Our recent travels through Southeast Asia were a sensory overload of colors, sounds, smells, people, and nature we’d never seen before. The compulsion was to immediately turn the camera to every single sight, an urge that slowed as the trip progressed. In fact, our best photos and video were taken towards the end of the trip because our eye for the unique became more discerning. Our growth as storytellers has taken a similar trajectory; we’ve developed better eyes and ears for what is interesting and worth telling and more importantly, which medium is best to tell it. There’s the written word, sound, video images and still images, all mediums we employ as storytellers. Some stories call for all while others may only call for one or two mediums. But how to decide whether a story is worth making into a film or if it’s better as an article or a photo? Below are a few questions I ask myself before I decide to start making a film.