What, Me Worry?
AKA Highs and Lows
AKA I spoke too soon, maybe.
I started this blog to chronicle my experience producing Reaper, Inc.¹ and as things go it’s transformed into something much more than that. It’s became a place where I do post mortems’ and dive fairly deep into my thought process on important projects² and decisions I make.
I haven’t yet taken a full time job. I’ve interviewed for a couple, done a couple of second interviews but no coding tests or offers yet. I should be down about that but I’m not. It looks like I may have spoken a bit too soon in my last post. I probably should delete it but at the time of writing it though it was what was going on in my head and it was/would have been/still could be a massive change for me and my relationship to film. Beside’s I’m actually really proud of my writing there too.
While I’m not exactly sure what changed between then now and now³ it’s really and thankfully starting to look and feel like, for the first time since I quit my job on a lark, film is going to work out the way I want it to and actually be a viable career choice. While I’m not fully out of the woodwork yet, I’m close, really close to it. It also looks like I’ll hit my financial goals for the year, and then some, but theres still time for it to go either way.
Before I went freelance full time in film I watched (and I still sometimes do) vlogs/youtube videos about freelancing full time and a lot of people warn you to look out for and be prepared for the highs and lows. Many people warned me to be careful of reading into either too much and no matter what you do understand that both will pass and don’t let the lows effect you negativity too much.
While the highs are different for each person, the lows are largely the same:
You are not booking anything, haven’t booked anything in awhile, and you don’t think you’ll ever work again.
I ignored this advice thinking I’m fairly mentally tough and I’ll be okay regardless of what happens.
Clearly I was wrong.
I let the lows really get to me and really get me down and I shouldn’t have. I need to get better on navigating it. I need to get better on allowing the lows causing me to lash out and over complain about things out of my control to people who had no control over it either⁴. I need to get better about not getting so depressed when I’m in somewhat of a dry spell. I’m working on it. I’m working on being more positive and grateful.
I wish I could say I let the highs hit me the same way but they didn’t. Maybe it was just the projects I was on that lead to those highs had their — let’s say — issues or maybe or it was something else entirely but it doesn’t matter. The highs didn’t match the lows. They are going to though. And I think soon.
I don’t know what exactly happened or changed but in the time since writing my last post but out of the blue I managed to book (in order) an ultra low budget indie feature, and 3 commercials with the feeling that there will be a fair amount more where that came from.
While the commercials where on the smaller side⁵ they were for some really big well known brands.
The feature? It has talent in it from one of my favorite movies of all time and is eighteen days of paid work⁶.
You know the really ironic part of it all though?
I kind of regret taking that feature.
But you can only make choices based on the data you have. I should have chanced it in the hopes for something bigger (commercials or other) would come along. At the time I booked it it wasn’t like things could get that much worse.
Anyway till next time.
1: Hopefully soon. Or at least ever.
2: I suppose I should write about the first feature film I worked on (Not Bradman) as a department head staring named talent. If I do I’ll update this post but it would be hard to write too deeply about it without breaking my NDA.
3: I have some very good theories. None of which I’ll write about though, sorry.
4: I’m actually pretty embarrassed about this. If you were one of those people I spoke to/lashed out to and happen to read this, I’m truely sorry. You know who you are.
5: I swear I’m not at all complaining.
6: At a low(er) rate but still work is work and money is money.
