Jumping Off the Cliff
Confessions from a Transcendental Story-teller
It’s scary being a writer and a filmmaker. Every word, every phrase, or idea you put down on a blank piece of paper and on the screen determines whether you sink to the depths of true depression or rise to the levels of full salvation. You write and film for yourself, but you also do it for others and if you slave away for months on something that ends up sucking…Oh well. You’ll have to start from scratch, no matter how hard it hurts.
Choosing to be a writer and a filmmaker is really like stepping off a cliff because you want nothing more than to magically fly but as everyone knows magic isn’t real so you have to put an enormous amount of time and energy in it just to figure out how to stay afloat.
Often times this means getting a half-ass job because a real career is too time-consuming. And with shitty jobs comes with shitty wages and shitty wages means you’ll never get a real girlfriend or be able to get out of town for a week or two. You might have a fling here and there, but you’ll never have a serious relationship, let alone a real life because the truth is…No one will ever take you seriously.
The people around will think you’re crazy or stupid as though you really are jumping off a cliff. And maybe you can spread your wings and really fly if you work hard enough to figure it out. But, until then everyone around you will tell you to give up and find a real job. And if you don’t, you’ll be casted as the crazy one in just about every social occasion. So, I guess the real question on every writer and filmmakers mind is…How do you avoid this kind of life? What’s the secret to success in this field?
I suppose it lies in asking the right questions, first.
I mean, what do writers and filmmakers do? What is our purpose and, how do we even achieve what we want to achieve? I can only guess because the truth is, I’m still trying to figure it out myself. I’ve only REALLY been writing and filmmaking for two years. Before, I just did it for therapeutic purposes. I’d scribble something down from time to time, shoot a couple things with my brother on and off but, I’d never actually finish anything.
It was fun and relaxing not something that felt like a life’s journey. There wasn’t any pressure and people didn’t think you were nuts. It’s when I really got into it though, that’s when I realized how high the emotional and physical stakes could be.
Today, I find myself in a sea of madness and heartache, but I also find myself slowly coming to terms with the reality of writing and filmmaking and understanding what it means to be good at it.
Ultimately, I find that developing an overarching point to a story is kind of the point of doing the profession in the first place. Adding in that deeper meaning enhances anything you do with writing and film because deep down inside, we’re all watching films to process and understand the times that we’re living in. That’s why we always re-make films like the Great Gatsby or Batman because we always want to watch something that reflects our World.
That’s why for me, a good story and a good film is something that’s both entertaining and enlightening. They’re highly visual mediums that evoke themes that are relevant to our time and maybe even a few steps ahead of what’s relevant, today. You want someone to walk away from your story and continue to question what they just saw.
You don’t want to just give them answers. Rather, you want to give them more questions to ponder on because ultimately you want your audience to go home and question everything they’ve come to know about the World so that they can re-define it for themselves.
You want to drive them to discover; drive them towards self-actualization so that they can grow from the experience of watching your films. In the end, you want your audience to understand the times that they are living in so that they can better deal with the problems they face. That’s why you create the overarching point, which is so often forgotten in modern-day stories. It’s like we’re making soup, but forgetting to add in all the spices. You can certainly live without it but, the experience is so empty and unfulfilling, just like our stores, today.
But that’s only half the equation because you still have to entertain. That’s why you have to shroud your overarching point in glamour and excitement. You need to create interesting and offbeat drama. You need conflict and comedy; symbols and strong characters. You need it all because you want to entertain and you want teach at the same time. They say those who don’t do, teach. Well, I believe that those who can’t teach or do simply write. There’s always a little bit of a teacher inside all writers even if it’s not our primary objective.
Of course, maybe I’m wrong. After all, I can only understand what’s going on inside me. Everything else outside my eyes is nothing more than the compilation of sensory inputs that feed me information about what could be out there. So everything I wrote above is simply my truth of what a good story is. Some of you will agree and others will say that it’s a bunch of hogwash because the truth about good storytelling is that it’s much more complicated than any one individual’s paradigm.
So maybe I am wrong about everything. Maybe storytelling is nothing more than a way to entertain so as to stave off boredom in a time of stagnation…at least in the West. But, maybe there’s more to it. Maybe the whole point is to help ourselves understand a reality that transcends beyond what lies inside the individual mind. And maybe that’s at the heart of being successful in a field that’s often chaotic and ruinous to people’s livelihoods.
I don’t know and to be honest, I don’t think anyone really knows. But we always have to try. We always have to seek to push the envelope just a little bit further. We always have to strive to transcend beyond what we thought we knew about the World around us and this is especially true for us in this age of uncertainty.
The future is unknown but, looks very bleak. There aren’t a lot of answers to the problems we’re facing so that’s why refining the way we tell stories has never been more important than today. We need a better understanding of things, which means we need better points to our stories.
So for those of you who have taken the great leap off the cliff…I wish you good luck. Hopefully your truth in film will be something that addresses the problems instead of avoiding them. No matter how you do it.
