I first saw this Ghandi quote on my friend Eugina’s myspace profile several years back and vaguely remembered it from elementary but mostly it felt fresh to me and really thought it resonated. At the time I had been trying to talk about new film industry models which my friend Andrew A Peterson referred to as trying to “solve the words problems”. That basically was us talking for hours and hours on the phone about how social media should work, how internet neutrality will be maintained, how the film industry should evolve, the new expression that is possible with new media and the collective evolution that should can occur with these tools.

But then this quote about “Being the change” was in front of my face. I realized I’d done enough theorizing about what the world should look like and it was time for me to just embody what I believed in and let that be my biggest contribution to the a progression in that direction. I felt I had been doing that intuitively with the creation and distribution of Four Eyed Monsters, but with that mostly behind me I was a bit directionless. It was especially hard because I had defined myself by that project so much. Defined myself even by that relationship with Susan. I needed to build up a new identity that wouldn’t just come and then go as fast as a film project does. I realized I need to just be myself.

So I started my own blog. Began my series of virtual film school posts. Decided to try to teaching others by simply explaining how and why I’m doing what I’m doing as I’m doing it via my blog.

This got me slowly really amped up for starting From Here to Awesome and again I went to town discussing all of the ways the new film industry could function, newer cameras making truly cinematic experiences now within reach, new ways to monetize films digitally and royalty splits amongst collaborators to add incentive to work on lower budget productions to everyone on the crew.

But then conversations with my good friend Roger Edward Ingraham who had been studying Eckhart Tolle reminded me again, that your only duty is to attend to your own awareness. This pretty much emphases to me this “be the change” concept again. That you don’t have to live in the future where everybody else gets on board for an idea but instead you can live in the now where you are on board for an idea. By this time I had gotten really exhausted traveling around with the DIY DAYS and realized it would be a huge relief to not put so much effort into changing the world but instead just relax and be the change myself. I was learning to set aside the end goal of what the film world should look like and instead focusing how I can use filmmaking tools and distribution pathways right now.

So I stepped away from From Here to Awesome for a bit and even stopped pushing or promoting Four Eyed Monsters in any way to go back the drawing board and ask myself what filmmaking tools and story telling techniques I was interested in. Essentially begin to work shop from scratch. Rediscover what filmmaking could be for me right now.

In that process I began work on As The Dust Settles which then lead me to another film we just got done shooting that will in the end all be part of a slate of films.

But then, full circle, this re-introduced the question, how shall I come out with these new films?

How shall they be distributed?

How shall the film industry work?

What do you all think?