These days it is often said: Young people don't want to work for success, they just want to 'get famous'. (Usually by making an outrageous youtube video). Some do 'go viral', but without any completed project that they can put in the market place to move them forward.

Thus, it's just 'momentary fame' with nothing solid to build on. The 'solid part' takes time, money and risk, not just jumping off their house onto a break-away table.

When I was 22, a documentary director said to me, "I knew you were a serious film-maker when I met you."

"I thought you didn't like my action movies", I said. "Because you didn't say anything to me after the screening yesterday."

"I liked them well enough," he said. "But that's not the point. I knew you were serious because you have completed film, after completed film, after completed film."

To stay in the artistic business game, be it movies, novels, painting, producing plays, or recording, one has to have completed projects. Projects to show an audience and business people that you're still happening. Still producing.

It's a simple idea, but not simple to do, because project completion takes, commitment, work and money. And if you a filmmaker, a lot of money.

Once an excited writer showed his 3-page short story to a group of us. After he left, one guy said, "He only wrote a three-page story. That doesn't compare with my 300-page novel." He had been working on that novel for two years, but hadn't finished it. 

One of the guys said, "Until you finish your 300-page novel, his 3-page finished story beats your unfinished one. He can now bind it, give it out and put on his blog. But you can't until you complete it."

That's when it finally sunk into my head; the idea and power of 'a completed project'. Even a 17-syllable haiku poem that is finished, beats a 400 page masterpiece novel that is not finished.

I had a 16mm, 25-minute comedy that I shot in college, but hadn't got the actors together to dub in the sound. Years went by and I was on my fourth feature-film and it still wasn't completed. I finally cut the film into a non-dialogue, 15 minutes with music, when I realized it could play that way. 

I made video copies and sent them to the actors. One of the actors became an art teacher and shows the movie every year to his classes. He can show it because it was finally completed.

Of course, if your project has become a money pit with no completion date in view or possible way to recoup your money, then it might be best to change course and focus on something else. Only you can make that decision.

However, always remember that only completed projects can be presented to an audience and move you up a notch in your artistic field.

"Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art." - Andy Warhol

Okay, complete 'em as you see fit.

Forbidden Power wins 38 International, First-place awards. All IMDB sanctioned. Including:

 2018 - Best Picture out of 1,000 entries at the BITB International Hollywood Film Festival.

2019 - Best Science Fiction Feature Film at the International Oklahoma BB Film Festival.

2019 - Best Thriller - London Flicks Festival. 

2019 - Best Original Screenplay - Florence Film Awards Italy.

2019 - Best Feature Film - New York Cinematography Awards.

Watch it on Amazon Prime: https://amzn.to/3dxcitp

After a one-night affair with a mysterious woman, a young man wakes up alone with sexually transmitted powers.

He searches for the woman to find out the source of her power and why he was chosen.