Working at the Initiative Production Company, I forget sometimes that I’m not alone. I forget that I can ask for help if I don’t understand something. I forget that the people here care about me and want to help me be a better person and a better filmmaker.
As reluctant as I am to quote High School Musical, I think I’m starting to understand that we are “all in this together” in the office. And why is not knowing something or asking for help such a bad thing?
As a production company we have been talking recently about how important vulnerability is in our everyday lives, our work lives and in our creativity. How do we build better relationships with each other and how does that translate into the things we create.
Vulnerability is not easy and it takes a lot from us but in the end it is necessary for being a good filmmaker and for good relationships with one another. Check out this video we watched together that unpacks vulnerability a little bit more.
Life on a film set is nothing but relationships.
A film set could not function with out the director, the first assistant director, the script supervisor, the director of photography, the camera operator, the sound mixer, the craft services, the grip department, and all the other departments working together. If no actors were in the movie there wouldn’t be much to look at, if the first AD wasn’t there the set would be chaos, if the sound department wasn’t recording we wouldn’t hear anything, if the lighting department wasn’t there we couldn’t see anything and on and on it goes.
If everybody is not working together it makes for a rough day on set. Life is all about working together. Life is all about relationships and perhaps life on and off the film set are more similar than I might think sometimes.
The conclusion I’ve come to is that relationships, like a film set, don’t just happen by themselves.
They take effort.
Sometimes they take my blood, sweat and tears. Sometimes they cost me sleep or a meal. But deep in me something knows whatever hell relationships put me through at the end of the day they are worth it.
I recently re-watched the film Into the Wild and what the main character takes away at the end of the movie really resonated with me:
“Happiness is only real when shared”
