Mutual goals, compromise, and when to stick to your vision

Last night I chatted over beers with a very enthusiastic special effects buddy. I asked him what it would take to do a car crash at highway speeds into a concrete barrier, edge-on. I said that I wanted a very simple crunch, with the rear being lifted up, swinging sideways a bit, and dropping to the ground. An understated yet visibly lethal crash.

This artist is a friend of mine, aims to please, and as I mentioned earlier, very enthusiastic. I said simple crash, crunch, a bit of aerial swing. What he wants is to do something like this, with a flip (sorry about the ad in the video):



The effect would be spectacular...flashy, noisy, lots of smoke, and a bit of flame. But, my vision is much simpler, because the nature of the scene demands that it not be flashy. It must almost look mundane, as if it is background action.

I should also mention that this will be an "out of pocket" effect. We will need to be very creative about how we stage it so that it doesn't become a multi-tens of thousands of dollars effect. So, he will likely need to sacrifice a bit to make it cost effective for me. Essentially, he will be doing me a big favor if we are going to get it done at all.

The challenge becomes how we both get something we want. He has been looking for a platform to perform a specific effect...a car hitting a sloped barrier and flipping sideways onto its roof, then sliding on the asphalt.

So, if he offered me the effect essentially for free, but done the way he wants to do it, would I take the offer?

No. I wouldn't.

All too often, the cohesive style and vision of a project is sacrificed because there are too many interested parties with their spoons in the batter. Our intimate scene with an understated, yet lethal car crash suddenly becomes an action scene, and in doing so, it loses its identity.

In business school, the end result would be called a "sofa-bed". It's effective as neither one nor the other; it's a bland hybrid.

So, my message is to be clear about your vision, and communicate the vision well. Do no turn this into a turf war or personality conflict. It's about the cohesiveness of the look and pacing of the film, which is the master that you and all of the other artists on your film are serving.

Another take-away is this: if someone agrees to do something specific for you at a reduced rate, karma requires that you do the same. In this situation, if he did the stunt that my vision calls for, and in a way that I can afford, my solution would be to write and direct something for him that uses the effect that he is dying to execute.