Question by alejandrothedirector: I am an aspiring film director, but everyone thinks I’m an aspiring magician. Help!?
I’m a sixteen year old high school student. Ever since I was eleven, I decided I wanted to become a successful film director, I made several movies, and one even won me a trip to Washington D.C. In middle school, I even made a short film and entered it into my schools talent show. I had recognition as a filmmaker. Then, I went into high school, my middle school had 300 kids who carried into my high school, which has 2500 students. I decided that I needed to make myself known in high school (I don’t have many friends, I’m not a nerd or look ugly or anything, I’m just really shy), so I wanted to make a full length movie. I started working on the script in 2008, and I am currently working on the third draft. The movie is on a $ 8000 budget, and is set for release in 2011. As a hobby, I decided to pick up magic, I performed several tricks for classmates, they loved it, but they all started to assume I wanted to grow up to be a magician. The sad part about magic is that nobody cared about who I was, they just wanted to see me perform magic tricks. I don’t like to perform magic for the same people all the time. (unless it’s for cute girls of course) There’s this one guy who always comes over to my table al lunch, he doesen’t even know my name, he just calls me “magic boy”, and he asks me to do a trick every day, I want to seem like I have spontaniousness with magic, but I only know about 50 good tricks. If I do magic for the same people all the time, they will eventually discover that I’m not as spontanious as they think. On top of that, nobody knows about how hard I work on movies. I am taking a video production class, but none of the students outside of the class really know about what we do, there’s no film fest or nothing, No movies really make it outside of the classroom. Also, I’ve been working on the film script for the movie mentioned above for over two years now, and not many people know that, but everyone knows about my true passion, filmmaking. What can I do so that I can do magic, but have people recognize me as a filmmaker? Orson Welles and Woody Allen actually like to do card tricks and Orson was a stage magician too.
Best answer:
Answer by Sabot03196
You are defined by you, not by other people. In other words, you are not their dancing monkey.
A constant thread through the lives of people involved in the arts is, “Civilians,” not getting you or understanding what you’re about. Don’t worry, film people will get you fine and the kids you’re in school with now will happily be shelling out their cash to see your films in a theater in ten years or so.
Keep making films, keep writing. You’re on the right track, regardless of what people do or do not know about you. I worked for many years in blue collar jobs where discussing how to make a story work would have just gotten you a blank stare. Don’t let it get to you.
I’m a produced screenwriter with feature film and TV credits.
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