Today I wrote a few pages of my screenplay. It’s been a slow slog, I’ll do just about anything to avoid writing it. These blog posts are just one of many procrastination tools. But the screenplay is also one of the only reasons I’m still alive. Almost two years ago now, I decided that I would commit my life making this film, if it was the last thing I ever did. I thought I was fooling myself into living out my days naturally, it would probably take me five years to make this movie. Two to write it, one to find the money & two to film & edit it.
Sometimes I go weeks without touching it, wondering around my house, picking up new interests & “learning” about other ideas to distract me from it. Sometimes it gets so bad that I anxiously question my existence. Why the fuck am I still doing this? Oh yeah that’s right, I need to finish this movie.
In another attempt to procrastinate, I also brushed up my resume & went on a job hunt. Nothing is so unforgiving to your self-esteem than having to update a resume. There’s that weird obligation that possesses you to inflate the menial tasks you did at your last job into something that seems official & important. “I moved the designated cameras to the required spot in the warehouse” becomes, “Oversaw the allocation & management of high-end video equipment.” One time I fixed a tripod head is an excuse to write “Engaged in the maintenance & repair of highly technical film equipment.” Something like that.
But the resume is the easy part. The hunt is a wilderness of warehouse shelf packing, constantly repeating Menulog driver jobs, sales positions, & the occasional managerial position. That’s if you go to Jora, Seek or Indeed. The pro’s go through Linkedin — well the real pro’s just kiss the right asses IRL — for people like me it’s Linkedin or bust, until some savvy dude bro let’s me in on the next untapped job listing goldmine.
After the reasonable amount of jobs I’ve gone through now, — never fired, always left on my own terms. — I know what I want out of a job, that is to work on something I actually believe in. I also know — especially after this go around — that not one of these companies has what I’m looking for. At the end of the day, I am a film maker since I left music behind me. Maybe I should explain why the move from one difficult, unforgiving career path to another. No I can’t, not yet anyway. That one’s for a drunken night of rage filled regret.
Typing “film production” on the job listing’s sites, gives me a result of fifty odd production companies specialising almost exclusively on creating branded content for businesses marketing plans. I.E handling big corporations social media accounts & concocting ways of manipulating the target market with ads. “Creative content producer wanted for exciting & dynamic position.” The only difference between each of them was the clients, & the aesthetic of the companies.
I tried to narrow the search to find one that was about entertainment, at least something a bit closer to art. Channel 7 digital content producer was the first result, after a few other big media corporations, “fruit-packer” was at the top of the next page.
I do have a disgust for the big broadcast channels, but I can understand the smaller fish gravitating to advertising. It’s difficult, so companies want to outsource it, it’s consistent because everyone needs marketing content & it can be lucrative. But it reveals something unsettling for me, that myself & most others are so desperate for anything even vaguely related to film work. That creating an ad campaign for a company like Allianz Insurance can be considered a noble endeavour. Really I can’t see how anyone who does see it that way is anything other than a deluded victim of a techno tragedy of the commons.
For me though, I must keep hacking away. At this blog, at the podcast & the movie. For good or Ill.
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