Yogi Berra once said something like “If you don’t know where you’re going, that’s where you’ll end up.’
Which seems to be the state of many of us in the creative economy right now, from Netflix on down. The macro-economic compass has shifted, and the smartest people in the room are scrambling to capture profit over growth. For those keeping score, this is the same cycle we saw in 2001, 2007, and now again in 2022. It isn’t just about eyeballs or subscribers, it’s about actually having a bag at the end of the year you can hold onto.
To the small scale creator like me, the challenges are similar but maybe not quite as tectonic. I’m always amazed whenever I’m putting together a budget how quickly the numbers add up, and often we’ll get push back from clients saying they just can’t spend that much. So that’s where the balancing act begins: where do I make sacrifices? How do I scale back into scope? What do I, as a creator, have to give up? And most importantly, how can we hold onto the integrity of our vision around the project?
It’s the challenge of every client, producer, director, production designer, cinematographer, and artist out there, especially in a bear market. The question we’re going to be asked, now more than ever, is how we do more with less?
But it’s not all doom and gloom. If we can keep making and building and winding our way through the next 18-24 months, we have a chance of building a strong foundation around ‘making’ that will do us well once the economy cycles back around. Patience is teaching me how to become very friendly with the long game again. But let’s not kid ourselves, it’s not without a struggle. The last couple years have been unique in their own right, so I’m reminding myself again (and again) of perhaps the single best piece of advice I ever received along the way:
Keep your overhead LOOOOOOOOW and your eyes on the prize. Fly with the least amount of baggage. Carry-on + 1.
Flying to Colorado - September 2022