Ep. 95 - Approaching Your Career Like a Passionate Hobbyist

Speaker 1: 0:34

Hi, welcome to the podcast Today. We're going to keep it pretty short, but we want to talk about what the process looks like of going from making films as a hobby and why that mentality of doing it as a hobby is important early on to, eventually, where you've built up assets that you can live off of and have a career, if that's what you want.

Speaker 2: 0:57

Yeah, for me this was kind of a paradigm shift, even just somewhat recently, where we've kind of grown from film students and film lovers to film wedding filmmakers and like video makers and then commercial filmmakers and music video make. You know it's like and then you're just doing whatever you can to just get paid to do it, because you're kind of pursuing it as a career. But then eventually we started to try and focus on passion projects as a way out and then recently made the shift to full-time feature narrative filmmaking, feature length, and so that's kind of quote-unquote the dream. But it's still like a little scary, right, because we haven't made like retirement level money from a movie or anything like that. It's not like our deal-making abilities as producers are secure, that we have like a first look deal with paramount.

Speaker 2: 1:53

So a lot of people are like what does that look like? What does it mean when you've made it? What is that whatever? And I think so. I think the paradigm shifted a little bit for me when I kind of realized that no single movie has to like explode your financial fortunes in order for you to become a full-time feature filmmaker. It also doesn't need to do that to. You don't need to have any movies that are like massive blockbusters or get paid like a director's fee or a writer's fee of like seven plus figures to to make that happen either. Um, but rather this idea of like building assets as a paradigm in terms of like something you can focus on doing habitually and over a long term, so that you don't get burnt out and feel like you have to give up because you still haven't made that movie that's grossed $100 million.

Speaker 1: 2:46

Yeah, absolutely, and every movie that you make contributes to your progress and continues to contribute to that significantly over time as you build this collection of films. Some of them will keep making money, some of them won't make any money, some of them will maybe make a lot of money, who knows. And then eventually I mean we haven't made any money yet off of our film because it isn't distributed yet it's not publicly released.

Speaker 1: 3:13

But we are getting paid to make the next films that we're making. So we have that that we're living off of too. So that's the assets. Eventually we realize we'll be bringing in money that we can. You know it, it adds up. Even if it's just a few thousand or ten thousand a year if you get a few films doing that, eventually that's like an average salary for some people yeah, well, it depends on.

Speaker 2: 3:38

Yeah, but like one of the things that kind of made me think this way and it wasn't something like I'd never heard of this happening. I mean, we know this happens with all pretty much any movie is that it's an asset that lasts way longer than its theatrical box office run, if it has a theatrical run at all. It generates a certain amount of money every year, and some movies I really think that the definition of a hit shouldn't really be did it multiply on its budget within the first few weeks of being in theaters. I really think that we need to start thinking of a hit as something that generates revenue year after year after year and from that that definition like it doesn't have to be like a massive classic. Not that I'm saying we shouldn't aspire to make the greatest movies we possibly can or the goodest movies you don't need to confine that window of success to the first few weeks of its release.

Speaker 2: 4:32

Yes, and so we were talking to someone who I won't mention the names just for the sake of anonymity, but he mentioned a film that is called mom's night out, which is a movie I was somewhat familiar with, I think in terms of I'd seen a trailer. I I was aware of the existence of this film, but I've I've never watched it. I don't really want to watch it. I probably will never watch it. Um, that's just because I don't. There's a bazillion movies out in the world and I'm not going to watch them all. That's just my preference. But that movie apparently, is still bringing in for the person that I've spoken, with six figures every year, a six-figure check every year, a six-figure check every year, and I'm really surprised just to hear that. But it wasn't mind-blowing. But as I've thought about it in the subsequent weeks, it kind of helped me realize that if you make a movie, and maybe it just wasn't everything you dreamed it could be, that doesn't mean that it wasn't worth making. It's going to inform your next films, it's going to help you grow, like Anna said, but then it also helps you build a portfolio of assets, and I'm you know this isn't just becoming financially shrewd in the terms of like oh, just make movies, and you'll make movies without worrying too much about the money. Because in my opinion, when you've got assets that are bringing in that kind of revenue, then you just make the movie the best you can.

