One of the hardest things in the world of film making is the dreaded tech mishap. I woke up this morning, early for me, only to find my laptop not turning on. The laptop with all the footage of my latest skit on it. As well as the script for the next skit and the first chapter for the new issue of Warzone Tales.
It is beyond stressful and can really knock you off your game sometimes. But I think I managed to fix it. It only cost me like a half hour of my time. Sometimes stuff likes this makes you want to scream. But you can't allow events like this to hold you down. You have to shake it off and figure out how to do what needs to be done, even with the setbacks in place. That is part of what makes someone a great director. P.S. I fixed my laptop, thank God!
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Sometimes you wake up in the morning and just feel blah. You don't have any energy or inspiration to make anything. But and this is the important thing, you can't let that stop you from making stuff.
It is easy to write, film, edit, or do anything else you want to do when you feel that burst of inspiration. That isn't what builds your voice and your craft. In order to do that, you have to be able to create inspiration for yourself. There are many different ways to do that, and they are different for everyone, you just have to find the ones that work for you. The two ways that always seem to work for me is to A) just do it. Write, film, whatever. Once I start the ideas start flowing and more and more ideas come faster and faster. I just have to force myself to put those first words down, or to film that first shot and the rest just builds on that momentum. The second trick I have is to go out into the world. Go hang out with your friends, go on an adventure. It doesn't have to be something crazy, just something fun. Put yourself out there into the world and let real life inspire you. Because let's be honest, nothing in the world of fiction is as crazy and unbelievable as the shit you see in the real world. I hope no one out there ever lets the real world tear you down. I believe in you guys. As I get older I start to see how pointless the pursuit of success is. Or at least what I use to think of as success. All I ever wanted was to be in the limelight, have fame and money, now I wanted that so I could fund my own projects. That has always been my main goal, to write and create worlds, and in order to do that, well you need money, or at least people who will give you money. So that is what I went after. But that is backwards. You don't chase the rewards so you can do the art. You chase the art and hope that the rewards come.
It's a hard thing to understand when you live paycheck to paycheck. When money is needed for simple things like rent and food. But going after your goals, without stressing about the outcome is the only way to feel truly happy. If only the world worked like that. Most of us aren't that lucky. We have to find ways to make ends meet while we work at our craft, knowing that the odds of us achieving our goals are stacked against us. It makes me miss being a child, when you could work at it, without having to worry about what will come out of it. As we get older, that freedom vanishes and we are forced to deal with the pressures of the real world. I'm not sure what made me write this today, just some thoughts that were rolling through my head. There is a path to making the art you want and making a living. I just haven't found it yet. The goal is to find it. Pure and simple. I hope all of you do the same. Till next time, Give Us Legends! Do you ever think about what the future holds? Go for long walks and think about how you want your life to turn out? Sometimes I think I spend far too much time doing that. On the other hand it helps motivate me. Even when I start to feel down and question if I am on the right path, my long walks thinking about how I want my life to turn out keep me going. Motivates me to double down and try harder. To keep working towards my goals no matter what.
Lately I've been talking to friends who have opinions that I just can't understand and I can't help but wonder if these long walks are the reasons why. I have one friends who is of the viewpoint that when you feel down you can't pull yourself out of the funk on your own. A notion that I find downright scary. The thought that you need someone else, or something else in order to feel happy. Happiness doesn't come from outside, it comes from inside. It is something you work and strive for. It's a state of being that you have to decide to want. And you have to want it so bad that you move heaven and earth to find it. You don't always make it, but the effort is apart of life, and no one ever said life was easy. That brings us to what my other friend said. That happiness doesn't exist. It is not a real thing and no one is ever happy. What a sad thought, one that I don't believe, nor can I understand how anyone could. If you look for things in life to ruin your mood, or make you unhappy you will find it. The world is a dark cruel place, no one is saying otherwise, but there is also a lot of beauty in the world if you look hard enough. They say when you are single all you see are people in relationships, and when you are in a relationship all you see is single people. There is a reason for this, and it is not that everyone is the opposite of you, you damn egotistical maniac. It's because we as a species have this crazy notion stuck in our heads that the grass is always greener on the other side. Add that to the fact that brain finds whatever we are looking for, even if we don't consciously know we are looking for it. I guess what I'm getting at is, if you believe that you can't be happy on your own, if at all, than you are right. If on the other hand, you believe that you can find happiness inside of yourself, than you are also right. It is all what you choose to believe. Choose happiness, you'll be glad you did. Sleep has never been something that makes a lot of sense to me. When I sleep for 3 or 4 hours I feel wide awake. Like I can do anything in the world. When I sleep 6-8 hours I wake up with horrible headaches and feel like I'm going to die. Why is sleep so confusing and complicated? Or is it just me?
