Why You Need To Start Now

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Here’s something on why you need to start now:

I keep meeting guys who are “getting ready” to be filmmakers. They’re buying another lens. They’re waiting for the right script. They’re building the perfect website before they’ve shot anything a stranger would pay for. I get it. I’ve done it. It feels responsible. It feels like you’re taking the craft seriously.

You’re not. You’re hiding.

The fastest way I know to get good — at shooting, editing, pitching, the lot — is to make a pile of work and learn from the pile. Not to sit in a room theorising about the one perfect film. If that sounds harsh, good. Read this story. Then go pick up a camera.

From Art & Fear:

“The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.

His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot — albeit a perfect one — to get an “A”.

Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes — the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.”

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That last line should be taped to the inside of your camera bag. Grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay. That’s a lot of “filmmakers” I know. That’s been me, more than once.

Quantity Vs Quality When You’re Actually Shooting

Swap pots for shots and the whole thing maps onto filmmaking without you having to stretch it.

The quantity guy goes out and shoots. He blows exposure. He misses focus. He cuts a scene together and it dies in the middle. Then he does it again. By the twentieth short, the tenth client job, the fiftieth interview, he can feel when a frame is off before he even looks at the monitor. His hands know. His eyes know. He didn’t get there by reading about the perfect approach. He got there by making a mess and paying attention to the mess.

The quality guy is still in the notebook. He’s designing the colour palette for a film he hasn’t started. He’s waiting for a location that “really sings.” He’s convinced the next idea is the one, so this idea isn’t worth shooting. He’s protecting his reputation from work that isn’t ready. Nobody has a reputation yet. You get a reputation by putting work in front of people.

I am not saying you should be sloppy on a paid job. If a couple have hired you for their wedding, you do not “practise quantity” on their vows. You show up prepared. You have backups. You treat their day with respect. Quantity is how you got good enough to be trusted with that day. It’s the unpaid hours, the personal projects, the cheap corporate jobs you took so you could fail in private and get better in public.

Same with editing. You do not become a better editor by watching another tutorial about the perfect cut. You become a better editor by cutting. A lot. You cut the same interview three ways. You kill your favourite shot because the scene is slow. You export something you’re not proud of, watch it on a TV that isn’t your edit suite, and realise the whole middle is fluff. Then you go back in. That’s the ceramics class. That’s the scale. The weight of the work.

Pitching is the same game and nobody wants to admit it. You will write bad treatments. You will send emails that get ignored. You will sit in a meeting and hear your own voice and think, that was rubbish. The guys who build a video production business are not the guys who waited until the pitch was perfect. They’re the guys who pitched, got told no, adjusted, pitched again. Quantity of conversations. Quantity of follow-ups. Quantity of “here’s a one-page idea, want to talk?”

If you need a framework for putting the hours in, I’ve written about commitment as a practice, not a mood. Start is the first move. The hours are how you stay in the game.

Make Ten Bad Shots This Week

Here’s a practice I actually use, and I’m giving it to you because the ceramics story is useless if it stays a nice anecdote.

Once a week, go out with the specific job of making ten bad shots.

Not ten pretty shots. Not ten shots for the reel. Ten shots you are allowed to hate.

A bad shot might be: you expose for the sky and let a face fall into silhouette on purpose, then decide whether you like it. You pan too fast. You hold a wide for thirty seconds with nothing happening. You shoot a stranger’s hands at a café (ask first, guys — don’t be a creep) and the footage is boring. You try a handheld walk that looks like you filmed an earthquake. You cut on an action that isn’t there.

The point is not to collect ten failures as a personality. The point is to take the sting out of “bad.” While you’re making the ten, you will accidentally make two that are interesting. You’ll notice light you walk past every day. You’ll learn what your camera does when you stop treating it like a museum piece.

Do this on a lunch break. Do it in the car park. Do it in your kitchen with a lamp and a friend who can stand still for five minutes. You do not need a crew, a location recce, or a story that is already a masterpiece. You need ten attempts.

If you skip a week, you don’t owe me an essay. You just do ten the next week. Quantity group. Bathroom scales. That’s the whole philosophy, applied.

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I used to wait for “a good day of light.” Then I’d get the good day and freeze, because now the day had to count. Ten bad shots kills that. The day doesn’t have to count. The pile has to grow.

Why Waiting For The Perfect Idea Stalls A Video Business

This is where it stops being a student problem and starts being a business problem.

If you want to get your hustle on and actually make a living with a camera, waiting for the perfect idea is lethal. Clients do not hire the film in your head. They hire the work they can see, and the person who can start on Tuesday.

The perfect-idea trap looks like this:

You won’t take the local business video because it isn’t “you.” You won’t shoot the event because the brief is boring. You won’t send the proposal until the treatment feels like a short film. You won’t post the last job because the colour isn’t quite there. Meanwhile someone less talented than you is booking the work, making the mistakes on someone else’s dime (within reason), and getting better in public.

A video business is a quantity game wearing a quality suit. Your showreel gets good because you shot a lot. Your prices go up because you survived a lot of awkward client conversations. Your taste gets sharper because you cut a lot of mediocre scenes and you can finally feel the difference.

I’m not outcome-dependent on any one of those jobs being a masterpiece. I am dependent on the practice. The next job. The next cut. The next email. That’s the intention: keep making pots.

The quality group in that classroom weren’t lazy. They cared. That’s what makes the story sting. Caring about the perfect pot is how you end up with dead clay. Caring about the perfect film is how you end up with a hard drive of notes and nothing you can send a client.

If you’re stuck right now, pick the smallest thing you can finish this week. A 60-second piece for a mate’s shop. A scene with no dialogue. Ten bad shots and one that you keep. Finish it. Put it in the pile. Then do another.

The ceramics students who got good weren’t more gifted on day one. They were busier. They had more failures on the table. That’s the job, guys. Start now. The perfect idea can catch up with you while you’re already working.

Ready to write your best script yet? Start here.