I was doing my mission check the other morning. I think you know that I find it useful to look at where you are and collect your thoughts on how you want to live your life, both personally and professionally, creatively and practically.
It is hard to determine your path if you don’t know your goals, right? Granted it is also hard to live your life if you are focused only on your goals, but that is for another post (as is how to pursue your goals when you aren’t paid enough to both survive and pursue them).
This is my professional assessment of my work at this distinct moment in time. The numbers are relatively arbitrary and not fully prioritized. I hope I haven’t aimed too high…
1. I want to help create ambitious and diverse works of cinema, help them get seen, and make sure the creators & their supporters directly financially benefit from that work.
2. I want to use my labor, passion, determination, and intellect in the most effective manner, and one that both encourages and allows me to grow and change in the process.
3. I want to help make independent cinema both a sustainable culture and industry. Making sure that creators and their supporters are the direct and key financial beneficiaries of their work is probably the most important part of this process.
4.I want to help creative people fully recognize the world as it is, what it could be, and understand how we got here – and then build their practice accordingly, learning the necessary skills to navigate the present so they can maintain generative creative lives in a manner that allows them to take risks and explore bold subjects in unique ways.
5. I want to build new platforms for creation, collaboration, appreciation, experimentation and the monetization thereof.
6. I want to create sustainable communities of engaged supporters of unique content and creation strands.
7. I want to help make cinema culture & business open, accessible, and supportive of diverse individuals of any background provided they are collaborative, creative, hard workers.
8. I want to encourage people to share what they know, create, and utilize, and to demonstrate appreciation for the work and creators they enjoy.
9. I want to work with collaborative, hard working people who love what they do and are driven by purpose.
10. I want to make a great film that can not be ignored and encourages people to care more about each other.
I do believe if we share our goals, we are far more likely to hit them. What are yours? Maybe I can help. And looking at these now, I do think it is good I became a “shapeshifter” and stepped beyond just project producing. Making a good story better is a great pleasure. Making a dream something real is a gift when you play a part. Yet, the hope of a hundred, a thousand, even more, good stories being told well and connecting with the right people in ways so deep and meaningful that they chose to act and further engage — that’s the hope.
