In Chapter 6 of 17 in her 2009 Capture Your Flag interview, filmmaker Tricia Regan finds expectations-setting critical in breaking a film project into steps and gauging the momentum. Even in uncomfortable places, Regan applies a persistent, incremental, open-minded approach to exercise sound judgment on storytelling potential. Through this approach, Regan positions herself to best understand whether or not project potential blossoms or withers.
Transcription:
Erik Michielsen: How has setting expectations played a role in your career as a filmmaker?
Tricia Regan: Well I’m actually in that process right now. It’s scary starting a film project because I know what I’m in for. It’s going to be a long haul, at some point everyone is going to be angry at me, I know that even if the money comes easily there are going to be financial issues and business issues. I just know what’s coming.
It’s scary. What I do is I get attracted to something and I don’t get invested in it. I take incremental steps even when I’m thinking this is so not going to work. Just go and show up and keep an open mind and let your wheels spin and let all the wheels of all the people spin. And leave it to providence more or less. If the wheels keep spinning and everything gets tightened and turned and it keeps progressing with some volition of its own, then you start to get involved. And once you do at some point you’re going to have to drag that baby along. But it has to have a certain momentum of its own because any film that gets made is a miracle. So if you don’t feel that miracle vibe, that providence involved at some point in the early stages, you can’t expect it to show up at some other point.