Speaker 2: 6:07

You could make no budget films If you don't want to raise money. You could make lower budget films If you do want to raise some money. You could make higher budget films If you want to take the time to really work your way into Hollywood and get millions of dollars to make a movie. But it enables you to do that because you're you're financially growing.

Speaker 2: 6:24

But in the meantime, you know, and I have about one and a half movies feature length done and a third one hot on its heels, and none of these are like starring a-list actors or major major. You know Hollywood studio deals involved and yet I'm realizing that we can sustain a life continuing to make movies that cost next to nothing or moderate budgets compared to what their expected returns are and what their relative value is compared to that budget, and just continue to grow those assets and learn, grow the scope of what we're able to create, as well as hone our skills as storytellers and artists yeah and I just just viewing it from that perspective of and that's just kind of where we're starting to get to, but everyone's different.

Speaker 2: 7:24

You might still be in that phase where you're like I'm just happy to be paying rent and make anything at all. Or I just barely bought my first camera, you know like, and it's like this tiny little hybrid mirrorless thing with like I don't have all the gear I need or whatever, and it's like, well, it doesn't really matter, like you just keep pushing forward and scrounging your resources and making long form content or short form content. If you're at that phase, you can create sort of a habitual approach to your filmmaking where it's like I just make movies and as you keep doing that, you'll survive because of your creative output and your faith that that will turn into financial input.

Speaker 1: 8:04

Yeah, I think that the reason I think it's so nice to start out as a hobbyist, even if you know you want to be a professional in this industry, is that the mindset's very different and I think that people who go in knowing that they want to be professional filmmakers and make a living off of their films might be expecting too much at the beginning to really make something good that's actually going to move them forward. For example, when you engage in a hobby, you know that you're doing it because you love it, because it's fun. You will pay money often to engage in your hobby, to get the materials you need to participate in that hobby.

Speaker 1: 8:47

Like if your hobby is painting you believe there are other people out there who also love doing it just for the love of it or music whatever, yeah, some of these things cost money or no money?

Speaker 2: 8:57

yeah, running sports like you'll pay money for your equipment, for your team, but it's not expensive, it's mostly for fun and it's for your soul, your body, you know, your, your relationships and there's not expensive, it's mostly for fun and it's for your soul, if anything to my life.

Speaker 1: 9:14

But I have a day job, I have a stable way of providing for myself and I'm not going to quit everything and just try to make money as a professional. I don't know basketball player when I'm brand new at basketball, or maybe I have a little bit of experience at basketball.

Speaker 2: 9:45

And you know, what's so funny is that, like so many people play sports or basketball or go running, even because of its intrinsic value, they just want to be in the act of doing that thing. It has intrinsic reward. And so few people think that's possible with film, because everyone says that film is an expensive medium. But really, in 2024, is film that expensive of a medium? If a smartphone is too expensive for you, then maybe you're right, but most of us have smartphones and most of us have brains and most of us have like a word processor, right, like we have Google docs or pens and paper, and so, if you have those tools can shoot, you can edit and you can more more important than any of that, right, and I think so many of us like. But I need huge crews, I need so many resources. I want to make these big fantasy films.

Speaker 2: 10:40

Um, you know, there are a lot of people telling even high concept fantasy stories for little to no money, because they're either 2d animating or stop motion animating. Um, and you might think I don't have those skills. Well, most stop motion animators start as hobbyists, because every little boy or little girl has a box of legos or a pile of clay. That's how I started. I bought clay from hobby lobbyby as a preteen. It was not financially restrictive and so, like you can tell these stories, but that's only if you have stories to tell. And I think that's the part that we all forget is that we want to be directing, we want to be, we want to be shooting and editing and working with actors. It's so romantic, and yet do any of us want to come up with great ideas anymore? That costs nothing and that's joyful. Writing to me is as soul feeding as running or eating good food or having deep conversations with people I love.

