Creativity, Chaos and Continuity Errors

I'm a filmmaker and I have ADHD.

I have been making films for almost three years while learning and adapting to the way I work, and in that time I have definitely learned a lot!

On one hand, I've made films, won a couple of awards, attended festivals, worked with some brilliant actors, and built an audience that actually watches the things I make. On the other hand, I can also look back and immediately spot a hundred mistakes!

That's probably normal for any filmmaker, but with ADHD comes certain challenges that make it particularly difficult! The constant stream of ideas. The inability to focus on boring tasks (and there are a lot of boring tasks in pre-production!), getting completely obsessed with one tiny detail while forgetting something much more important. Starting five jobs at once and somehow finishing none of them!

Rocket Badger Productions isn't a full-time job. It's something I squeeze into evenings, weekends, annual leave, and those brief moments when I'm supposed to be relaxing but instead decide it's a good time to plan an entire production.

Like most independent filmmakers, I'm working with limited money, limited time, and a very small crew, and on many of our productions that entire crew has been just me behind the camera handling directing, producing, writing, editing, sound, scheduling, problem-solving and whatever disaster happens to be unfolding that day.

With that in mind, here are three mistakes I've made repeatedly as a filmmaker, in the hopes it can help someone else out there trying to work a creative hobby with a messy mind!

Continuity

Continuity is one of those things that's completely invisible when it's done well, but when continuity goes wrong, people notice.

Over the years I've spotted various continuity issues in my own work, including breaking the 180-degree rule in Company. Some viewers probably never noticed, others probably spotted it immediately.

The reality is that when you're filming, there are about a thousand things competing for attention at any given moment.

Is the actor happy with the scene?

Is the microphone working?

Is the camera battery about to die?

Have we got all the coverage we need?

Did someone move that prop?

At some point my brain simply gives up trying to keep track of everything.

Professional productions solve this by having dedicated crew members. Independent filmmakers solve it by making increasingly detailed notes and hoping for the best.

I've definitely become more organised over the years, but continuity remains one of those areas where I can tell when I've tried to carry too much information in my head at once.

Planning

This is probably my biggest weakness and the reason is because I get excited! Sometimes I'll have an idea and become so enthusiastic about making it that I want to jump straight into production before I've fully worked out what the production actually is.

Most people probably start with a plan and then make the film. I start with excitement and then attempt to construct a plan somewhere along the way.

There have been projects where I hadn't fully worked out the visual style before filming started. There have been projects where creative decisions changed halfway through because I'd suddenly had a better idea.

The Letter is a good example. Looking back, there were choices made during post-production that resulted in some shots being cropped more tightly than I would choose today.

At the time, however, I was absolutely convinced I knew what I was doing, and I think that's the biggest problem with how I experience ADHD - no matter what I'm doing, my brain convinces me that it's fine!

That's another thing I've learned about filmmaking. Future me is constantly correcting decisions that present me was very confident about. These days I try to force myself to spend longer in pre-production, even when every instinct is telling me to grab a camera and start filming immediately.

Sometimes it works, sometimes I end up planning a completely different project instead!

Time

For whatever reason, I never seem to have enough time for anything!

I don't know whether that's an ADHD thing, a filmmaking thing, or just an adult thing. Possibly all three!

What I do know is that I consistently underestimate how long things are going to take.

I'll look at a film and think, "The edit is nearly finished." Three weeks later I'm still adjusting tiny details that nobody else will ever notice. Then suddenly I'll get impatient and decide I need to finish everything immediately because I've already become excited about the next project. This is probably the mistake I make most often, not because I don't care about the films, but because I just get so excited that my brain is already halfway through making the next one.

There are definitely things I would spend more time refining if I went back. Colour grades, sound tweaks, little technical details. Looking back at films like Hope and Pillow Talk, there are areas I'd approach differently now, because every project teaches you something, and sometimes what it teaches you is that maybe you should have looked at the colour grade on more than one type of screen before exporting it!

Still Learning

The older Rocket Badger Productions gets, the more I realise filmmaking isn't just about learning cameras, editing software or storytelling, it's also about learning how I work.

For years I thought I just needed to become more organised, but what helps me most now is accepting that my brain works the way it works and building systems around that.

Will I make these mistakes again? Probably [definitely], but despite all of that, I'll keep making films.

Rocket Badger Productions exists because I get excited about ideas and can't stop thinking about stories. Sometimes that's exhausting, sometimes it's chaotic, occasionally it's frustrating.

But without that part of my brain, there probably wouldn't be any films at all... so I suppose it's a trade-off.