The struggle is worth it.
We are in full production mode this week. Staying focused and keeping to our timeline is tough. We sacrifice rest to make this happen. This week we filmed more footage for the doc. We interviewed, took headshots for the project, captured b-roll and most importantly, we learned a lot about one another this week.
We are machines and will do what it takes. We are honest. We are committed. We have talent.
Our next ambitious goal is to attain additional grant monies from the Telus Storyhive organization. We are specifically going after the documentary series grant. Telus is awarding 30 x $50,000 grants this year. We tried last year and didn’t win, something we've mentioned before. We learned from this, and it shows. Our experience tells us that we need to be different, edgy, and real if want a chance at this.
Jonard put together some of his initial thoughts and shared them with the team. To be frank, I wasn’t so sure it was the story we were trying to sell. I’ve learned in life that if you hold back in any situations, nothing good will come out of it. You won’t be rewarded, you’ll have “what if” perpetuating in your brain. Regret will set in.
In our case, with the pitch video, we were brutally honest with each other. I could tell Jonard was not confident in his first cut. Noel and I were uncomfortable that we weren’t portraying who we really were as characters or individuals. So as a team we brought our heads together and strategically revamped our pitch video. Even though our ideas came late, our ambitions were intense enough to see through what we wanted to achieve.
It was a late night. It was hard work. It sucked to get no sleep in. However, at the end we produced something worth putting our names on. In the pitch video there is a line that I said, “it’s not easy, but the struggle is definitely worth it”. That struggle is very much what we went through that evening and morning after. As a team, we recognize that this is not the last time we would experience this kind of grind. The golden nugget we learned from this, though, was that we need better preparation all the way leading up to the editing floor.
I’m on my way to San Diego for a work related conference and writing this after watching some inflight entertainment. I had the opportunity to watch “NEAT: the story of Bourbon”. Here is a documentary worth watching. Inspiring in face. I would like to be at this level. Today, we are not experienced story tellers, like in NEAT, although, our experiences and learnings from other documentaries are exposing us to what it takes to be just that. Who knows? Maybe we will be some day.
-- Cliff