Speaker 1: 11:37

Well, and the people who become best at something are doing it from that place of love and they don't forget that. I think that my son is our son's a good example. He's really into baseball right now. He's never played on a team we haven't. I mean, we may get him that for his birthday this fall, but he just took an interest in it.

Speaker 1: 11:56

He's not like I want to be a professional baseball player when I grow up, he just likes baseball. He plays with his friends at recess. He picked up a glove and a baseball at a yard sale and a hat for some random team, I don't even know what, and he plays it with his sister out on our back deck and with his friends when he can at recess and it's just like he is finding what he's looking for because he just loves it. So at the yard sale that's going to stand out to him oh, a baseball. I don't have like a real baseball. He was using like a little plastic, some other kind of ball for a while and now he has a real baseball and you know and a real glove, for that matter.

Speaker 1: 12:36

Yep and so, and he could hold himself back and say, well, I don't have like a professional jersey, I can't play baseball without the right clothes, or I don't have like a team or the right ball, or enough people, or whatever.

Speaker 2: 12:51

Or a sponsorship deal. You know it's like. You know you can just go endlessly, and yet he's like I will find a sphere and hit it with a stick and I will play by myself if I have to. He will throw the ball in the air and swing at it and miss all day. And yet he just romanticizes about baseball and he doesn't watch baseball on tv, he doesn't romanticize on it, like like stats or like baseball cards. He has like one baseball card, I think, and so like. Yeah, it just shows you that like baseball right now for him and this might change as he gets older has just completely intrinsic value. It has no extrinsic value. This idea of like this will make people like me or like it's for him, it's I, like it, it's fun yeah it's something I want to keep doing, and then, as soon as that's gone, it does.

Speaker 2: 13:45

It just becomes a chore. Or it becomes something you wish you weren't stuck in but it's always going to be better to or it becomes something you wish you weren't stuck in.

Speaker 1: 13:49

But it's always going to be better to pursue it from that place of love and not believing that it has to be professional, that it has to be a certain way, than for him to just sit and dream about it and not do anything with the resources he has. Like hitting a sphere with a stick is always going to be better than like sitting and dreaming about being a professional baseball player.

Speaker 1: 14:07

the stick is always going to be better than like sitting and dreaming about being a professional baseball player. So, in the same way, if you want to make movies for a career or just because you love it, moving forward with what you have to make, what you can right now, is always going to be better than sitting and dreaming about someday when I have tons of money and someday when I have all the resources and all the skills and all the people. Then I'm going to make this excellent film, and you never actually do take action that moves you towards that future. And so I think starting from a place of hobby is really nice because it's just like for fun.

Speaker 1: 14:40

When I have time I work on this and I do it with what I have because I love it, and eventually, if you keep doing a thing that you love, eventually it starts, you start to get good at it and that starts to become valuable and you share it with people and they start to engage and eventually you'll make something, or you'll be good enough at making things that people will pay you to make things, and maybe it's just that you make your first feature for really cheap with money. You can scrounge here and there with your friends. However you get it made. You make it this is how all the best do it and then you put it out there and maybe you make a huge profit. Maybe you don't, but you've made a film. And then you make another one and eventually you make ones that start to bring in money, and you can get to the point where you are making enough money off of this hobby that you could quit your day job and just do the hobby if you want to.

Speaker 2: 15:38

But it could also just be a hobby right, well, and does it lose any of its value if it is just a hobby? And does it lose any of its value if it is just a hobby? It shouldn't right, because the value is intrinsic. The value is sort of experiential or emotional or spiritual. It's not monetary necessarily when you're doing it for the love of it, which is kind of what you know. I learned the definition of the word amateur, uh, from francis or coppola, who talked about the rainmaker being his last film that he made for hollywood as a highly paid hollywood director.

Speaker 2: 16:16

And he said as opposed to an amateur, which is someone who does it for the love of it yeah speaking of which he's releasing a new movie that he spent 120 million of his own dollars on, which you know. Why don't you just go spend $120 million on your own movie?

