Film Courage: Your message to artists: don't quit your day job?
Jason Park, Director, Producer, Writer, Actor, and Cinematographer: Yes,
so it's important because it goes back to what we were saying about having your A goal and
your B goal and by you having a day job for me anyways it gave me the stability to create my
own films. I was able to procure locations, feed casts, take care of them, do films,
do projects because I had a day job. If I only worried about booking jobs to live, I would be
struggling because I haven't booked a job in this field in like five or six years so then that means
I would go five or six years without any income looking to work as a PA on set or having to do
background work or having to do oddball jobs whereas when you agree when you get that skill
you're able to just build the foundation and without the foundation you can't do anything
but with the foundation of financial security and it doesn't matter how much you make,
thirty thousand, fifty thousand, eighty thousand, how much you're bringing in so you can kind of
mold your life around it then you're able to create. You're able to know okay I'm off Friday,
Saturday, Sunday I'm going to film Fridays and Saturday nights or Saturdays and Sun
however you're going to do it and I'm just going to do that slowly consistency for a
creator is more important than anything so if you're a writer I have a goal that I live by
if I'm planning on writing a script because I like a story I do a minimum of three pages a day
and that minimum means if I can get three pages a day then in a month I have a script if you do one
page a day and you hold yourself to that one page in three months you'll have a script but if you're
not disciplined enough to hold yourself to that one page or three pages then you'll never have
anything and that story will stay stuck in your head so when you have discipline you have your
your goal a goal B it becomes so important because you're able to get a lot further think about it if
you go to the gym and you're disciplined to work out every day you're going to get stronger so if
you're a filmmaker and you're disciplined to shoot every weekend discipline discipline okay maybe it
took you six months but now in six months compared to you thinking about doing something it's done
that Turtle verse the race that turtle versus the rabbit that we all used to
listen to and how the turtle used to win you don't understand it as a kid or when
you're younger because you're like the rabbit is way faster but consistency can move mountains
so be consistent okay let me just play the opposite approach for a minute though let's
suppose you get this great job I.T it's very in demand especially now post pandemic
what if you get into a lifestyle now you have a nice car now you have a nice place now you have
friends coming over for dinner and they're in the same profession or or similar and and then
there's this little gnawing at you and you're like what I don't want to be at this keyboard
right now I want to be creating something I had that and that's what led me to making films
once you get that creative bug kind of never leaves you because even though I kind of quit
Hollywood I didn't stop that feeling never left me of wanting to create and wanting to see something
so lifestyle working in the job you can't make the excuses if you want to do it you have to
find time right and I say that because I'm married I still have time for my wife I'm a father I still
have time for my son we do his Kumon and his schoolwork and I pick him up from the bus stop
I still work 40 hours a week at my job when I get off at five I can either write a script
from five to six I can edit a film from five to six that consistency as a turtle
every day of one hour two hours of creative output leads to a mountain of work in three years
from an independent standpoint you have three films you have a web series with 12 to 13 episodes
you have a reality show about a med spa and then you have a reality pilot episode
in three years and you're only able to do that if you're consistently pounding at it so even if
you're in a career instead of mindlessly searching through social media and letting an hour pass by
you can go and align that effort towards what it is that you're trying to accomplish so again if
you're trying to write a script or you're trying to write a book do a page a day because in three
months your script is done if you're shooting a film shoot one day a week and then before it
if it's 16 days okay in four months you're done shooting and now you're in post and then you apply
that same tactic go edit for an hour go edit on the weekend it's all about balance and consistency
because you still need time for your friends you still need time for your spouse or significant
other you still need time for your kids you need time for yourself I do all that while
I still play video games right it's important to have that balance but if you are a creative and I
think someone gave me this statistic I think like 12 percent of the world are creatives
and then 98 of filmmakers never make a second film right those two kind of Statistics I think
are accurate but I could be wrong if 12 of the world are creatives then that and the
whole world consumes art right every film is Art every commercial every story is art
then that means if you're one of those creatives and that kind of sticks with you and that's like
the invisible Wings on your back that that you just have to fly then you owe it to yourself
and you owe it to your to the world to let that art out because if you die one day with that art
inside of you and you're old and you're only stuck with your thoughts you don't want to live a life
or leave a life with regrets you want to live a life regardless of the success attached to it
with I did it I tried my best and I gave my best effort the results are out of your hands because
even films with hundreds of millions of dollars in budget flop the success is out of your hands the
