Always be closing…

My videos suck.

At least thats the impression I get when I rewatch old footage from the past.

I am not talking about 10 years ago but roughly 2 to 3 years back.

I know for a fact that every creative person, while reflecting on his previous work he realises it’s not that good.

That in itself is a positive feeling, because filmmaking is an ongoing, repetitive learning process. The more you do the better you become

I see it as an algorithm.

Idea. Execution. Final Product. Feedback. Repeat.

After I bought my first DSLR it was only a matter of time that I would step in the amazing world of filmmaking. And so I did. After watching countless hours of tutorials, directing lessons, paying closer attention to movies etc I decided to make my own little travel video since I was planning a trip in the near future.

I bought a new lens, a mini tripod so I could have better control over my shots and I was ready.

View from our plane on our way to Eindhoven from Athens. October 2015.

We set off to the UK & Netherlands for a week and I shot tons of footage. I was excited with all the new things we were seeing.

The trip ended. The “Execution” of the project was done. We all had an amazing time, especially me where I was looking forward to put everything together.

The problem was that I had just discovered filmmaking, so editing, at the time, seemed like a really daunting task so I never dared to tackle it and if I did I wanted to learn it perfectly in order to produce the best possible result.

Time went by… I got distracted with other obligations and interests and the files from the trip were left in my hard drive never to be seen again, thus the “Final Product” was never to be made… until today.

By the way I made the same mistake by not editing any videos from my previous trip to Switzerland two years ago. Same problem. Same laziness. Same me. Slightly better camera though.

Flying over lake Geneva a few minutes before landing. November 2016.

The worst part of it is that while rewatching everything together today I realise that all the mistakes are being repeated. More specifically:

1. No story
2. Camera shake
3. Awful exposure (really bright or really dark scenes),
4. Shooting whenever it was convenient = boring content
5. Being shy in front of the camera
6. Speaking different languages while attempting narration and many many more…

So back to today. I am sitting on my desk rewatching the clips and trying to figure out like a puzzle how to assemble everything together to create a compelling story…

Looking back I feel really frustrated with myself, I feel like a loser for not completing something that I started and the more I think of it the more I realise I’ve done it in other aspects of my life as well.

So as of today I am willing to put an end to loose ends.

Starting from the very first unfinished project on my drive and work hard in order to produce a final result.

I do not care if it will be perfect, at least there will be a result…

Because to finish something even imperfectly is to learn from it and move on.

So I am making a public commitment here, on Medium, to my 206 followers as the day of this posting that I will be posting a YouTube video on my channel every week until I finish with all my archive and who knows what will come next?!

Making public commitments has always helped me in the past and I believe it will do so now as well.

Thanks for reading… see you in a week!