Goals

Someone at the production company I interned at, shared the reel of a Norwegian motion graphics artist named Marcus Eckert. His motion graphics skills are extremely impressive. There are two abilities you have to have to be a successful motion graphics artist. Ideas and mechanics. Just because you know the program, doesn't mean you have the creative mind to come up with a design that successfully works with the project. And of course if you have ideas, you have to be able to implement them and make them come to life. This guy can do both, and I aspire to reach his level. Check him out:

Enmeshed from Marcus Eckert on Vimeo.

Another Sleepless Night

Things have changed. A lot. Relative to how long existence has existed, the period of time it took us to go from the invention of radio to the technology dependent society we are today may as well have happened at the speed of light. With the innovation of the internet, it's become much, much easier to appeal to a wide crowd (the entire world). News travels the world in seconds as opposed to a week. That being said, anybody can upload their brainchild to YouTube and get a million hits.

So I ask myself, Why are we still working hard to learn all kinds of extremely difficult techniques when someone can make a stupid game, where you hit the screen over and over with your stupid finger, and make $50,000 a day? Why learn the craft of photography and storytelling when you can take a solitary stupid picture of a shifty-looking shiba inu and have it take over the internet for months, even years to come? Why work hard and spend thousands to make a meaningful, impressive and heartfelt project when an idiot with a stupid accent can play video games while filming his reactions and put them on YouTube so millions can watch them?

Maybe this is less of a blog post and more of an existential crisis. But with the innovation of technology, job opportunities and success are eons different than they were even just ten years ago, and they'll be completely different in ten more years. Now of course, film companies will always be around. I can always get an internship with a company and slowly work my way up the ladder. But in a business that involves heavy competition, how can someone with a creative mind but intense social anxiety stand out, or, convince someone important that he's worth keeping around? How can someone feel important in a job that took four years of college to achieve, and someone can post a video on YouTube they made in a day and get a celebrity endorsement? 

The internet has changed the game tremendously. Whether it's for the better or worse, is up to the user. Does it make me uneasy that I might have to scramble for a job following graduation and work up from the bottom and (hopefully) make it somewhere, while I instead can post a funny video of my cat and maybe get a call to be on Ellen? Of course it does. Does it bother me that I'm good at most things, but not extraordinary enough at any of those things to shine above my peers? Of course. Does it bother me that in a business where networking and ass-kissing is key, I freeze up making my order at Moe's? Quite a bit. 

I cover this topic not because I'm feeling sorry for myself, but because I do not want to be known on any false pretenses. My dream is to be well-known in the film/television industry but I face many demons. I don't know what I could possibly do to stand out from the rest, but I don't want to give up. I guess what I'd want someone to get from this is that even if you feel absolutely worthless you have to push that part of you aside and tell yourself that perseverance will hopefully pay off in one way or another. I'd feel better having tried and failed than never having tried at all. I'm sure there are others out there that are too afraid to truly find their calling because they think they're not good enough. I blindly started off college in engineering and hated it for two years before dropping out for a year, then starting over and coming here to take a last-ditch shot at my dreams. It's proving to be an extremely difficult and tiresome journey, but all I can do is try. So I am.