If you're making films, I think it's really really important to care about what you do. But at the same time, one of the biggest hurdles for people starting out is that they just care way too much.

The Weight Of A First Film

That's normally because we place a huge amount of weight on the first projects that we create - you guys will often tell me that the films you're submitting for feedback are the result of years of development, painstakingly iterating on the script until it's just right, and then pulling all nighters on the edit, before losing confidence and starting it again.

That's all learning, and it's all useful. There's a chance it's all necessary. But there's a chance that you're stressing yourself out by caring too much - or more accurately - about the wrong stuff (meaning you're not caring enough about the RIGHT stuff!)

Don't Fake It When You Make It

What you notice after a while of being in the industry is that the huge amounts of care that people put in to get their foot in the door give way surprisingly quickly to total ennui. There are several reasons for this, but it's mainly energy preservation. Caring takes energy, but film making is an absolute energy parasite, so you roll back your enthusiasm to keep rolling. Unfortunately, that means that optimism and positive energy become the hallmark of inexperience, so young artists will often adopt jaded and cynical facades quickly so that they can mingle more comfortably with the old hands.

That's a mistake, because "not caring" isn't actually not caring, unless you're unprofessional (which in fairness a lot of people are!). It's that what looks like not caring is actually only caring about the important stuff.

Kubrick vs Eastwood

Baby clearly isn't real...but I would argue no one cares (except its parents). Anyway, you could AI a real looking baby in there pretty fast these days if you had to

Let's take two extremes as an example - in one corner, Kubrick, the poster boy for caring about every tiny little thing, and the master of the "takes until they break" approach to working with actors. In the other, Clint Eastwood, who famously does everything in a single take, and created the viral moment in "American Sniper" where Bradley Cooper has a very clear prop baby instead of a real one. My take is that he just didn't care, but not because he didn't care about the film, but because he cared about the film. He knew that the audience just needed to go "This character is nurturing a baby, got it", and move on. Time and budget are finite resources, and if you're using them to hit the small beats, you may not be able to hit the ones that really matter.

On A Budget, It's Eastwood All The Way

Ultimately the best approach is whatever is authentically yours IF it gets you where you need to be. And one thing I've learned about filmmaking on a budget vs Hollywood is that on a budget, you don't really have a choice. It's Eastwood all the way.

The Fine Line

In reality that becomes a fine line to tread. If you get it just right, and you only care about the most important stuff, then every minute or dollar you spend will make it onto the screen. If you're working with other people, you'll also probably upset quite a few of them, because they'll misread your prioritisation as not caring about their work. And to some degree, you didn't, because you'll only care about the portion of their work that actually serves the film. So…consider buying gifts to smooth over the inevitable tension.

Find Your Brain Trust

Whilst some of you will naturally lean one way or another, the project you're working on will also have its own little gravitational pulls. If you're not constantly trying to pull back to see your work from the most zoomed out view possible, it WILL pull you and trick you into thinking that you should be spending 2 hours working out whether this sound is better for the car door slam, or that (sliiightly) different one is better. Consider a "brain trust" of people you show your work to - you'll somehow see it through their eyes, and realise that you were wrong about all the things that you thought mattered. Those of you who submit work to us for feedback will be very familiar with this feeling, 2 seconds after starting watching the feedback video you think "OH GOD MAKE IT STOP I CAN SEE EVERYTHING THAT'S WRONG NOW"

If you're a platform subscriber and you want a fresh eye on your work now, click the link to get submitting (I promise I'll care…but only about the stuff that matters).