On a Fast Moving Train

What perplexes me greatly in my first year of film school is how much I did indeed thrive in ways I never expected. Somehow all the skills I felt were a useless set of intentionalities and curiosities, had become my greatest strengths.

“How are you doing?” she asked as we walked in cadence with one another. The sound of the cicadas chirped around the trees, filling my ears around her question.

I blinked a couple of times while darting my eyes back and forth looking for a succinct answer. “I feel like I am on a fast moving train and I’m just hanging on,” I replied with a smirk.

For a couple of years, I felt like I was waiting at a train station. I would sit on the bench watching everyone else get a ticket but me. My feet curled under the bench beneath me, pointed in no particular direction. Every road I had walked down seemed to lead to a dead end. A list of failures outside my control compiling neatly on the desk in my office. Each of these rejections seemed to guide my curiosity of the train again and again.

I was never passive in the waiting. I perused books at the local library around photography, I watched how-tos around filmmaking, and I carved a deeper set of writing skills. On occassion I stood at entrances of educational buildings I was unsure about and whispered to myself, “What if this is a failure too.”

What perplexes me greatly from my first year of film school is how much I did indeed thrive in ways I never expected. Somehow all the skills I felt were a useless set of intentionalities and curiosities, had become my greatest strengths. I have a natural inclination to be curious about people’s journeys and what they love doing. I ask a lot of questions about process, style, and what people see in the world around them. I never thought that this curiosity would compel me to speak to people who make the big decisions or lead to coffee chats with people well established in their field. I spent a year with great intention checking up on people and asking about the heart behind ideas.

A campaign related to the degree has now released that talks about part of my story in going back to school to pursue film. In all that time of waiting at the station alone, I had somehow forgotten that I needed people. As I walked alongside my friend, I realised that others may perceive luck or charisma in my successes of this last year, but I think it has much to do with friendship. The people I have come to know are more than just a work friend or someone I met on a project, these are people who feel like family. The type of family that would show up when I’m crying in the stairwell, or ones that would happily come along to an art event and ask as many questions as I do.

Some recent film releases have been led by women leaders on set who created an environment that felt like family. Sets that were intentionally designed for people to be curious and experiment within their own creativity. This to me is where the magic of film can be, safe spaces that allow creativity to thrive, even among tough themes. Perhaps it is a young person’s point of view that it is even possible to create such an environment, but there are examples that prove it’s true.

I am now in my second year as a film student, and what a year it has already been. Not because I am on this fast moving train headed towards an ever-changing industry, but because I am surrounded by whānau who are curious, kind, and endlessly creative. I am grateful that all my life experiences have shown me that luck is not in the successes, but in the people we get to meet in life who become lifelong friends.