Opinion: Your work sucks, and that's ok

photo courtesy of Pexels

Let’s be honest; your directing is far from the work of genius. Your writing could be more original, the dialogue a lot more natural, with characters better realized. You can be far more creative with your framing and camera movement. That edit could be cleaner. The lighting isn’t perfect. Those lines could be delivered with more emotion.

Whatever role you play in the world of filmmaking — each experience, every minute on set, each moment messing around with a camera. It all builds on top of one another. So, stop crippling your ability to learn by being completely unable to take the criticism of others or only listening to positive affirmations. As in all the things, mistakes that aren’t learned from and fixed early on are doomed to be repeated.

Art is nothing but continuous progress that builds upon itself — the only way to go is up. Don’t act like you’ve reached the top of the mountain when the journey has only just begun; It’ll only ever make the climb ahead more treacherous.

Is it a little presumptuous of me to act like I know you and your story, that I’ve seen all your work, came away unimpressed, and dare to tell you to be better? Yes.

The truth is I don’t know you, but chances are if you’re reading this, you preside somewhere within the realm of art and filmmaking, and your career, even several years in, is still in its infancy.

Early in our careers is the time to learn; it’s the time to experiment and completely strikeout. There is an immense amount of pressure from both ourselves and others to be brilliant, to have our art stand far above the rest, convince ourselves that we have something unique and special that no one else does.

Photo courtesy of pexels

In truth, everyone does have some signature artist’s mark, even if it’s yet to be discovered—and brilliance, with enough time and dedication, will eventually peak above the surface. However, until then: be confident in making something awful and let it be torn to shreds. Learn what worked, listen to what did not and figure out how to remedy it. Next time make something slightly better.

Don’t waste time fishing for compliments for work that doesn’t deserve it.

Suppose the only takeaway from film school is everything great about your work without recognizing its flaws and drawbacks. If you graduate with a skewed understanding of where your weaknesses lie, you’ve wasted thousands of dollars and very soon will come to a realization the rest of the world is not quite as kind and nurturing.

Don’t be served your peers’ compliment sandwiches and only consume the bread. Empty carbs and no nutrition results in a malnourished body of work.

Please don’t confuse my message of taking an honest look at what you create and striving to be better with the chase for perfection.

Perfection is a deadly plague on filmmakers, an endless uphill battle that will always result in failure. Even worse than chasing perfection is believing it’s already been achieved. It’s a damning death sentence for any real progress as an artist.

No matter what, progress will always win out over perfection. For progress is tangible and can be visibly tracked; perfection, on the other hand, is merely ideological. A perpetually moving goalpost that only becomes more difficult to reach as one continues to improve and grow.

Art is inherently imperfect; that’s what makes it so special, that’s what makes us strive to do better. That’s all filmmaking is: using everything at our disposal to piece together each little imperfect element and try and make something beautiful out of it.

Embrace and acknowledge the imperfections within every aspect of your work. Don’t surround yourself with yes-men who walk on eggshells, afraid to give honest opinions and critique. Note that your “artistic vision” has not had enough time to develop even to approach any level of infallibility. So don’t perch yourself on a high horse of auteur mentality, be open to and actually listen to the thoughts of others. Even if you wholeheartedly disagree with someone’s viewpoint, it doesn’t invalidate their criticism, and there are likely many others that will share the same opinion.

After wiping away the blood, sweat and tears, it can be hard to admit when something didn’t work, when different choices along the way could have resulted in a much better film. Acknowledge that gut feeling no matter how hard it is to admit, It’ll help steer you in the right direction. Still, don’t deprive yourself of victories, celebrate the good and the fact that the film defied the odds and reached completion.

For however much it might hurt, making something bad is always favorable to never making anything at all.

For now, your work might absolutely suck, and that’s perfectly alright, it's supposed to. Making films is hard. So many pieces must fall together in just the right place that especially early on, it’s going to be rough. But now is the time to divorce from your ego and learn to recognize all flaws and imperfections because that's the first necessary step towards making something genuinely great.