Certainly, everyone has at one point in their life had a dream job; something they really want to do no matter how unrealistic it may be. In my case, I had several of these dreams throughout my life. The first one I can remember was to become an astronaut and go to space. Then I wanted to be an inventor and follow Da Vinci’s example. For a few years, I found my great passion for soccer, and I wanted to go pro. My last and by far longest desired job, however, was and to this day is to work in the film industry.
And I am lucky; I have a talent for almost all of these things. I am what is called a jack of all trades, master of none.
The idea of having a great variety of talents sounds great. Adding a long list of interests into the mix should be a good combination. Indeed, my great variety of interests paired with a great variety of talents gives me many options and opportunities to try and do all kinds of things. In school, I was fairly good in almost all of my classes without having to put much work into them. The same is true outside of school. I play soccer and I am decent at it. I like to draw, and I am decent at it. I play the flute and I am decent at it. There are other examples too.
I must have been around ten years old when I first listened to the audiobook version of Stephen Hawking’s “George’s Secret Key to the Universe”. I remember lounging on the blue carpet in the middle of our small living room with my head propped up on my hands. The story fascinated me not because of the plot or the characters but because of the planets and stars that were described in the story. I found myself flicking through the book version afterward to read up on any information about space that I could find there. I quickly decided that I wanted to become an astronaut. I wanted to go to space and explore planets, comets, and stars. Black Holes were particularly fascinating to me. Of course, at that point, I didn’t know what goes into becoming an astronaut and I also didn’t know whether I was actually good enough.
Now, about ten years later, I can safely say that I am not anywhere close to becoming an astronaut. But that does not have to do with the fact that I had no talent. I just found more interesting things.
My talent alone, however, is nowhere near enough for me to become a professional athlete, artist, or musician. My talents aren’t good enough to make me great at any of these things. Being great requires work for me.
I recall a conversation with my mother that I had a few years ago. I had brought up the topic of becoming a professional soccer player. As expected, she rejected the idea of me playing soccer professionally as soon as I mentioned it. Of course, she was worried about the fact that women don’t get paid well in sports, but I could tell that wasn’t her only or even her main concern. She doubted me. She doubted that I was good enough and she doubted that I would put in the work to become good enough.
For the next year or so, I went outside regardless of the weather and practiced my skills with the ball. I went on five-kilometer runs regularly and I frequently worked out at a gym. That was the fittest I had ever been.
That dream slowly changed when a different one materialized out of nowhere. Actually, that new dream had always been there somewhere, lying dormant in the depths of my consciousness. Something had triggered it, maybe it had to do with the fact that I found out, my cousin was studying movie directing. It was like a signal to me that working in movies was in fact not impossible and unrealistic.
Ever since I have had one career wish: I wanted to make movies. I knew that without a doubt. My father didn’t.
I told him about my dream on a few occasions but one in particular sticks out to me. This was probably the first time that I had mentioned that dream of mine to him. His reaction was immediate doubt and questioning my creativity. He had decided for himself that people who make movies must be creative. So, he told me that I was not creative enough. It was a punch to the gut for me. I wanted to do this so bad, I had never considered that I might not be good enough at it.
I had always known that my parents were very realistic people with a tendency to pessimism. On top of that, my father is an intelligent man. His words carried an enormous weight for me at that time which made his doubt that much more gut-wrenching and hurtful. But I am a stubborn person with a dream.
Despite that conversation, I sat down and googled which free video editing software there was. I downloaded one and started playing with it. The best way for me to learn almost anything is to learn by doing. So, I imported a video into the application and changed various settings, cut it, and added text. It didn’t take me long to pick up on the basics of the software.
Next, I figured out how to write scripts. I found out quickly that I am, in fact, fairly creative. I also learned that not every part of making movies requires creativity.
But my natural talents only got me so far. If I wanted to become better, I would need to put work into it. So, I did.
Over the years, I accumulated a small collection of various books that teach how to write scripts, how to frame shots, how to light and color scenes, and how to edit them. Although I have not read all of them yet, I have gone through several of them and worked the learned material into new projects that I made at the same time.
I was introduced to another software a few years after the start of my filmmaking hobby. Blender is software for animation. Learning how to work with this technology which was completely new to me posed a challenge. But thankfully there are lots of tutorials on YouTube that explain how to model a simple human, how to rig an object, and how to use texture. As I worked through these, I slowly got a grasp of how this strange software works.
Finally, I had a more specific idea of what I wanted to do in my professional career. I want to become an animator. I made that decision not based on my talents but based on my interests and the skills that I had gotten through hours of work.
More than that, however, I proved my father wrong. I have a lot of talents and I surely have some that are helpful for filmmaking. Those are however not enough to make me great at it. This far my father was right. But he was wrong when he doubted my perseverance. I did what I set out to do: I got further than my talents alone were able to get me. I became genuinely good at making videos. I learned that talent only gets me so far. Putting work into it is what makes the difference.
Where there is a will there is a way.