Before Whiplash became an Oscar-winning feature, Damien Chazelle had a problem, nobody wanted to make it. The story of an ambitious young jazz drummer pushed to breaking point by an abusive instructor had been intended to be written as a feature, but Chazelle couldn't convince anyone to finance it. The screenplay even spent a year on the Black List of the best unproduced scripts of 2012, generating interest but not a greenlight. So instead of trying to make the whole film, he made 18 minutes of it.

That short would win the U.S. Fiction Short Film Jury Prize at Sundance.

And suddenly, Whiplash was a movie people wanted to make.

Chazelle had written Whiplash partly from his own experience playing in a highly competitive jazz ensemble as a teenager. The character of Terence Fletcher was inspired by a former band instructor, although Chazelle pushed the character considerably further.

He believed the story could work as a thriller rather than simply a drama, but the problem was convincing everyone else. The feature was still an ambitious proposition for an unknown filmmaker. A story about a jazz drummer wasn't an obvious commercial bet, and Chazelle was struggling to get it off the ground. Then came a suggestion from the producers around the project: make a short version.

Chazelle wasn't initially enthusiastic. He had written the story as a feature. He wanted to direct a feature. Turning 15 pages of his screenplay into a short felt like moving backwards. But the idea was to the feature existed, and was worth financiers betting on.

Fifteen Pages

Chazelle selected a sequence from the screenplay centred on Andrew, an aspiring drummer, arriving at an elite music conservatory and encountering Fletcher, the terrifying instructor who will become the film's antagonist. J.K. Simmons played Fletcher and Johnny Simmons played Andrew.

The short was effectively a concentrated demonstration of the feature: its characters, its tone, its tension and, crucially, Chazelle's ability to direct it. The production was extremely small. The drum kit was paid for by producer Couper Samuelson, while producer Helen Estabrook reportedly used her own money to soundproof a classroom at a local parochial school and turn it into a rehearsal studio, very makeshift. However, as mentioned, they didn't need to make the whole movie, they just needed to make people believe in it.

Sundance

The short premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and won the Short Film Jury Prize for U.S. Fiction. That changed everything, the short became part of the sales pitch for the feature, giving potential financiers evidence that this could work as now, they could see what Whiplash actually looked like.

The feature was sent back out to financiers with the Sundance-winning short attached. Bold Films ultimately backed the project with a $3.3 million budget. The entire feature was then shot in just 20 days. The finished film arrived at Sundance the following year in in 2014, opening the festival and winning both the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award for dramatic competition. Sony Pictures Classics subsequently acquired its North American rights.

The Lesson

The interesting thing about the Whiplash short is that it wasn't really designed to be consumed as a traditional short film. It was a proof of concept. Chazelle didn't try to squeeze the entire story into 18 minutes. He picked the part that best demonstrated why the movie should exist and when the feature was eventually made, much of that original short was recreated almost shot-for-shot. The short had done its job.

There is an obvious lesson in the Whiplash story: If nobody will give you the money to make the movie, you might not need to make the movie. You might just need to make the part that proves it works. Chazelle didn't need to demonstrate that he could make an entire feature. Eighteen minutes was enough.

Four years later, Chazelle would go on to win the Academy Award for Best Director for La La Land, however we must remember that before Hollywood gave him that opportunity, he had to convince someone to let him make his first film, and he done it, with 18 minutes.