Ben is great at directing movies, but he needs direction to get out from under a massive stack of notes…
This interview is a classic example of the way CONTEXT creates value for new solutions.
- In the past, Ben has been happily drafting written notes and using mindmaps.
- Back then, he worked on short stories and simple scripts
- Now, he’s buried under a mountain of notes and can’t keep up with his own story.
Listen to the story below to hear why this context switch causes him to go shopping for a new solution
Watch the full interview below:
The Four-Forces Debrief
Here’s Ben’s Four Forces debrief – did you pick the same Pushes and Pulls?
Ben B - Four Forces Analysis
Ben is a 30 year old Film, TV, Music Video and Commercial writer/director based out of Sydney, Australia. For the past 3.5 years he has been working on his own Feature Length (90 min) script, which is the first idea he has felt could be good enough to turn into a real film (where he would raise funds up to $1m to film and direct it).
His work is usually 8:30am-1:30pm of writing on this script - when he is most productive and only when he's not actively filming. Over the course of 3.5 years he's built up a large script, plus notes that he adds to various acts within the script - these are ideas to improve the script (e.g. a new scene/character) - and over time this has become unmanageable. Typically he would be carrying around the script plus 50-100 pages of mindmaps and notes.
Previously, when writing short scripts, this was not such an issue as they were not as long/complex. As he has developed the idea through the 1st, 2nd and 3rd drafts he has created more and more of a problem, and it has become impossible to wrap his head around all of the ideas in his notes.
By the start of 2025 he started to think "How am I going to make the final push" to get this script to the position where he can send it for review by people other than his peers. He felt "buried in notes and ideas" and was worried that he wouldn't be able to use all of his ideas without a better way to organise them. What he was trying to do was combine and review all these different notes and ideas to ensure the best possible ideas made it into the final draft.
Eventually he has the first thought "How am I going to find a way to organise all this? I need a new method so I can get a grip on all of this content" - and it comes to a head when he presents his script at a weekly writers group. In the group he shared 5 pages of his script, and others read and annotate their notes on this - so with 5 people in the group he gets 25 pages of notes back. One of the other writers in the group mentions "Verbal to Visual" as a course that he has used and recommends to help with the writing process. This person has a similar learning style to Ben, so it seems interesting.
He tried reviewing all his notes again, which was overwhelming. He thought about highlighting things, but then realised he'd just be "trapped doing the same things" and he needed a new method.
He starts to look for other solutions - including:
- Evernote - an online note taking tool, but he prefers notes that are written down so he can see the whole picture at once (the challenge with his huge note pile) - Evernote doesn't help because it's too hard to see everything on a single screen and he can't take it with him.
- Trello - he's used this before on a project, but only 50% of the people on that project would log in to use it, and he didn't feel it was suited to his style of thinking
- Heptabase ( he thought this was a course, however it seems to be more of an online whiteboard, too: https://heptabase.com/
- He seemed to have seen some of Verbal to Visual's YouTube content - but felt this was more tips and tricks rather than something organised into a full course
- The online whiteboards seemed to just move his problem online, when he needed a different way to capture his ideas so he could get a grip on them
He also checks out the Verbal to Visual course and liked what he found - it spoke to his problem "If you have too many notes to distill, this can help you", the person selling it is charismatic and shows sharpie-drawings that he creates in real time with an overhead camera. This feels down to earth, relatable and has a bunch of lessons that he could try and use to help rather than a fixed curriculum where they tell you how to solve a problem without explaining why.
The course was appealing as it felt less intimidating and it was value for money because there were a lot of methods being taught, and Ben felt he could pick and choose from these.
- In March/April 2025, Ben signs up - for approx $100USD (from memory)
- This has access, videos, updates and content that he can use across a 1 year subscription
- It is a DIY course that he takes in his own time - maybe 3x per week taking a lesson, learning a new technique, and then seeing if he can apply it in his work the next day when writing
- He got about 70% of the way through the course over 18-20 weeks - which was "good enough" that he's not gone back recently - he's learned what he needed to learn and that's good enough
He recommends the course to others as it has helped him to distill everything in a timely manner without being buried in notes. He can now distill his ideas and implement them in the script in half the time it used to take, which will help him get this script made.
- Historically he'd be carrying the script plus 50-100 pages of notes and mindmaps per act
- Now, he has a "cheat sheet" with 3-4 pages per act, and it's a 60-70% reduction in effort
Ben says he was "skeptical" of the course and "set in his ways" prior to joining - and needed to become more open to change to buy it.
He liked the content about "discomfort" - it was not a technique for drawing, but it taught him something else useful - lean into the things you're uncomfortable doing as you'll learn more.
This really competes with other tools to organise his notes - rather than other courses about creating visual ideas.
This is much less about expressing ideas in a visual format for the benefit of communicating ideas to others, and much more related to organising, distilling and communicating his own ideas back to him - when he's overwhelmed by too much information.
Verbal to Visual is currently on sale for about $150 USD.
So there you go – three interviews down now, and no real patterns forming yet (which is no surprise). As we listen to more people, themes should start to emerge and we will hear their stories emerge more clearly.
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