Surviving the Ride of Filmmaking

The dream is to be paid to do what we love -- produce, direct, write, critique, etc. But this dream can take time and buckets and buckets of patience. And as we are seeing with the new lay offs being made by entities like Variety, dreams can often be derailed. 

One day, you feel like everything is going your way: You have a paying gig, interest from an investor for a project, cast who say they want to be part of your film. You are on top of the world. Then the next day, you're fired, your investor ran out of money and your cast found another project they like better.

Filmmaking is a never-ending roller coaster ride. It's bumpy, scary, and thrilling. The ups and downs and twists and turns will never go away. You have to learn to enjoy the ride in order to survive. Here is a picture of a roller coaster. This is your life as a filmmaker.

To start enjoying the ride, you need to accept that a career in filmmaking will never be considered stable or secure. Once you embrace this concept, you can then devise a plan for figuring out how to survive within that concept. 

It may mean working a full-time job and working on your projects at night and on the weekends. Or it may mean developing a skill, like writing, that you can do in between your work as a filmmaker. 

It is possible to survive in this wild ride of filmmaking. You just need to take the leap, strap yourself in, and have fun along the way.