THE ABC of Creativity - A Guidebook for Struggling Creatives (that I wish I had found when I started out) - INTRO (My Story)

Dear reader and - perhaps - fellow struggling creative,

I am 35 years old and have been a struggling creative - and struggling person in general - for probably half of my life. The struggle became tougher throughout my university years. I guess it's not that strange when you study film and television theory but want to be a filmmaker.

Let's be clear about this, I wasn't taught to be a filmmaker. It was, after all, university. When I graduated, barely, in late 2007, the struggle became even bigger. I was released into the real world and soon felt myself being sucked into the black hole of post-university. Armed with a worthless degree, I entered the financial/ economic crisis and became part of it.

I worked for a year in all kinds of jobs and, as soon as I had the chance - it was early 2009 - traveled to Spain. I learned Spanish, rediscovered my creativity - even wrote some short film screenplays - and stayed in España for 5 months, till I run out of money. When I had just about enough dough left to buy a plain ticket to The Netherlands, I flew home. Back there, I soon got sucked into the black hole again.

Now let me be clear, I don't think I was depressed. I have never been diagnosed with depression. But, looking back at these times, I might actually have been. I can assure you of one thing, I felt pretty miserably most of the time, but I thought that was normal, part of life. Simply a consequence of my choices.

After about half a year of unemployment, I took on two different jobs. Around october 2010, I was fired from one of my two jobs. And just before Christmas - talking about timing - they fired me at my other job. Fortunately, I had - by that time - decided that I wanted to make a serious attempt at filmmaking.

I wrote a short film screenplay and found a cameraman/ editor. We embarked onto an adventure/ collaboration that lasted 2.5 years and led to ten short films. The first of these films took us 8 months to make and believe me, we struggled.

Be warned, this film is not for the faint of heart and definitely no entertainment. You will probably enjoy my writing a lot more ;)

This was meant to be an introduction, so let me try to cut it short:

It's now 2017 and I'm still struggling on an almost daily basis. I am proud to say that I'm a filmmaker though, since about 7 years or so. I might be struggling a lot, but at least I'm struggling on the things that I like to do most.

In the past 7 years, I made about 15 short films. The first one took me 8 months to make. I then made 9 films of 12 minutes each, in one year (2012). The project was called '12movies12minutes'.

In 2013, I tried my hand on a mini-series, without success.
Here's the teaser though for your enjoyment...

I started and failed on a couple of different projects, one of them a feature film that I was going to direct.

Last year, in 2016, I quit my job as a teacher, moved to a tiny island full of volcanoes and started on a feature film.
I can offically say that I am, since then, struggling on my biggest project ever. It's a feature length, Spanish, microbudget thriller called Los Ojos Rojos (The Red Eyes) and I'm self producing it, together with my screenwriter.

Here's a 55 second teaser that we made to attach more people to the project:

For those of you who are still reading, congratulations! You made it to the final stage of this post..

I am planning to share more of my filmmaking (process) and overall creative struggles.
This can be the start of something special.

My next post will be on the A (of Creativity) - A is for Authenticity, where I'll explain the importance of authenticity.

Hope to see you then!

Saludos,

Vincent