Getting Paid to Make Magic

Branded content may not be the reason any of us got into production, however, we're still getting paid to basically make magic every day. A crew shows up to an empty room and by lunch there is a world in it. Somebody sits down nervous in front of a lens and an hour later says the truest thing they have said all year. A pile of clips becomes a story. That is the job.

The aspiration and the day job

It is easy to have an aspiration in mind. Documentary. Narrative storytelling, feature or TV. Animation. Whatever the thing is that made you pick up a camera or open a timeline in the first place. Most of us have one, and most of us are not working on it today. What we are doing is using our greatest skills and talents, daily, to support ourselves. And they are the same skills. The framing, the lighting, the listening in an interview, the sense of exactly when a cut should land. The corporate piece and the film you want to make draw from the same well.

Let's not pretend it's all magic

We can all agree we're not always exercising our creative muscles. A lot of this work can feel rote, repetitive, and a little trite next to what you aspire to get paid to do. Nobody is taking the safety training module to a festival. That is real, and pretending otherwise is just dishonest.

But if we can take some perspective, there is a lot of gratitude we can and should have for what we're currently doing.

Two doors

The thing I keep having to remind myself is the other door for people who really love this craft is probably some sort of shiftwork in an industry that's not this one. So, those of us who can make a living doing this type of production are still among the minority of people who would trade their day job in an instant for the ability to pay their bills doing this. They are out there shooting weddings on weekends, cutting spec spots at midnight, saving up for a camera. We are on the other side of the door they are trying to get through, and we got here by doing the very work it is fashionable to complain about.

Ambition clouds the view

I often let my ambition and my passion cloud my vision for what is right in front of me. Though the project on my desk today is not the one I would pitch, I still have a person who trusted me with their story. A client spending real money on the belief that we can bring their vision to life and a crew that is going to turn an empty room into a world by lunch. Take the ego out of it, that's freaking awesome.

For that I am grateful. And I want to try harder to remain grateful even when I'm nine revisions deep on an edit that I'm having trouble staying awake through because I'm so personally uninterested in the content. Especially then. That is the moment the perspective is for.

The ones for the meals

This is a note to myself as much as it is to anyone. Production is fun. We get paid to make magic. If we never get to that pot we've envisioned is at the end of our aspirational rainbow, it is especially important to remember that on the boring days, the ones for the meals. Because the 'boring days' are the ones that let us keep doing what we were born to do.

If you want to make something with people who still think this is the best job there is, let's talk. Or have a look at the work and judge for yourself whether it looks like fun.