creation and given it its best effort is within your capabilities so before you leave this earth
do everything that you can to get that feeling that that conscious art out of you because if you
don't do it in that web of Consciousness somebody else is going to pull it so for example I wasn't
planning on making pizza boy Rick which is my latest film that's in post I wasn't planning
on making it at all I was at a Cisco event as an engineer for three days in Vegas and I was
laying in bed by myself just randomly watching TV the thought came to me instantly the whole
story I could see play in my head I went into my phone in my notes and I just wrote points Rick
goes here okay this what this is what happens and then I came back wrote the script in about a week
if I didn't pull that from the artistic Consciousness that all creators I think
pull ideas from somebody else would have so I think it's important to give it your best effort
for yourself as a human being and for your soul because we all die
and you don't want to be on your deathbed say man I wish I would have done things differently
you think that nine to five gives you structure where you have this hour
before you have to I don't know pick up your son or take them to Kumon or
whatever and and you're like I have to do this now or it's not going to happen
it gives me stability because we would all love to just make films full time and be
like Spielberg or Christopher Nolan or Quentin Tarantino we would all love that we would all
want to be in that position but until you're in that position then you have to do what works and
what I've realized growing up and going through life is that life does not have to be a struggle
when you grow up poor like I did in many other people in the world you think that struggle is
normal that you have to struggle but when you realize that hey if I just take these steps in
life differently maybe I don't have to struggle well guess what if you're back to being that 18
year old kid that wants to fly out because you don't have a stable home and you want to go and
you're just going to try it and and struggle along the way unless you get that Lottery lucky break
compared to that same 18 year old that goes to the military which I had this conversation with
my brother hey go to the Army four years you get the VA loan so that means you automatically get
approved for a house you can rent out that house rent out those rooms stay in one of the rooms and
they pay for your mortgage you can get one percent down on a million dollar loan for your business so
you can buy a business that generates money for you and then you do those few things outside of
them paying for your degree and going to school while you're learning and you're a young man now
you come out in four years at 22 with a degree that's paid for no debt the ability to get a
small business loan and buy a home that's all provided for you because you you sacrifice four
years or you gave four years now you took your life in your own hands and gave yourself a leg
up right because now you have these options so now you can pursue whatever it is you want to
pursue from a stable point of view compared to I'm just going to go out and I'm going to try
and figure it out I'm just going to try and figure it out like for some people it works
but when I say life doesn't have to be a struggle it doesn't if you just make the right choices if
you just and someone can say well what's the right choices right okay so I'll step back and say if
you just make more calculated choices I think you can get to your destination without as much pain
you know it's funny you say that you you if you had an open schedule if something
an open schedule can sometimes be detrimental too because now you can put stuff off because
you're your own Taskmaster so you really have to like reevaluate once you have
that open schedule to-do list fixes all that sure so if you have a to-do list
and and you kind of write what you want to accomplish you'll be surprised at how fast
you can get that to-do list done if you stick to because every story starts on a piece of
paper or on your screen you have to write the words down before you make a film right
if you have a to-do list and on that to-do list I have to do laundry I have
to do work I have to write this page for the script I have to take my son to the dentist
okay if you just mark it off and you look at that to-do list
you'll realize how quickly you're able to get things done but that to-do list holds
you accountable if you're looking at it now with that open schedule if you don't have a to-do list
you're fiddling around you're wasting time for me one of my greatest assets because I'm not the best
director there's other directors that are better I'm not the best cinematographer there's other
cinematographers that are better not the best writer I'm not the best anything but what I am
are two things I'm a grinder I will grind it Non-Stop and knock on the door Non-Stop
and I I get laser focused so that laser focus helps out a lot because when I
stick to okay my rule was three pages a day I tend to write 12 to 15 a day
because writers know like once you start getting in the flow the story kind of writes itself and
kind of goes and I don't worry about punctuation I don't worry about spelling correctly sometimes
I don't even worry about describing a scene I'll say interior house in Alaska fireplace
Jim walks into the front door the fire is burning there is no the smell of the burning wood
permeates through the building you can see the smoke as it leaves the front door Jim
walks in the door creaks for what when I shoot it it's going to either Creak or it's not going
to Creak when I edit it and I do sound design it's either I'm going to add it or I'm not so
if you're going to sell it you need to colorize it but if you're going to film it then don't get
caught up on making those words sound perfect get caught up on how do you make the story that you
see in your head out on that paper and then how can you the best to your abilities get that shot.