Sometimes when you get lost, you’re lost because you need to be. There’s a reason for it. After a few weeks of riding on a crazy film festival roller coaster, I think I need a few days to be lost. And if you have to be lost, being lost in Paris isn’t really all that bad. As distracting as cobble stone streets and 200 year old buildings can be, I’m still lost in thought. I’ve learned a lot in the last few weeks but it may take years for what I’ve learned to sink in. The main lesson for me is how much more there is to do. I can take two or three days to get lost in Paris but then it’s back to work. I need to work about one thousand time harder than I have in the past. Everyone in the world is a Filmmaker. Everyone in the world has a film to sell. I know this and accept this now, but I must move past it and focus on what’s next. Taking baby steps over the last ten years has lead me here. To a screening in a thematic program in the Cannes festival. But what does that really mean. The main lesson to take away from the last few weeks for me is that the short film market is beyond super-saturated. One thousand, seven hundred and twenty films were in this years short film market. Those films are just the ones that made it to the film market at Cannes. Out of those 1720 films, some are selected to get screenings in the thematic programs. Thousands and thousands of films compete for attention at other festivals around the world. If you think about the amount of films out there you can lose your mind. In the end you can only compete with yourself and with your last project. I can only improve on my last film and move forward. This time, the way forward my not involve another short film. I’ll have to find a way to make something longer. The next baby step is a big one, but there’s no other direction to go in unless I take a step backwards. The puzzle pieces are slowly coming together, but the only issue is that I still don’t know what image all these pieces come together to form. Building a puzzle, piece by piece, leads to an ever changing image that never really comes into focus. I’m sure that I’ll have this all figured out in next ten to twenty to thirty years. For now all I can do is walk around these cobblestone streets and be lost for as long as I’m allowed to be.
