Someone I used to know

Am on the last week of this 5 week feature shoot. I managed to get an old camera assistant of mine who I trained. She's difficult to get on jobs now. People move on, as they should. Someone else on the crew who also knew her when she started out said it was sad to see her not seeing the art of film anymore and doing it as a job. I agree with both ends, it is a job and we do get sucked into making a living but we must never also forget why we do it in the first place.

I used to be friends indirectly with David Slade. He's directing the new Twilight film. My best friend who used to be his partner said he would do small art films. Even then I suspected he would get into the Hollywood machine of producing features that were commercially viable. He now has a family to support so there is the rub. It is said that he sold out. What does one expect? would one do the same faced with a few million dollar pay wage? Even at my end of the scale struggling to make something of this job, i would welcome a good wage on a half decent film. At the moment I am doing a half decent film with the wage of someone who works at the local restaurant.

Unfortunately, we have to pay the bills and we want to do what we want to do be it directing or Cinematography and we want to make a decent living. Why would we work so many years honing our craft to be making work that doesn't get seen? To be starving artists? No thank you. Even if it is a semblance, most of us would take it. I dare say i would and have. It is the state of economics that we direct, design and shoot to practice some semblance of what we want and get paid for it.

We have our private projects no one will fund so in the meantime, make commercially viable projects so we can still eat sleep and dream.

Someone I used to know used to show me his sketchbooks of ideas in a flat in Finsbury Park. Now he lives in LA and is directing the new Twilight film. He is the only person then I knew who was driven enough to 'make it'. And he was only doing Rob Dougan's video then back in 2000. I always wished and still do, I could too.

I used to know someone who said they wouldn't do car commercials. But when I was offered one, I only hesitated to be hired because I didn't want to fuck it up.

- J