Charlie shares seven essential strategies for giving helpful feedback on creative projects, drawing from his experience transitioning from video game development (Subnautica, Natural Selection) to independent filmmaking.

The insights come from months of working closely with writers on their Christmas movie screenplay "Nutmeg and Mistletoe," where they aimed to transform a good B-script into an exceptional A-script through thoughtful feedback.

1. Do no harm - creative work is fragile and requires protection
2. Be descriptive not prescriptive - focus on symptoms rather than prescribing solutions
3. Prioritize and filter feedback - don't overwhelm creators with every minor note
4. Merge stakeholder feedback before sharing - resolve contradictions internally first
5. Emotion is gold - emotional reactions are the most valuable feedback in creative work
6. Try working sessions instead of back-and-forth notes - 2-3 hour meetings for complex issues
7. Highlight what you love - creators need to know what's working, not just what isn't

🔗 Show Notes

• 🎧 Scriptnotes Podcast – (this is a must for screenwriters): Watch
• 🎧 Rick Rubin on Listening – Watch
• 📘 The Creative Act by Rick Rubin (particularly the "Let It Be" chapter)
• 📗 Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull (”Honesty & Candor”, Chapter 5)
• ✍️ On actor line readings – Read here 
• ✍️ More on Giving Helpful Feedback for Games - My game design blog

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Questions or thoughts? => [email protected]

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I interview the two writers on our Christmas movie to to how the project got it's start, how they work as a writing pair, how scripts are different than games, how and what a logline and beat sheet is, book recommendations, game pillars in Subnautica, what we feel is essential in a Christmas movie and our favorite Christmas movies and why.

YouTube video interview
https://youtu.be/OJuBJ01QP3o

Book Recommendations
Save the Cat, by Blake Snyder (Loglines, beat sheets)

The Hero with a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell (Story structure, the monomyth, Hero’s Journey)

The Art of Creative Writing, by Lajos Egri

Classic Christmas movies

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Rankin/Bass_Productions_films

Pillars in Subnautica and game development (re: loglines)

https://www.charliecleveland.com/game-pillars/

Jennifer Bascom

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-bascom-she-her-5b679a233/

Deborah Dodge

https://www.instagram.com/debi_dodge/

Charlie Cleveland

https://www.charliecleveland.com

Christmas Letter (working title)
https://www.linkedin.com/company/christmas-letter

Send us a text

Questions or thoughts? => [email protected]

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Introducing the other crew on A Christmas Letter - Peter Herro is the director and Julia Knox is a producer. We talk about how we met, their origin stories, moving between games and film, traffic, money and competition for top Fortnite creators, 90s nostalgia in film, open world games and film story.

WTF Movie Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXpShtPI2Og

@DirectingPete YouTube - Unreal Editor
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5YM-ZZgw1keO-cyFKa2TOA

Julia Knox’s “Barefoot” short
https://vimeo.com/861133847/9ab6c32888

Gringo Latino
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21445250

Send us a text

Questions or thoughts? => [email protected]

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Welcome to a new podcast, called Movie in the Making!

Get a behind the scenes look at a Hollywood film as it's made. We'll show you how the sausage is made - and hold (almost) nothing back. 

The creator of Subnautica (Charlie Cleveland) will bring lessons from the process of early access video games to the film world.

Send us a text

Questions or thoughts? => [email protected]

Get daily work updates on Instagram