Speaker 2: 16:29

You know, I guess, um, not all of us are Francis Ford Coppola, but and I hope it all works out for the best and that his movie is good the um, um. But I mean, if you want desperately to quit, whatever your current source of income is, um, this is still the best way is to just keep finding a sustainable, repetitive, habitual way to make film, and I think we might be, maybe Ann and I've been guilty of this in the past. But I think that I really appreciate a lot of Noam Kroll's thoughts on this topic in that he says, first of all, almost nobody who graduates from film school actually makes a feature film. Almost nobody who makes a feature film, even less make a second feature film. And he's like but right now I'm reading a book called Atomic Habits.

Speaker 2: 17:26

The more you do something, the more it informs a certain sense of identity in you, and so when you make a film, you start to say maybe I'm a filmmaker. And then you make another film and another, and then pretty soon you're like this is just who I am, this is what I do, and because you believe that about yourself, you just keep making movies. So thus the hobby, thus, thus the habit, thus this mentality of creating an identity for yourself of making films. Um, I think is really helpful to just take out that self-sabotage that's in your brain, that's keeping you from making films because you don't have enough experience, money, equipment, whatever it's like just or do, or to prevent doing something impulsive or rash or desperate, like people who actually do need to make money, who quit their day jobs and say I'm going to make feature films.

Speaker 1: 18:32

And then you become kind of desperate, like, oh, I need money because I have to eat, I have to make something good because I have to eat, and that pressure actually doesn't help your work. Instead of being motivated and fueled by love and passion, you're fueled by fear and pressure, and that desperation usually leads to bad decisions and people lose their homes and they lose their relationships and sometimes make really bad choices from that place.

Speaker 2: 18:57

Well, and everything you fear. If you operate out of that fear, you almost always guarantee that what you fear is going to eventually happen. Like I'm so scared I'm going to make a really bad movie and that no one's going to like it, and then you're going to make a movie out of that fear.

Speaker 1: 19:11

Well, what you focus on is what you create.

Speaker 2: 19:13

Yeah, exactly, and so it's. It's so inevitable, and so creating a system in which you can make movies fearlessly is going to be way better for you. Now we are sort of financially dependent on our working as feature-length filmmakers, and yet I still don't have to operate out of fear. I can. I still have the same job that that, you know, some of us who are still not full-time at this have, which is to make films out of a place of creativity and a place of love as opposed to a place of fear, and so I just have to have faith that I'm going to make another one, and I'm going to make another one after that, and if this one doesn't quite turn out, the next one might, and I'm just going to keep making movies, and that's fine. You know, if you're on tour, not every single night is going to be your best night, but you're going to do your best.

Speaker 1: 20:18

And it's super fun because, hey, hey, you're playing music and you love music because music is good for your soul and you love connecting with people. It's the same with movies. Well, and it was that way for us, even though it's hard to differentiate because we were freelancers. Doing film work, commercial film and event film, videography was not the dream, that was our day job, and so we did passion projects on the side, in our own free time. After we put our kids to bed, we would meet with our friends, we would write, we would plan these films and then eventually, we were able to set aside a couple of weeks and make our first feature. That took years to edit because we were doing the edit in our free time.

Speaker 1: 20:51

And now we're finally at a place where we can actually give it all our time to work on the features that we're doing, which is kind of the dream and we're not like big names or anything, but this is a dream for us to be able to do it we've figured out a system that creates enough value to keep our bills paid you know, know, yeah, it's just enough. Just enough to take care of our family and move forward.

Speaker 2: 21:16

Without a lot of surety. But the one piece of surety I've learned is that it's not a simple technique or a way to raise money or a certain network connection that helps me have a guy in my back pocket who keeps funding all my stuff. None of those things are the key. The key is to stay creative and to make this a habit so that I'm not scared. You know, like, just if I keep creating, the money will just come, but if I keep thinking I don't have enough, then I'm actually going to spend more money. Like I'm going to always think I need to spend more and buy more to be able to make, when really I need to make more to be able to spend.

