While I have liked the job that I do in Hollywood, I have always focused on the technical aspects of filmmaking, as opposed to the creative side. I didn't go to meetings about script revision, or character development. I dealt with things like file types, compression formats, and data security. As time went on this became a more deliberate distinction, for a number of reasons. For one, I was a leading expert on the technical front, and that was not true in the creative side. With technical issues, whether an idea is "good" or not is measured by if it is true, and whether or not it actually works. With creative ideas, whether or not a suggestion is "good" is measured by how much it is liked by other people. I prefer to avoid such subjective issues, because I like being right. Looking back, I guess I was afraid to lose the status I had earned of always being right. I valued that my bosses trusted my judgment enough to take significant risks based on my technical input. My ideas were very outside-the-box compared to the industry at large, and my company was willing to invest in unproven ideas based on the fact that they trusted I could make it work if I said I could. And I always made it work, and never lost a single shot in ten years. But I nearly always refused to offer my creative input, even when it was deliberately sought.
My avoidance of creative conversations may have been to my detriment in the long run, since that is where the upward mobility is, and those ideas and experiences are less time sensitive. I was the best at what I did because I was well connected with the technologies that were being developed at the time, and what that meant for my industry. Those technologies are still in use, but are no longer the area where the most significant innovation is taking place, so I am out of the loop in that regard. The concepts of good storytelling are not going to become obsolete anytime soon, but that world can never be totally conquered by a single individual. There is always more to learn, and ways to improve.
This is all on my mind, because after years of avoiding the creative aspect of filmmaking, I am considering trying to create a film of my own. I won't be doing it on my own, but I will have to take the lead in regards to the creative direction, which is going to be a challenge. Unlike my actual job for the last ten years, this is the role I was trained to play in college, with an Art Degree in Multimedia. So I am pitching my idea for a documentary about the importance of Freedom to anyone who I think might be able to help or support the project. Freedom is a fairly intangible concept, so illustrating that in a visual format is going to take some creativity. But I believe it is possible, and that this is an important time for that idea to be better understood by the public at large. It is unlikely to become a financial success, but it can still succeed in spreading the message due to the innovations in streaming video and online distribution. If I can create something that presents and defends the idea that "Freedom is the opportunity to experience the consequences of your own actions," and that "Freedom is more important than life itself" then that will be a success in and of itself.
