Working...

On set several years back.  Probably spring 2005.

I'm at the monitor with my man Chris Stacey on the VariCam at the wall with singer Joel Auge up against it.

We're shooting 'LOST' my first music video as a director--based on a song off an album by Joel's band Hewit.

You can see it here.

What struck me about the shot is how 'ghetto fabulous' getting it was.  I mean, we're just walking around--outside a rundown old warehouse with rats and everything--telling Joel to do stuff.  Chris is rack focusing like crazy, Joel's emoting, I'm watching it all and telling them to re-do this, re-do that, let's try it this way and so on.

It's not 'till later, once you start putting it all together, that the thing starts looking like something.

And all along the way, you've got to trust.

Trust that your concept is going to work.  Trust that your ideas are actually good.  Trust that the shots are going to cut together.  Trust your collaborators, trust the process.

Trust.

It's one of the toughest things to find and keep.

And the reason I thought I'd put that simple shot up there is to remind me (and possibly you) that in most things (regardless of your particular industry) you have to start very, very small.

If I fast-forward from that day on-set with 'LOST' to a night in the middle of the winter 2006 where we had the central intersections of Hamilton Ontario shut down (twelve cops in all) so that we could shoot the climax to my first feature film it's quite the trip.

Then I'm reminded of how small that first film was and the steps we've taken since then.  It's like you need to keep a childlike fascination with the work you're enabled to do--staying wide eyed and bushy tailed--while embracing the fact that, as you look back on it in a year or two, you're going to be very humbled by how small you were when you thought you were so significant.

It seems to always come back to the 'children at play in the fields of the Lord' analogy.

We're just a bunch of kids playing.  We're impressed with ourselves sure, but we do well to remember that we're very, very small in the grand scheme of things.

No matter how big things get.

T