if you are pursuing a creative career
like i am
in hopes that it will be more fulfilling
than a regular office job
then you've probably heard
the quote that if you love your job
you'll never work a day in your life
all those kind of quotes there's this
whole like
ideology
that
if you follow your dreams if you
work on your passion then you'll just
have the most fun and your life will be
perfect
and i just want to kind of offer
alternate view to that
because that's kind of what i'm going
through at the moment
um yes it's a very first world problem
but i think it's important to talk about
the stuff that's tricky not just the fun
parts of filmmaking not just the fun
parts of
whatever this is that i'm doing so i
mentioned a few weeks ago that i was
challenging myself to make a short film
with a really really cheap camera
and if you'd like to see that it is now
online it's the first link in the
description i'd recommend you watch that
before you watch this
because i kind of want to get into some
of the difficult parts of
choosing a creative
career
so
basically when i was editing that
project i've already mentioned in my
last video that i was too scared to look
at the footage because i thought it'd
been such a disaster
but the truth is that was a little bit
of a understatement
because
i actually waited quite a bit longer
and well even once i started editing i
started trying to compile it into
you know
hopefully what would be a good film
a good short film
and
i got to the point where i was feeling
physically sick
because
i guess i cared
whether it was good or not i guess i
want i wanted it to be good i really
wanted it to be good and at that point
it wasn't even making sense let alone
whether it was any good you know
so i think this is what happens the more
you care about a project the harder it
hits you when it's not going well
and
that has been
very a very common experience for me
throughout filmmaking that people
usually don't talk about they usually
talk about editing as it's like a task
that you have to do
but
for me at least it usually is a hugely
draining process emotionally because
you're coming to terms with everything
that went wrong on set and this is
inevitable
and you're kind of seeing for the first
time
just how different it is from the
perfect version of the film that you had
in your head you know
and because it was shot on a cheap
camera that just made it even more
obvious because i couldn't rely on the
fact oh well you know sure it's not
perfect but at least it looks good
because i didn't even have that to rely
on
so it was a really tough uh couple weeks
actually
because
because it affected me so much so that
it was going
wrong
i
honestly noticed like
socially that i was less confident
because and i think that's because when
you say in your head
that was a failure you are a failure
that is so like when you when you have
that disappointment of thinking that you
can make something good and then it goes
wrong
then
you
it really can like knock your confidence
so
that's two things about
the creative process or filmmaking that
no one really told me about
or that people don't usually talk about
when they do their like oscar acceptance
speeches you kind of get the impression
that it was just this amazing experience
they were just having so much fun
but
from for me at least and i haven't heard
other people kind of hinting at this
kind of thing
the way it is at certain parts of the
project or
depending on you know how things are
going sometimes for the whole project
it can
be a
very
difficult process
involving
self-hatred at times
so i was feeling crap about the project
feeling crap about myself
and basically ended up wasting about
four days
not really doing anything just kind of
feeling sorry for myself
watching like tv shows
and
then i went to amsterdam for shortcuts
film festival
and
that kind of changed a lot because
you're certainly in a room with so many
people who really
love filmmaking
and
it also put things in perspective like i
was talking to someone and i said oh
yeah you know i've been working on this
youtube channel for four years
and i kind of said it like four years as
if it was a really long time
and she actually said like
four years oh wow that's that's that's a
very quick like that's not much time at
all and then i was talking to this
director who had been working on his
film for three years and it still
hadn't been released and then we were
actually watched a short film so it's
like 10 minutes long
and this guy had spent seven years
animating it
seven whole years for like a ten minute
short film
and so i think all of this they just
kind of coincidentally
linked up to remind me
that
a
if you're young then you think that four
years is a long time
or five years or however long i've been
doing you know
trying to be a filmmaker
um
but then also the internet world teaches
you that everything has to happen fast
and just just hearing this from you know
traditional filmmakers
where things do happen slowly it just
helped me realize that yes filmmaking is
an art form
it's the kind of thing that takes
decades
to get a hold of so once i got back from
the festival i was feeling more
motivated
but to be honest it didn't fix
everything you know i still was sluggish
to get going i still had plenty of
procrastination i still
felt pretty bad about the project
but you know i did realize okay it's not
quite as bad as i thought and of course
once you start piecing things together
you can improve things
um
and
now to be honest it's got to the point
where
i don't i i'm too close to i can't tell
i'm i'm no longer an objective person
who can say what i think of it
it just
it's it's finished and that is kind of
how i'm treating this project right so i
guess what i'm trying to say
is that if you're in a similar situation
where you don't feel like your work is
good enough
or you feel like by now you should have
got to a further stage or you just hate
your projects hate yourself sometimes
then
firstly
know that that's quite normal for
creative people
and secondly it's definitely normal
for a certain point in the project and
that's even if you've been doing it for
for years
because your your standards are going to
be higher so you have more things to
pick apart more things more flaws that
you can see
but then also just
to remember that you know
there are
there's plenty of time there's no rush
you don't have to be
at a certain point by a certain year
you know
i really do think that
that it takes decades to
master a craft that's you know
subjective obviously
but
those would be my uh
words of encouragement i would have
given myself
two weeks ago
if you're
feeling bad about what you're making if
you feel like it's not good enough
that is okay
it will pass
if you can get through it it will make
you stronger when you get to the end
and yeah
that's what's kind of been going on
recently