The original goal of this weekly blog project was to set up artificial deadlines and force myself to regularly work on and post new content. Google said we're 34 weeks into 2018 and I think I've only missed one week so far.
I'm itching to work on another personal project but THANKFULLY I'm still swimming client projects that are paying the bills in an otherwise very slow year. Oh, and it's the start of the school year so Anne the Wife – an elementary school teacher – has been busy getting situated and I've had both the boys more than usual.
The last two to three weeks have been a bit of an outlier and had me crazy busy: shooting in Oklahoma City for a group from Wichita, KS; producing, directing, shooting, and currently editing a commercial campaign with a longtime OKC client; shooting in West Virginia with a Tulsa based agency; shooting a multi-cam project in OKC that'll need to be edited soon; shooting in OKC with a group I've never worked with based out of New York. Oh, and there's the pre-production part of a good deal of stuff on the horizon.
By no means am I complaining about being busy – far from it. It's not always rainbows and sunshine, but good grief I'm insanely thankful for people and organizations willing to pay me for work I love doing. I'll rant about waiting for invoices to be paid, but that'll have to wait for another day.
In this world of "if there's no pic it didn't happen," it's frustrating to not always have something to show that you're actually working. There's no reason for me to show you what my pre-production process looks like – unless you're up to see me sitting in front of a pile of notebooks and my computer at a coffee shop. I don't have behind-the-scenes images from being on sets mostly because I'm focused on the people and the work and don't always have the margin to share it on social media. No one cares how many recent trips I've made to FedEx and the local rental house to pick up and drop off rental equipment. There's no reason to post another image from an airplane or gripe about the flight attendant making you gate-check your camera bag even after the last one on the same plane didn't.
All that being said, I still jealously collect – and try to learn from – piles of screen grabs from other DPs and Directors posting this kind of nonsense to their Instagram accounts.
This is an insanely visual world that's constantly whispering to our insecurities, "You're only as good as your last project/image."