Does an idea really even exist?

The task was simple: deciding to shoot something and putting it in my calendar. I trashed a pile of ideas that were gathering dust… or maybe rotting in the queue and started fresh. I had ideas I'd talked about for years… I’d catch myself saying "I have a short idea about that" whenever someone would bring up, say, making their own casket.

But an idea really isn’t… anything.

I've heard people say "I'm happy knowing I could have done x" and that's pretty depressing. Am I headed here? So we start fresh. It's not about ideas anymore—that's not the bottleneck. It's about when.

Creating is emotional. YouTube videos, sure. But short films or "art"? Even more so. You have to put yourself out there and feign confidence in your ideas to get a team on board. Will it actually be good? I have no idea.

I don't think anything I do will ever feel "legit" to myself, but you do things enough times that you start drinking your own Kool-Aid. And then you turn 40, and you just don't care anymore.

It's just fun to make stuff.

So we shot that short film—the subject of last week's newsletter.

This week's video is a behind-the-scenes look at how we pulled it off, including a very, very, physical gag that I'm so happy surprised people at the end.

What went right (and wrong)

This short wasn't as well-planned as I would have liked. I talk about being buttoned down in pre-production – the shoot day should be about executing your pre-pro plan.

But I was in the thick of my busy season. We planned out the necessities and I trusted my instincts and experience for the rest. Like a champ, I held all the continuity in my head. Sammy, one of our young actors, has a mustache painted on at one point. Shooting out of order meant it had to come on and off constantly—I'd just mentally reset and yell "mustache on!" or "off!" before each scene - a win!

But we balance that with the losses: we broke the classic 180-degree rule a couple times, didn't quite have our shooting approach dialled in for the opening scene, and I gave myself a bunch of unnecessary VFX wire-removal busywork.

All stuff a good editor can cut around, right?

And then the short bombed. I don't know what I expected. I went into full panic mode trying to fix things. New thumbnail! New title! I reached out to people. "You can't just upload this stuff by itself!" "Hide it in a ‘traditional’ YouTube video!" "Start a second channel!"

It's a common problem, I'm learning. We complain about "YouTubers" talking the talk but not walking the walk, but maybe many are walking it, but the original work they're doing just doesn't hit our feeds. Or maybe it does and we never click. I mean, "watch my short film" is something I usually meet with a bit of skepticism too.

Yes, the audience has been smaller than normal (spoiled!), but the response has been  fantastic. My only fear is that a stinker of a video might affect the algorithm's view of my channel... And if it does? 100% listicle content from now on! Subservience!

This is a baby step into creating more, and concurrently figuring out what to do with it. Trying to find my path to subsidizing more and more of this creative work. Let me know if you have any tips.

Now to put a date in the calendar for the next short.

BTS Video is here.

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