Yesterday, I went to a friends house to hang out. I've known these kids since I was 4 years old. I relate most to the eldest brother he's one of my best friends, but being so close since forever they're all basically my cousins. I hung out with the younger two (of three), whom own a digital marketing company and specialize in social media marketing. I got there, was offered fresh dominos pizza, I rolled a joint, I smoked it, and then the media ingesting frenzy ensued. I had never seen anything like it. They went from ridiculous video to the next and were extremely entertained. The next generation of media is so far from my own (I'm 26) that it truly worries me what the market for film will be like in 10 years. What stories will sell and what will we as filmmakers be forced to make.
I started this journey because I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wanted to be Indiana Jones. I wanted to design worlds and become an architect, I wanted to be James Bond and so much more. I realized that filmmaking was the only thing I could specialize in and be all these different things. 12 years later my mind shifts from business to my to do list to reading to not knowing what kind of media 17-22 year olds want.
The problem is I care. I started this journey thinking I would save the world through films. In college I noticed I couldn't save it but maybe I could change it a little. Now I just want to pay my rent and do it while playing around with cameras and people and stories.
I think the realization I am having is that... very soon I will have to choose between the pursuing of making the content people want and making the content I want.
Excerpt from Plato's Protagoras:
"Is not a Sophist, Hippocrates, one who deals wholesale or retail in the food of the soul? To me that appears to be the sort of man. 1
And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? 2
Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul; and we must take care, my friend, that the Sophist does not deceive us when he praises what he sells, like the dealers wholesale or retail who sell the food of the body: for they praise indiscriminately all their goods, without knowing what are really beneficial or hurtful; neither do their customers know, with the exception of any trainer or physician who may happen to buy of them. In like manner those who carry about the wares of knowledge, and make the round of the cities, and sell or retail them to any customer who is in want of them, praise them all alike: and I should not wonder, O my friend, if many of them were really ignorant of their effect upon the soul; and their customers equally ignorant, unless he who buys of them happens to be a physician of the soul. If therefore you have understanding of what is good and evil, you may safely buy knowledge of Protagoras, or of any one; but if not, then, O my friend, pause, and do not hazard your dearest interests at a game of chance. For there is far greater peril in buying knowledge than in buying meat and drink: the one you purchase of the wholesale or retail dealer, and carry them away in other vessels, and before you receive them into the body as food you may deposit them at home, and call in any experienced friend who knows what is good to be eaten or drunken, and what not, and how much and when; and hence the danger of purchasing them is not so great. But when you buy the wares of knowledge you cannot carry them away in another vessel; they have been sold to you, and you must take them into the soul and go your way, either greatly harmed or greatly benefited by the lesson: and therefore we should think about this and take counsel with our elders; for we are still young—too young to determine such a matter. And now let us go, as we were intending, and hear Protagoras: and when we have heard what he has to say, we may take counsel of others; for not only is Protagoras at the house of Callias, but there is Hippias of Elis, and if I am not mistaken, Prodicus of Ceos, and several other wise men. 3"