How did I end up here?

Today, I am pondering, among other things (including why no one has invented one of those Star Trek thingys that make food appear with the click of a few buttons) how I ended up as a filmmaker. I mean seriously, I was going to be a ballerina or contemporary dancer or theatre for youth performer in a small company that toured the world. And now I mostly sit at a computer writing scripts and editing films. Sometimes, I’m on set. (Most people are unaware that films are mostly made in a dark room, alone with a few weeks spent on set. But I digress, as usual…)

Anyway, how did I get here?

My first professional paying job (besides being in a couple of commercials) was producing and directing shows at a summer camp. I loved this job and really didn’t think of it as a job. “I’m a dancer, that’s hard work. I just do this as a summer gig cause it’s fun.” Duh, right?

I learned so much “on the job” and to this day, it astounds me just how much I picked up during those years. I did that for over a decade.

Then one day, I decided I didn’t want to be a dancer. And I wasn’t sure what to do with myself. (Duh, again, right?) So I tried acting. I had taken acting lessons in high school and thought yeah, I can do that. The only problem was, I didn’t like it. I mean I loved the classes. But I didn’t love performing except for theatre for youth, but that’s not a long term career. You age out and the pay is generally on the low end of the AEA scale. Mostly, live theatre that wasn’t for children made me so nervous that I literally shook on stage. And I was constantly distracted during performances and almost missing cues thinking “why was that person told to stand there” and “wouldn’t it be better if…”

While in rehearsals for one of these wonderful plays that I loved rehearsing and dreaded performing, actors started to come over to me asking me what to do and couldn’t I give some suggestions to the director who to be honest was struggling to create a cohesive play. And I thought, “Why are they asking me?” And then I thought “Do they know I’m thinking about these things while we are rehearsing. Oh my God, they can read my mind, I’m so screwed.” Well, obviously not. It was just somehow becoming apparent to the people around me where my skills were even though I didn’t know it.

So, I thought, I’ll direct theatre! But for a variety of reasons, including the fact that most actors I knew were trying to get into television and film (cause that’s where the money is apparently…) and were struggling to do so. And I like to help people so I thought “Well, I’ll just make a movie and hire all of them. How hard can it be?” Well, I learned a lot on that film. Not just what I didn’t know technically, but that I was actually really good (for someone who never did it before) at directing, producing and it turns out editing.

And I had this flashback to the owner of the camp I worked at telling me he could see one day I would be a great director and producer. And then I had a flashback to my high school musical theatre teacher who told me he thought I should go into directing and choreographing.

So by helping others, I helped myself. That’s what got me on the path to making films in the end. Not what people told me, not my own aspirations but by focusing on others.

It’s weird right? To find your path that way…but it works.