I have two partners at Floodgate Productions – Dave Wilkins and Jason Rowe. They both contributed to my book about faith and creativity, and are both dear friends and creative collaborators.
When we came back after the Christmas break, Dave walked into the office with a script in his hand – a script that he wrote. He looked at us and said…
“I’m going to make a three-minute short film for a local film festival. I have three weeks until it’s due.”
Dave went on to tell us that he had already written a script (a really great script, by the way). Now, he needed to cast, find a location, gather a volunteer film crew, edit, color, balance audio, and pull the whole thing together.
The due date was January 23 at 9:00am.
So during the past three weeks, Dave has done everything I mentioned above. Many people think that owning your own creative company allows you to do whatever you want to do, whenever you want to do it. That’s just not true at all. Dave had other hard deadlines to meet during these three weeks. He was pulled into company meetings, and asked to lead other projects. Dave is also the father of three children, and is a great and ever-present dad to them. He’s also an amazing husband.
Dave is already busy enough.
And this morning, he sent his short-film to the festival.
The festival is local, and won’t land on any global map. At this festival, there is no voting for “best picture”, and there is no prize.
The only reward for Dave is the fulfillment of working through a creative process, and finishing.
As I reflect on watching Dave over the last three weeks, I’m inspired by how much he believes in this project. Dave worked nights and weekends to complete this project, and walked away from the Floodgate offices at 6:00am this morning. He didn’t put everything else on hold to complete the project. He added it to an already-overloaded production schedule.
Dave believes.
Every artist has excuses about why a creative project hasn’t taken shape for them. We use the excuses of money, time, resources, expertise, and people. We excuse ourselves because we don’t want to upset the work/family balance. I wonder if these excuses are simply the top layer of something going on underneath?
If there’s some creative project that you’re supposed to create for the world, and if you’ve continued to place that project on the shelf, I wonder if – at the core of it all – you don’t really believe.
I wonder if the primary reason our creative concepts never see the light of day is because we don’t really believe.
I feel like I need to be called back to the simple belief that creating something excellent and beautiful is always worth it.
And I feel like Dave’s story might serve to call you back to that, too.
