Weekly Motivation: If Your Filmmaking Career is Going Nowhere

weekly motivation, indie film hustle, alex ferrari

Every week I’ll be posting new videos as part of my Weekly Filmmaking Motivation Series to help the #IFHTribe along their filmmaking or screenwriting path. We all need some help, guidance, motivation or inspiration on our long journey in this crazy business so I hope these video help in a small way.

If you like this please share it with your friends and inner circle. Keep on hustling and never give up on that dream!

Now the very first thing I want you guys to know, and I want you to listen very carefully, is that

YOU ARE ENOUGH.

Now one of the biggest mistakes we make as filmmakers, as creatives, and this goes along for everybody, though, but specifically us filmmakers and screenwriters and creative people, is that we attach ourselves to what we do.

We attach our happiness to what we do. And that is a recipe for pain. If you were to sit down and ask the 23-year-old Alex what I, who I was, and I would say oh I’m a director, and that’s it. That would be the extent of my identity back then. I know a lot of you listening right now, if someone would ask you that, what are you? You would say I’m a filmmaker. I’m a screenwriter. I’m a cinematographer. And you’re attaching that thing that you do to who you are.

You are not your skillset.
You are not your occupation.
You are much, much, much more than that.

When you identify yourself as an occupation, as a career, as a thing, when that thing goes wrong or doesn’t do what you want it to do for you, like so many times in my life, you crumble. You fall to your knees every time. So when you don’t get that movie, don’t get the financing for that movie, you don’t get the access or the opportunity that you were searching for, you didn’t sell that script, your whole life completely comes crashing down around you because that’s the only identity you have. And it’s not good. Trust me on that.

I’ve gone through it so many times in my life. I’ve been slapped around so many times. My book is all about that. It was at that time in my life when I wrote Shooting for the Mob, that whole story when I was in my mid-20s, that was my identity. I didn’t know anything else about myself. I didn’t care to even learn. I was too scared to learn about anything else about myself. I didn’t wanna go into those crevices. I held on to being a filmmaker or director, and that was the only thing I was holding onto because it was the one thing I knew I could, it was my blankie.

It was my blankie to keep me safe and happy, you know, at least I thought it did. I didn’t wanna go to those dark areas of my life that I wasn’t as good at or I wasn’t as happy in. But you’ve got to go in there. You gotta be a full, full human being and not attach yourself to what you do.

Need more inspiration? Check out my new book Shooting for the Mob (Based on the Incredible True Story)

Music by: Soundstripe (The Official Music Library of Indie Film Hustle)
Footage by: Film/Pac

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TOXIC MINDSET, FILAMMKER MINDSET, BELIEFS

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Weekly Motivation: If Your Filmmaking Career is Going Nowhere – WATCH THIS