Worth It

Shew, emotional day.

I was freaking out getting all the details set for the film shoot, that is suddenly, thanks to an impromptu road trip that took me out of town for 5 days, next weekend. I even asked myself at one point if this was all worth it. Wondered why I'd applied for the funding in the first place. Wondered why I take on these creative projects - why can't I just be satisfied with lying on the couch?

I haven't felt this stressed out since I quit my job last year, so just feeling that old familiar anxiety was adding to the pressure.

Had to remind myself that yes, I could have a normal job and day to day worries instead of things like "Will the film get here in time?" "Can I find a truck at this late date?" "Who the heck is going to record sound?" "Can I figure out how to make the scenes work with my actors?" But I've chosen this. Some inspiational speaker said "The only time you won't have troubles is when you're buried in the grave." Cheery, in'it? The point being for me that figuring out details is part of the package. It takes work to make a movie, and I'm not (yet) in a position to waggle a finger at someone else to do that work for me. It takes work to do almost anything creative, and I just have to rise above the genetic tendency to stress.

But even with all these rationalizations, at 6 p.m. my stomach was still tight and I wanted to crawl under the bed. Except I had to clean the house for rehearsal.

And then we had the rehearsal. Three and a half hours flew by. I'm exhausted but it was worth it. I know again, now that I'm again in the True Work of it, that it is all worth it. Incredible moments when I was able to step in and fix something that we all knew just wasn't going right. Amazing to get confirmation that yes, I do have the intuition to make those calls. Though admittedly other moments where I saw that I need to get more experience working with actors, to develop a language to communicate my proposed solutions. But that can happen.

As we were going through the scenes, I began seeing the cuts: "We won't need to shoot her walking across the room to do X, we'll just go right to the close up of Y" (scintillating script, eh?) I'm meeting Sunday with the DoP to finalize the shot list together, and now I have a much clearer understanding of what I want and need, and what we can probably skip, so I'll be able to verbalize that much more coherently than our last meeting.

Soooo thrilling to see that this is actually going to happen. Because part of the stress was fear - that it wouldn't happen at all somehow, or that it would suck. But faith has returned. While I can't guarantee that every second will be gold, there are going to be some beautiful shots. Just as I imagined them from the beginning, 8 months ago...