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Welcome to the IP Incubator!
Yo! I'm Miles Crossman - filmmaker, writer, and apparently someone who thought launching a feature film and a book series in the same month was a good idea. So here's the deal: I'm not here to teach theory or sell you some course about "the secrets of IP development." I'm actively doing this stuff right now, in real time, and I figured - why not document the whole process? What I'm working on: My feature film The Princess & The Dragon is hitting festivals now and releases wide in late April. At the exact same time, I'm launching The Remnant Chronicles - a dark fantasy series I am in the process of writing (60,000-80,000 words, structured as three novellas). Yeah, probably should've spaced those out. But here's the thing... I know that if The Remnant Chronicles is going to be successful, I need to have that along the way of me completing the feature - nothing worse than being at a festival and not having another project on the go when you are releasing one. Why you should care: Because I'm going to show you everything. The stuff that works, the stuff that crashes and burns, the actual numbers, the distribution headaches, the marketing experiments, the cross-promotion attempts - all of it. No filter, no "guru" nonsense, just what actually happens when you try to build IP across multiple formats. I co-founded The Grand Illusion Film Company, I've made a bunch of films, written various eps. of TV and have been a story editor on over 200 episodes of TV (true crime and documentary stuff), and I have a Master's in Film Studies that mostly taught me that real learning happens when you're in the trenches actually making things. This community is for people who want to DO this, not just talk about it. Whether you're a filmmaker who wants to write, a writer who wants to adapt your work, or you've just got a story burning a hole in your brain that needs to exist in multiple formats - welcome. Your turn: Jump in the comments and tell everyone: - Who you are - What genre gets you excited - What you're building (or want to build)
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Never ending rewrites...
I think we've all been here... And and for some of you, probably because of me ;). Endless Rewrites are the bane of the creative mind. I feel like this only comes up when we are doing something for someone else. When I'm doing my own, I generally have an idea of what I'm working towards, so it's easy-ish to achieve that goal. But what really cooks my biscuit is when the goal posts keep moving. I think this is just the reality of working in television, there never is just one layer of decision making. We can please the producers, but those producers have to please their distributor, and that distributor has to please the broadcaster. For those of us on the ground, doing the real work, it feels like we're a slave to three masters. My trouble is just keeping up my desire to want to dive back in every single time a change needs to be made. Of course, this would become one of those "that's what the money's for" things... But sometimes I just don't care about that. What are your guys' thoughts on this? Angus, I know you're embroiled in this nightmare right now with me. And Carolyn, I know you've seen the script notes from hell more than a couple of times from those American showrunners, anyone else? I'm also curious if someone who is working on a private project has felt like they were engaged in endless rewrites on their own idea? Was this from your own volition? An editor? Perhaps publisher? Let us know!
The Brain Drain Problem
Here's the thing that's been driving me bonkers lately - be prepared to get out your tiniest violin... unless you can relate: Paid writing work is stealing creative energy. Not in some metaphorical way. Literally. You spend your best hours making someone else's words work, and by the time you sit down with your own project, there's nothing left in the tank. My Dad used to say: "Build your own dream, or just get paid to build someone else's..." Ouch. We all need money, that's for sure. But more and more I feel like by the end of the day... I'm done. This is the brain drain problem. And I think the biggest reason personal IP projects stall out. It's not that we don't care about our work. It's not laziness. Creative energy is a finite resource, and we keep spending it on other people's projects first. Then we wonder why our own stuff isn't moving. So here's what I actually want to talk about: how do we stay on track? Not the motivational poster version. We all know we "should" make time. The real question is how we do it when the paid work is eating our lunch every single day. The scheduling piece is trickier than it looks. Blocking off an hour for your personal project isn't enough, it's not just about when you write, it's about what state your brain is in when you sit down. Grinding through hours of interviews or the soul sucking accounts of true crime and then jumping straight into your feature script/novel is a great way to stare at a blank page and feel like garbage about it. I feel like I need a buffer in there... just some time to do nothing (or drive the boys to soccer, which is more likely). Some people protect their sharpest hours for personal work first thing in the morning, before the paid stuff even starts. Some do it late at night when the day's noise has finally died down. Some break their paid work into smaller chunks spread across the day instead of front-loading it all at once. None of these are magic formulas. But you need something, a system, a rhythm, whatever you want to call it, or your project just keeps sliding to tomorrow. And then tomorrow becomes next week.
Type of social media posts that work
I find it very interesting that the posts that I have specific branding on and font that I love seem to be the ones that get the least amount of traction. A perfect example is the two images below. the first photo show that after 7 days it still under 300 views... the 2nd has over 1600 in less than 24 hours despite having plain fonts and arguably less 'business'. One opinion I received was that the first video appears too 'ad' like... the branding making it seem too commercial, and hence something one skips... Any other thought?
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Type of social media posts that work
The Princess & The Dragon Official Release Date!!!
Ok, as someone who always feels like they need to apologize for their own feelings or for simply just having them at all. I often question whether or not me getting so hot under the collar is warranted. But in this case, I feel vindicated - because the production team just didn't even realize that I had all this other stuff going on. And completely backed off and revisited the release date. We are now looking at an official release date of April 3, 2026! What a huge change from them trying to say February 3rd. Which, frankly, was just way too soon and didn't give me any time to build up all the resources we needed to.
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Feature Forge - IP Incubator
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We are going to write a piece of original IP, and then take it all the way to making a feature (or tv series if we get lucky).
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