To my fellow creatives, actors, thespians, etc., I want to talk about the importance of creating your own work. I personally didn’t see the extreme value in doing this until 2017 when I got the chance to work on a friend’s short film. I was able to act in the project and I paid some money to help the film get complete, so I was also able to get a producer credit in addition to acting in the project. This experience changed my life and opened my mind to a new world of creating your own work.
Now don’t get me wrong, creating your own work is hard and it can be expensive! But I promise you this, as a creative, there is no better feeling than knowing something you created from the ground up is respected and admired by your peers. Not only this, but with creating your own work, you’re providing opportunities for actors, writers, producers, camera people, gaffers, sound mixers, etc. You’re literally employing people and giving them opportunities to do what they love! But creating your own works comes a ton of responsibilities. First you have to ask yourself, what role do you want in creating your own work? Do you want to create the idea of the project and that’s it? Do you want to create the idea and write the project? Have you ever written anything? Do you know screenplay do’s and don’ts? Do you want to just produce and act in your own projects and develop a team of people who can create ideas and then write the screenplay? There are a ton of questions you have to ask yourself before going along in this journey. You will have to teach yourself new things. You will inevitably have to learn much more than just being an actor/actress. In creating your own work, you’re now the boss. The boss has the most responsibilities. The more you learn from others and the more you teach yourself will lead to your producing better content. But no worries, we all have to start somewhere! Your work will continue to get better as you shoot more projects.
We all know how inconsistent this business can be. One month you have tons of auditions, the next 3 months it’s crickets. One month you have two bookings, and for the rest of the year you have no bookings. So, what are you doing in the meantime? I’ll tell you what you should be doing. You should be taking ownership of your career and creating as much content as you possibly can. Take it from me, I now have my own production company with numerous projects in talks of development with major studios. If you build it, they will come!
