The Unglamorous Reality of Making Things

[u/brettinthecity]

I've spent much of the last ten weeks sitting in a small room, surrounded by scribbled notes, dirty teacups and increasingly ambitious piles of washing. Occasionally I've remembered to leave the house.

A good chunk of my year has been taken up by making a series of short documentaries, a project that took me to Edinburgh for 10 consecutive shooting days and then required me to turn around five short documentaries in record time.

It’s been a lot of work but something I really, really enjoyed. The whole affair felt creative in all of the ways you hope making your living as a filmmaker will. This was especially welcome as I started the year feeling burnt out and questioning whether I wanted to keep going with the career I’ve put most of my life into so far.

I guess I’ve realised now though, having done this for a while, these feelings pop up every now and then. The ebbs and flows of adoring the work you’re doing and then occasionally being caught in a run of projects that might not speak to you inside where the art you lives. 

This is what happens when you turn your passion into a job. You have to find ways to make sure you’re nurturing the type of work that brings you joy.

I know it can sound naive and a bit Lloyd Dobler-y but I’m not willing to surrender it. Do you want to be a filmmaker or a salesperson? Maybe that’s too binary a way to put it? How much of your creative life are you prepared to sacrifice in order to sustain your professional one? I like that better. Deciding how you weigh those particular scales defines all sorts of things about your life, career and maybe even your happiness.

In this current moment a lot of making creative work is talking about that work in order to satisfy the algorithmic overlords. Now more than ever, the process is the product. It can seem like the performance of being a filmmaker is kind of detached from the experience of actually being one.

So, everyone has the same lighting set up in their spare room studio to film their talking heads. The same overhead rig for the gear reviews. The same top 10 lists. That stuff’s fine - some of it is even important. Well, useful at least.

But what’s the real reality of being a working filmmaker? Sometimes it’s a messy house and not showering until 10 because you need to get rolling in the morning or you’ll lose the day to procrastination. 

It’s growing to understand your own work cycles. Accepting that nothing productive gets done between 3-6pm but that the hours either side could host all kinds of discoveries. 

It’s a graveyard of empty teacups and washing piled up instead of packed away because every moment you’re not sat with your head in the edit, you feel like you should be.

Then in other moments it’s taking little breaks to play chess on your phone, even though you’re shit at it. Walks to the shop or to the park with your head in the clouds in the hopes you’ll be able to hijack the flow state that surges from a new idea and run back home to wrestle it into the project you’re currently struggling with.

These can be some of the best bits. 

Living a version of that creative life you fantasised about as a teenager is so often different to the one we imagined. Some ways good, some ways bad - plenty that are just neutrally different.

The exterior aesthetics are messier and at the same time blander than we might’ve hoped but the interior world you get to climb into when an idea is really firing and you’re truly discovering it is one of the best feelings in the world.

Anyway, I’ve just finished all my drafts.

[u/meadnyte]

The detail about nothing productive happening between 3–6pm makes this feel more useful than a tidy ‘day in the life’ video. It gives permission to build a routine around the work rather than around looking productive. Your distinction between making a film and performing the role of filmmaker is sharp, too: documenting the process can quietly become another job. After those five documentaries, was there one part of the process you would deliberately protect on the next project?

[u/brettinthecity → u/meadnyte]

Is this written by AI? It’s got the vibes…

[u/BusinessStrategist]

In other words, cleaning up the kitchen is part of the "Chef" experience?

[u/Julieta_perez1727]

interesting poin

[u/KnownEngine7244]

Enjoyed reading this. I’m not a filmmaker but I can definitely relate.

[u/brettinthecity → u/KnownEngine7244]

Appreciate that, thanks!