How To Get What You Want

I’ve been thinking a lot about this in recent years. When I take a look around and think about what many of us filmmakers are doing for work, and then asking myself, is this what we got into this to do, most of the time it doesn’t line up. I think most people got into filmmaking because they watched movies and thought about how awesome that would be to make them, but once you dip a toe into production, especially in cities that aren’t known for making movies, idealism quickly fades and you find yourself shooting commercials and interviews and a few music videos at best, or worst, depending on how you look at it. The reason this has been on my mind is because several experiences I’ve had over the last few years have woken me up to the work that I really love, the work I got into this for, and now that we hire more people and I’m meeting more people all the time I begin to wonder those same things about those who work for us. And I want to continue to create opportunities for people to do more of what they love. I’ve also seen some interviews with directors like Peter Jackson and Christopher Nolan in particular that really opened my eyes. Peter used to fabricate all kinds of insane props and camera support equipment and he even baked molds for alien costumes in his parents kitchen oven in his home in New Zealand, he literally did everything himself, look t up on YouTube, the movie he made was called Bad Taste and it’s hilariously campy. And Nolan used to work on corporate videos, haha, how weird is that? I bet they were the trippiest corporate videos ever. But anyway, both of these were so eye opening because they made me realize that the separation between what I’m doing now and what I ideally want to be doing quite possibly just comes down to decisions. The limiting factor may not be some uncontrollable force, but it may just be making decisions to push in a specific direction, and counting the cost of those choices vs continuing to do what is known and comfortable. I really think it just comes down to what you want. Because if you don’t know what you want how do you know which way to point yourself. The things you want may not be as unrealistic as they seem, it just takes time to get there, even for Christopher Nolan, he didn’t just wake up one day and direct Inception, that movie is the culmination of millions of decisions and a lifetime of hard work that lead him there, and the same goes for any of us. The work you’ll do later in your career, whether it’s filmmaking or any other craft, will most likely be the culmination of the direction you’ve been heading the entire time. And it’s not to say you can’t pivot along the way, because chances are you will, what I’m really getting at is, the thing you’re doing right now, is this what you got into this for? And more importantly, is it fun? Because if it’s not, what are you gonna do about it?