i am folding up my sleeves and getting back to work on my new film, and i couldn’t help to step back a little and observe where i’m at in the process, and i thought that being a filmmaker is like getting on a plane to look at the world from another perspective.
you fly around and keep your eyes open, looking for a special moment or just some kind of inspiring view.
when that happens, it’s all so beautiful and touching that out of sheer excitement you throw yourself out of the plane, to hopefully be closer and maybe touch and feel whatever interesting thing you saw. it’s only after a few seconds that you realize that you are in the air and didn’t put a parachute on. damn. so you keep falling and you start freaking out because you have jumped and can’t go back to the safety of the plane’s comfortable chairs. you look around and after some time you see a group of other skydivers falling as well, far away, and the only thing you can do to save yourself is try approaching them, to see if they can help you somehow. turns out they not only have a spare parachute, but they also give you hints about how to use it, when, and how to land. you gladly take the parachute, say thanks and goodbye and everyone goes back to attending their own fall.
so now you’re there alone again, falling into this big void, and is actually pretty fucking exciting but you’re aware that you’re falling to your death, and that’s the major source of anxiety of course. But at least now you know you have a parachute. Which you really never used before, but you have to trust that whatever those other skydivers gave you works, and whatever they told you is true.
so, based on that help you start planning how and when to open the parachute. but the more you fall, the more you realize you’re getting ecstatic and you’re loving the fall so much because you’ve never been in such a situation and the experience is making you reconsider so many things on so many different levels. so you’re faced with a choice, either to open the parachute now and stop the fall and slow down and finally be safe, or you can wait to open the parachute at the latest moment you can, in order to enjoy as much as possible what this fall is offering, because the more you fall the more interesting it gets. after a few seconds of meditating, you decide to wait.
but with that decision comes back again the anxiety and the fear of what’s coming towards you, which is certain death if you don’t open the parachute in time or if you can’t manage to open it at all. you start doubting if you made the right choice, and the fear starts turning into sheer terror. and along with that comes a wave of sensations, feelings and insights that you never would have come across if you opened the parachute way before. the terror makes you dig inside yourself for any hook that might keep you sane, and that digging is sublimated into consciousness and some sort of enlightenment, and that opens your mind to a number of ideas and connections as vast as the world coming at you. that’s the moment that you were waiting for, when you conquer fear and that world coming at you turns from being your worst enemy to your best friend, and you embrace the moment and everything becomes clear and you finally understand why you stupidly jumped out of that plane in the first place.
that’s the moment when you can open the parachute and focus on a safe landing.
when you land, maybe you break a leg or your waist or worse, but at least you made it alive. the skydivers that helped you along the fall gather around you, happy you made it and eager to listen to the story of the whole fall.
you’re happy to share, they’re happy to listen and tend to your wounds, and will be happy to share the story with other skydivers, and maybe there will be random people around that will be listening or that witnessed your fall and will maybe get excited about the story and maybe even in the reasons why you stupidly jumped out of a plane without a parachute, and maybe who knows, if you made it why can’t they try themselves since it all sounds so FUCKING AMAZING.
that’s what i feel making a documentary film is like.