Confessions from a Transcendental Story-teller
It’s scary being a writer and a filmmaker. Every word, every phrase, or idea you put down on a blank piece of paper and on the screen determines whether you sink to the depths of true depression or rise to the levels of full salvation. You write and film for yourself, but you also do it for others and if you slave away for months on something that ends up sucking…Oh well. You’ll have to start from scratch, no matter how hard it hurts.
Choosing to be a writer and a filmmaker is really like stepping off a cliff because you want nothing more than to magically fly but as everyone knows magic isn’t real so you have to put an enormous amount of time and energy in it just to figure out how to stay afloat.
Often times this means getting a half-ass job because a real career is too time-consuming. And with shitty jobs comes with shitty wages and shitty wages means you’ll never get a real girlfriend or be able to get out of town for a week or two. You might have a fling here and there, but you’ll never have a serious relationship, let alone a real life because the truth is…No one will ever take you seriously.
The people around will think you’re crazy or stupid as though you really are jumping off a cliff. And maybe you can spread your wings and really fly if you work hard enough to figure it out. But, until then everyone around you will tell you to give up and find a real job. And if you don’t, you’ll be casted as the crazy one in just about every social occasion. So, I guess the real question on every writer and filmmakers mind is…How do you avoid this kind of life? What’s the secret to success in this field?
I suppose it lies in asking the right questions, first.
I mean, what do writers and filmmakers do? What is our purpose and, how do we even achieve what we want to achieve? I can only guess because the truth is, I’m still trying to figure it out myself. I’ve only REALLY been writing and filmmaking for two years. Before, I just did it for therapeutic purposes. I’d scribble something down from time to time, shoot a couple things with my brother on and off but, I’d never actually finish anything.
It was fun and relaxing not something that felt like a life’s journey. There wasn’t any pressure and people didn’t think you were nuts. It’s when I really got into it though, that’s when I realized how high the emotional and physical stakes could be.
Today, I find myself in a sea of madness and heartache, but I also find myself slowly coming to terms with the reality of writing and filmmaking and understanding what it means to be good at it.
Ultimately, I find that developing an overarching point to a story is kind of the point of doing the profession in the first place. Adding in that deeper meaning enhances anything you do with writing and film because deep down inside, we’re all watching films to process and understand the times that we’re living in. That’s why we always re-make films like the Great Gatsby or Batman because we always want to watch something that reflects our World.
That’s why for me, a good story and a good film is something that’s both entertaining and enlightening. They’re highly visual mediums that evoke themes that are relevant to our time and maybe even a few steps ahead of what’s relevant, today. You want someone to walk away from your story and continue to question what they just saw.
You don’t want to just give them answers. Rather, you want to give them more questions to ponder on because ultimately you want your audience to go home and question everything they’ve come to know about the World so that they can re-define it for themselves.
You want to drive them to discover; drive them towards self-actualization so that they can grow from the experience of watching your films. In the end, you want your audience to understand the times that they are living in so that they can better deal with the problems they face. That’s why you create the overarching point, which is so often forgotten in modern-day stories. It’s like we’re making soup, but forgetting to add in all the spices. You can certainly live without it but, the experience is so empty and unfulfilling, just like our stores, today.
But that’s only half the equation because you still have to entertain. That’s why you have to shroud your overarching point in glamour and excitement. You need to create interesting and offbeat drama. You need conflict and comedy; symbols and strong characters. You need it all because you want to entertain and you want teach at the same time. They say those who don’t do, teach. Well, I believe that those who can’t teach or do simply write. There’s always a little bit of a teacher inside all writers even if it’s not our primary objective.
Of course, maybe I’m wrong. After all, I can only understand what’s going on inside me. Everything else outside my eyes is nothing more than the compilation of sensory inputs that feed me information about what could be out there. So everything I wrote above is simply my truth of what a good story is. Some of you will agree and others will say that it’s a bunch of hogwash because the truth about good storytelling is that it’s much more complicated than any one individual’s paradigm.
So maybe I am wrong about everything. Maybe storytelling is nothing more than a way to entertain so as to stave off boredom in a time of stagnation…at least in the West. But, maybe there’s more to it. Maybe the whole point is to help ourselves understand a reality that transcends beyond what lies inside the individual mind. And maybe that’s at the heart of being successful in a field that’s often chaotic and ruinous to people’s livelihoods.
I don’t know and to be honest, I don’t think anyone really knows. But we always have to try. We always have to seek to push the envelope just a little bit further. We always have to strive to transcend beyond what we thought we knew about the World around us and this is especially true for us in this age of uncertainty.
The future is unknown but, looks very bleak. There aren’t a lot of answers to the problems we’re facing so that’s why refining the way we tell stories has never been more important than today. We need a better understanding of things, which means we need better points to our stories.
So for those of you who have taken the great leap off the cliff…I wish you good luck. Hopefully your truth in film will be something that addresses the problems instead of avoiding them. No matter how you do it.