I used to wake up after 4 hours, now I'm lucky if I wake up before 10 hours. Maybe I should invest in an alarm or something, because this is getting ridiculous. I'm going to have to start looking into ways of sleeping shorter amounts of time so I feel more awake, which just saying out loud makes me feel crazy. But alas, that is where I'm at in my life at this moment. Am I the only one who has such a messed up relationship with sleep? For the longest time I obsessed over working nonstop on every project I had in front of me. Whenever I would go hang out with friends or read, or play games I would stress out. Like really stress out. All I would be able to think about was all the work I wasn't doing. It made my life a lot harder than it needed to be and let me miss out on a lot of good times that I should have enjoyed more.
There was another added drawback. It became harder and harder for me to come out with story ideas. The problem was I was burning through all the ideas I had. I needed new experiences in order to continue being creative. I started going out with friends and attempted to live in the moment. As I did so, I started to overflow with ideas again. It was a reawakening for me. Sometimes in order to create you have to take a step back and have fun. It's a hard lesson, but one I needed to learn. I read something yesterday that really bothered me. I couldn't figure it out at first why it bothered me so much, but the more I thought about it, the more it dawned on me. We are moving backwards. Without getting to into everything that is going on with R. Kelly, back in the early 00's, Dave Chappelle did a skit on his show called I wanna piss on you. It was a parody, used to mock not only what R. Kelly did, but the people who were supporting him. It was, in short, a social commentary.
Now in light of the new doc-series on R. Kelly, people are condemning the skit for it's support of R. Kelly. It was a skit that used comedy to shed light on the issue and make people think, yet now people view it as support for the act itself. That speaks volumes about where we are headed as a society and it scares me. More and more we seem to lose our basic understand of context and why it matters. Humor is an important tool for dealing with ills of the world, if we remove that from our tool box we are lost. In the name of progress we are marching back to an age of censorship. We need to be able to understand the difference between the people spreading hate and the people shinning light on it. But in an age where people dig through each others past in an attempt to destroy their lives, I fear we may have already gone too far down the rabbit hole. I hope I'm wrong, but only time will tell. So, life is hard sometimes. Hard, as in, not easy. It's been almost a week now and I've gotten nothing done, well the Christmas Pod, but that had other people that were coming. I couldn't get out of it without admitting to people how I've been feeling. It's a weird feeling, one that I have never felt before.
I have no moral. No will to do anything. Not just work, but also read, watch TV, hang out with friends. I don't want to do anything. It all just seems so hollow. So empty. I can't explain it, except to say, it isn't me. It's not who I have always been, nor who I want to be. I'm trying to find my way back into world, back to my old self. I guess I just have to take it one day at a time. One task at a time. The last time I felt this way I forced myself to film some skits and film a movie that I still need to edit. But it worked. It made me feel human again. So that is my goal, to do the work that I've always wanted to do until I enjoy it again. Until I can wake up in the morning and feel joy, like I use to when I was younger. Before the world beat me down. I've always been of the belief that when the world knocks you down, you have to get back up. No matter how hard it is, or how much you want to stay down. You can't let life beat you because there is no second chance. You have to make every day count, even when all you want to do is crawl under the bed and vanish. That is something I am trying to remind myself. A philosophy that I will strive to live by every single day, even more so on the days when I want to do anything but. Today we lost a true icon. A man who gave us so much. He built a whole world that has gone on to inspire each and every one of us in one form or another. Not since William Shakespeare have we seen someone who created such a wide range of characters that speak so powerfully to the human condition. Characters like Spider-Man, while possessing amazing abilities, is one of the most human characters put to page. He deals with ups and downs, wins and losses. Just as each and everyone of us goes through in our lives. He is a reflection of us.
That is what Stan Lee did. He created real world situations and hid them inside of fantastical stories. Much in the same way that Gene Roddenberry did with Star Trek. It let us reflect not only on our lives, but the state of the world without having to address it head on. That is the mark of a great writer, and you would be hard pressed to find anyone with the talent he possessed. If that was all he had going for him that would have been enough, but he was not only a great writer, but a great man. He was one of the nicest people that I have ever had the good fortune of meeting. He made you feel special, like what you said had importance, even when you were just some 13 year old kid. A large part of who I am today I learned from not only his stories, but also from the old Stan Soapboxes. He had a platform that he built in an industry that was looked down upon and mocked and he used it to speak about issues that were important. He knew that with great power must come great responsibility and in acting on that knowledge he passed that mindset onto so many young people who would grow up to be better people because of his messages. The older I get, the more jaded I become. You see so often what an ugly place this world can be, but when I look at the picture I was lucky enough to get with him, it always reminds me that there are people in this world who are good. Who do care. That power and influence doesn't always corrupt us. That maybe there is hope for mankind. Thank you for everything Stan "The Man" Lee! Excelsior! So I've been thinking about going back to doing Jon's Corner once a week, if for no other reason to give me more time to work on other projects. It's been taking up a lot of my time. I do love doing them, but I have an ever growing to-do list.
On another note, I just watched mid-90's and it is the greatest movie ever! |
AuthorJonathan Gutheinz vents about everything under the sun. Archives
August 2022
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