concept alone can determine your fate.

I would never suggest that every micro-budget filmmaker takes the same approach to their script, but there is one concept that almost always leads to good results.

Compressing the timeframe of your story.

Most filmmakers think of a premise for their movie, and plot the story out over a duration of months or years.

There’s obviously nothing inherently wrong with that. Great movies can take place over any duration – whether a single night or a hundred years.

But on a micro-budget level, the longer your time horizon, the more complicated things tend to get.

A movie set over the course of a decade needs to show changing of seasons or convincingly make the actors look like they are aging.

It also has more potential to drag (compared to a real-time movie for example), as there is less immediacy to the story.

Not to mention, it can lose specificity. Longer time horizons mean far more scene choices – which often leads newer writer / directors to lean into tropes.

That’s why compressing the timeline can be a bit of a cheat code.

Take the exact same concept and set it over the course of a day instead of a month, and so often it becomes more interesting, more unique, and easier to shoot all in one swing.

I re-learned this lesson myself on the feature script I am finishing now.

It originally took place over the course of a year. I wrote an entire draft of the script on that timeline, but then had a thought…

What would the story look like if it was set over 48 hours instead?

As soon as I explored that option, so many new ideas emerged.

The story became 10x better and more interesting. And it led to the movie having a hook that is unlike anything that’s been done before.

It also required that I did a page 1 re-write and throw out months of work on the previous draft.

That was a tough pill to swallow, but well worth it to eventually get to this point – finishing my favorite screenplay by far I’ve written.

Every movie is different, so I never mean to imply there is a one-size-fits-all approach to be found.

But if you’re struggling to make your micro-budget concept work on a practical or creative level, try to see it through a different prism.

Compressing the duration of your story almost always forces it to become more shootable, more alive, and more uniquely yours.

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