What I REALLY wanna do when I grow up... is make movies. It's a pretty deep desire and I hope to be able to make a few films someday. If you look at the significant art forms of any period of history, you'll see that enormous budgets are assigned to those new forms of artistic endeavor that end up changing the face of art. Consider for example, the Florence Baptistry Doors competition, which kicked off the Renaissance. This project had a monetary prize equivalent to the defense budget of Florence, and required significant new technologies around bronze pouring. The project kept two hundred artisans busy for 20 years, so we can estimate that the budget was worth about $100-250 million in today's dollars. Or look at Rodin's studio... he hired scores of assistants.

Clearly, the most important artistic medium of the 20th century is the motion picture, as evidenced by the $100 million budgets required to create these works of art. In the 21st century, interactive art (ie, videogames) may become the new medium, but for now... the motion picture is where the action is.

I'm working on a number of movie concepts now, have a few scripts and treatments written, and take meetings with other film wannabes for fun. But is it a realistic dream? Of course not. But it's a nice outlet for my creativity.

One thought that I have is that it's kind of funny how similar filmmaking is to high tech ventures:

script = business plan
exec producer = chairman
director = ceo
bankable male lead = vp engineering
primadonna actress = primadonna programmers
producer = vp sales and marketing
pr girl = pr girl
investor = investor

You start with a great idea, turn it into a script, find a little seed money to develop the idea into a demo reel. Then you sign up the director and male lead, to make the project fundable. Ideally, you nail a negative pickup offer based on the plan, in order to mitigate the risk for the investor. You find investors, produce the work, put it out there and hope to hell that it works. The key ingredients are: a great concept/story, strong team to execute, adequate financing. Then you cross your fingers. If you have a hit, the next one is easier. If it flops... well, you can only learn from failure.

Another interesting issue is that the ego attachment of the writer to direct, is quite similar to the ego attachment the founder usually has to be the CEO. Sometimes it works, but other times it is a recipe for disaster.