Not with a bang, but a whimper
AKA A Brief History Of My Life From August 2021 To August 2022
AKA Chasing A Dream
AKA Time Waits For No Man
Author’s Note: This blog post is a bit depressing. read at your own peril.
Author’s Note: I probably shouldn’t write this one or at the bare minimum publish it but it’s therapeutic, maybe. At least that’s what I’m going to tell myself.
Author’s Note: Before you dive in I would like to take a moment to thank the people who did hire and take a chance on me and from the bottom of my heart thank the people who constantly hired me and referred me to other jobs. The later were few and far between. I am not going to name or call out anyone other than myself in this blog but you know who you are. It meant the world to me and let me freelance a bit longer each and every time.
A little over a year ago (at the time of writing this anyway) I quit my full time programming job on lark without a plan over issues that had been building up over time. Truth be told I had been there too long anyway, had become complacent, and needed a change.
I’ve wanted to work on film full time since high school and college and have a degree it. In the Summer/Fall of 2021 the Chicago Film scene was fairly warm and I had a fair amount of money saved up and decided I was going to try, like really really try to make it as a Director of Photography (DP for short). I also knew that I really could only (for various reasons) give it a year and if it looked like it wasn’t going to work out or not work out fast enough or not the way I wanted or needed it to I would have to call it.
A year later, after all said and done — it went okay.
I had some amazing high points too — from getting paid really well to travel to a part of the country I would have never had the chance to otherwise, to gaffing an indie drama/horror feature stating known talent, and finally getting hired to gaff a mini series for a streaming service. I also got the chance to meet some amazing people and make some great friends that I would have otherwise never had the chance to.
But the thing was I also had some awful lows. I averaged maybe $500 a week income, and over the winter I made a grand total of $1000¹. The feature had more behind the scenes drama than what we put in front of the camera. That mini series? I walked off of it three days into production after almost getting hit by a car during an unannounced stunt. Those great friends I made? Only a couple of them ever tired to get me work or hired on the shoots they worked on while I constantly tried to get them hired on each and every job I worked. Finally, despite spending way too much money upgrading my camera package and being willing to almost work for free, I just couldn’t book DP² jobs and most of my work was as a Gaffer³.
The simple truth is — it was amazing to get the chance to chase my dreams, really go for what I want, really to get to live it but I’m getting too old to really start over and make a giant career switch, no matter how much I may want it.
Unfortunately it looks like my time working full time in film is over. Is it going to be over forever? I don’t know, all I know is that it is for now. I’ve cancalled all my subscriptions to film job boards and have been applying for and interviewing for full time jobs.
Part of me wants to get something part time so I can still kind of freelance while making a decent income but that just seems unrealistic and impossible with the way film works.
As for what’s next for me in film? I still want to make Reaper, Inc. and am hopeful that I’ll get the chance to. I’m telling myself I’ll still help friends on projects and do stuff on nights and weekends. I also keep telling myself I’ll have PTO and if something I really want to do comes up I’ll be able to. Finally and lastly I keep telling myself that l’ll be back to film full time within a year or so, this is just a temporary detour, and that I’m just going to spend the time making a few spec commercials, write a couple of features, and maybe a short or two of my own.
The harsh truth is I don’t know if any of that is going to happen. While I’m not ready to sell everything and quit cold turkey, I’m not quite ready to admit that I probably won’t be using most of the gear own enough to justify owning it.
I’m also not sure what exactly my “career” in film going forward looks like. The fact is I love it, I do, it’s what I’ve always wanted but it’s not as glamorous as I thought and at a certain point I have to accept I’m just getting too old to really try and that I did twice now, and for whatever reason (trying during two huge recessions, 2009, and 2021) it just wasn’t meant to be.
Maybe if things worked out differently, I were ten years younger, or my timing was better, or I was more talented, I or owned more and higher end gear, or — well — it really doesn’t matter at this point. A post mortem is only going to tell me so much at this point when the cold hard truth is I made about 28k at age 35 and didn’t see myself being able to even reach 60k⁴ doing it within the next few years. Eventually you need to plan for the days you can’t work anymore or don’t want to. The brass tax is I’m too old and too educated to make almost no money and would like to retire someday, so back to programming it is.
The thing that really really hurts after this — (let’s say) sabbatical — from real life is that I think deep down, somewhere, I knew that it wasn’t going to work out and I only had maybe a year at it. I painfully wanted to end my full-time freelance career with a DP gig for a director who really wanted to take the time to make it right, to make it perfect. I wanted to go out with a bang, prove to myself and the world, even if it was just once, that I am talented and good at this, even if things didn’t quite pan out.
As it stands though the likely last “big”⁵ project I’ll do as a full time freelancer is gaffing a low budget short over a weekend⁶ with full gear for a DP who always tries to get me hired⁷ on the stuff he shoots at $250 a day⁸. Somehow that just feels fitting.
The major question I have after all this that I’m left pondering is —
At what point is a dream nothing more than a dream?
[1]: Why didn’t I take freelance programming jobs or drive Uber? I didn’t drive Uber because of Covid. I didn’t take programming jobs because I just mentally couldn’t.
[2]: There were two separate feature films that I gave a very low rate for as DP, was told the job was mine, and then wound up not getting.
[3]: I have no problem with being a gaffer or people who are gaffers, its a hard job that requires a lot of talent and skill. I don’t hate it, but it’s mostly manual labor and the work (and rates) I could book, wasn’t worth the effort.
[4]: I don’t think 60k is a bad income, it’s just not what it used to be and when your working 60 hour weeks it’s a lot bleaker.
[5]: For me anyway.
[6]: Nights and weekends right?
[7]: Thank you!
[8]: He doesn’t have much say over the rates.
