There are two short films I made with friends while still in junior college that were great learning experiences but terrible films: Murphy's Law and IV League.
I have no idea why we made Murphy's Law. It was fun, but in film terms it was quite an example of how not to make a film. Murphy's Law was structured as a mockumentary, which isn't a problem in itself, but can become one if you lose sight of what the film is trying to do. We shot it on a Sony Handycam, which produced a terrible picture - it's good if you want to put it on Youtube, but even on a television screen the picture quality begins to show its limits, and when Murphy's Law screened at First Take in June 2007 it was quite impossible to watch, the image was so blurred. However, as a simple comic piece it was effective, and it did get a solid round of applause.
One of the biggest mistakes we made with IV League was scheduling its production right after Murphy's Law. IV League was complete before Murphy's Law was screened, and we had no time to learn from the mistakes of Murphy's Law. IV League was never screened, and I'm not compelled to make it public either. The script was poor, the camerawork was uninspired, the editing was sloppy, and the final picture was, again, low-resolution and blurred. It had one thing going for it, and nothing else: a solid premise - in a future dystopia, students are so obsessed with getting grades they are willing to hook themselves up to intravenous caffeine drips to stay up as long as they need to.
(Well, we're not that far off, are we? Seems like Ivy League students are using ADD medication to help them focus and keep them going through the night: The Harvard Crimson: Harvard on Speed.)
My focus on the poor picture quality may seem strange, given we now say that with the advent of consumer video, the film/video medium is one of the most democratic, in that anyone can pick up a camera and start shooting. It's true, yes, that the nature of film means that for a particular film, you can get an equivalent image on a lower-quality camera and still tell the same story. But if, as an audience member, I find that the poor picture limits my enjoyment, then it's a problem I must address as a filmmaker. If, as a filmmaker, the camera's limited range prevents me from shooting the image I really want, then it's a problem.
Back to the films: the biggest problem with both films, and with Suffering for Success as well, is the lack of a true narrative. They were centred around ideas, not stories. I can't speak for other mediums, but I feel the best thing aboiut the film medium is how it lends itself to storytelling. Take the story, which is more often than not the main human element, out of a film, and it will lose much of its impact. We relate to people, not to themes. So beginning the conception of those films with ideas and failing to frame those ideas as narratives was a huge mistake. The films can engage people at the intellectual level, but not at an emotional level. It took me a long time to understand this.
On the other hand, making those films was the first step to understanding the physical and logistical involved in filmmaking (especially amateur filmmaking). You really cannot understand where the practical limits are, and how to work within - or around - them, unless you start work on a film. After you've done it once or twice, logistical considerations will begin to be part of the creative process.
I envisioned IV League taking place in an enclosed white space, with a huge futuristic caffeine-dispensing machine - hah, was I disappointed with the result or what... where was I ever going to get access to an enclosed white space at a reasonable cost? One reason now I think IV League was poor was that it was shot as if the classroom was a sterilised white space, when it was not (it was shot in the Substation's Random Room). If you have to accept a substitute for something you initially hoped to be able to use, don't just use what you do have, but adapt to it, milk its characteristics for everything it's worth! If you want a trombone in your jazz band but only have a saxophonist, don't ask the saxophonist to play as if he were playing a trombone - adapt the part to the unique qualities of the saxophone. No matter the process needed to arrive at the result, the final version must still have its own completeness, its own logic, and IV League lacked the sense that everything on the screen was there for a reason.