Speaker 1: 22:04

I feel like consistency is maybe the highest indicator of success that I can think of. Even with practicing piano, practicing for a whole hour before my lesson once a week is not going to be nearly as effective as practicing for two minutes every single day leading up to that lesson.

Speaker 2: 22:22

Two minutes might be an extremely short amount of time, but even the same amount of time.

Speaker 1: 22:26

Let's say I did an hour total, but it was spread out across a week versus in one chunk, and doing it spread out is more effective.

Speaker 2: 22:37

And to your point. Some people might say well, you can't just make movies for an hour or two a day. And I will beg to differ, because we have made a feature film, for the most part about an hour or two a day, like I mean, some days it was a lot more hours than that, some weeks it was zero hours, it wasn't hyper consistent, but we never gave up and we just kept shipping away at it. And that first feature I really do do. I do think it helped crack that sort of door of opportunity, yeah, sort of door of opportunity.

Speaker 2: 23:12

Yeah, sort of cracking that wall down, that barrier down, in terms of just helping investors feel like they can buy shares in the projects that we are developing, and the selling of those shares is what's supporting us financially. And then you start to get scared and think what if I can't make my investors money back? The only answer to that is to not feel fear and to keep creating, and that's the best chance you and your investors have of survival. Right, it's like just keep making the best thing you can and make it from a place of honesty. Like Craig Mazin and John August say on script notes notes all the time. The best script to write is the one you want to see get made.

Speaker 2: 23:56

do not try and write to what you think other people want to make you know like, don't try and make movies what you think people are going to like or want to watch. Just create and keep creating and honing and learning and refining and everything's going to be fine if you are creative and you are contributing.

Speaker 1: 24:16

It affects the final product. It definitely is If you're coming from a place of love and passion for what you do. I feel like I tell this story a lot, but when I was in high school I remember watching a talent show and seeing side by side one person get up and sing who was actually a really good singer but super nervous, and I just felt like stress the whole performance because I was nervous for this person, because they were nervous. And then someone else getting up who was not nearly as talented at singing and just have a grand old time performing and singing this song and because he was having so much fun, everyone loved it and had so much fun watching it, and so in the end the attitude mattered so much more than the talent, even because your experience of making what you make has an effect on those who watch what you make. And so if you're approaching it from a place of love and fun and you can find that and sometimes I lose that and I have to kind of go back to like, how did I fall in love with films in the first place, or watch those movies that bring back that love for me then that will translate into your work.

Speaker 1: 25:30

And also there's no guarantees. You know, and if you're a spiritual person I am, we are and maybe you aren't but definitely we have been prayerful about our decision when to switch over into doing this as a full-time career, and that also gives me a lot of sure. I guess like, yeah, confidence moving forward, I feel like the time is right and I trust in God and he's always provided for us and our family. So I'd invite you to be prayerful about your decision, but also to not be rushed about getting to that point, because if it is a hobby and it's something you love, just love doing it when you're able to do it.

Speaker 1: 26:12

But if it feels right, trust yourself you'll know yeah, you'll know, when that time comes that it's time that you can. You can take that leap, and it's always going to be a leap. It's not usually like here you go, you're all set for the next few years. Do it if you want to yeah, it's never gonna.

Speaker 2: 26:29

Yeah, exactly, it's never like. Here's all the money that will wipe away all your fears.

Speaker 1: 26:34

You're all set. You made a million dollars on your film.

Speaker 2: 26:36

If someone paid you a million dollars and gave you a hundred million dollar budget to make a movie you'd still have plenty to fear and be scared and stressed about, because you'd be so scared that the project is going to fall apart and this is going to be your last movie you ever get to make because it's so high budget. There's tons to be scared of. So just choose now not to be scared of your limited resources and you'll have practiced not feeling scared of unlimited resources right? So you know, fear just never helps and consistency, habit, love, bell always helps.

Speaker 2: 27:12

So, anyway, hopefully that was helpful have a a good one.

Speaker 1: 27:16

We'll see you next time bye.