It takes talent to make a good film, and this digital revolution has made it easier for talented people to express themselves. It’s become a familiar story – a young person comes out of the blue with an astounding film that they put together on their personal computer. Talent has shown its face! Twenty years ago, a kid with a great story to tell would face an entirely different battle to put their story on a screen: searching for financing, equipment, technicians to handle that advanced gear. Now, they can get remarkably close to that level with equipment that’s sold at Best Buy, and they can learn a suite of techniques in YouTube tutorials that were traditionally traded among a handful of artisans. They’ve got something to show now, a finished film, where twenty years ago they might have had a script. Is that talented kid a filmmaker? They are on their way, but they aren’t there just yet.

A wise man once said about being an artist – “This is not a young person’s endeavor. This is for old men and women.” This man didn’t mean that young people shouldn’t consider themselves filmmakers, or pursue that goal – but that those who will succeed in this game are in it for the long haul. They see themselves as filmmakers today, and they see themselves being filmmakers until the day they die. They are committed and serious and they don’t plan on going anywhere.

Let’s look at this through the lens of another art: cooking. A lot of people love watching The Food Network. A lot of people have fancy cookwear and a great stove. They may cook wonderful, complex meals from recipes, or even invent their own delicious dishes. Are they chefs? No. They are home cooks. A chef is something more. A chef may have certifications or degrees, or a pile of awards and a number of successful restaurants, but even a 20 year old with a tamale cart and a killer palate can be a chef. The difference lies in commitment, and the distinction comes from what that commitment does to a person’s output. Chefs have committed to make food service their life. They develop techniques and tastes over a lifetime in the kitchen, and they cook with commitment and love and personal flair, just about every day. That lifestyle creates someone with passionate and personal feelings about food, with an incredible sense of flavor, with strong relationships with quality suppliers and staff. They won’t accept anything less than the best from themselves, because cooking is their life, and their natural talent has been developed into something consistent and professional, yet passionate, through daily practice. People who enjoy food migrate to the restaurants of talented chefs to taste their innovative cooking, to engage with the story those chefs have to tell. They know that restaurant will deliver something beyond what they can whip up after a long day and a trip to Whole Foods, and they expect quality every time they sit at that table.

Audiences expect the same things from filmmakers. Film is an art, an elusive one that can take a lifetime to master. Someone who has made a great short film on their first time out now has a little cachet, and may have the talent to get moving in the world of film a bit faster than others. They are on their way, but until they make that commitment to spend every day of their life in that competitive and demanding kitchen of filmmaking, they haven’t truly become filmmakers. Filmmakers dream stories and images, breathe script outlines, aspect ratios, and focal lengths. They wake up in edit bays, shoot the last f-stop of waning light at sunset, and sketch camera setups on their way to set, wether they’re in the back of a Lincoln Towncar or the back of a city bus.

It is an incredibly fun and rewarding life, but it also takes a large measure of sacrifice. You’ll know when you get there, and you’ll probably get there because it is the only thing you can see yourself doing. Don’t be discouraged though – you can get there. How? That’s easy: make films! Start making them and don’t stop. Learn from each one and set your sights on elevating your skills on the next. At first, they don’t even have to be good! If you have something to say, if you have a story to tell, and you remain committed to telling it, you’ll get there. Every chef has that memory of the time they utterly ruined a meal, and every master filmmaker looks at their early efforts and can see only the mistakes. It is commitment that will get you there. It is passion and talent and a relentless desire to explore and improve. The hours are long, but the work is quite a bit like play!

So, are you a filmmaker?
Welcome to the kitchen.

As we grow, we’ve challenged ourselves to express the attitudes and philosophies that drive us as storytellers, as entrepreneurs, as humans.  How do we dig deeper when adversity confronts us?  How do we find the will to keep charging forward despite mounting obstacles standing in our way?

Be a difference maker!

Be a difference-maker.  You hear it on the lips of Reggie Bush and Steven Colbert. There’s a sense of the grammatical blunder here at first glance, some loose Yogi Berra style goofball language.  Looking closer, however, there is a specific use of words here that reveals a higher, more telling mythology.

It’s fair to say that most people have made differences to one degree or another in their lives.  Everyone is capable of doing something that makes a difference.  Being a difference maker isn’t a state of doing, though.  Being a difference maker is a state of mind, a state of being!

We are striving to live as difference makers.  Striving to live every minute of his life as a person that makes differences in his world.   A person trying to make a difference focuses on a certain problem, and wills a change in that problem (presumably for the better) through his actions, intellect, investments.  As difference makers, we apply these same causes, not to a specific effect, but to our identies, our very existence.  Making differences then becomes fundamental to the way we live our life. In a difference-maker’s world, every hurdle or emotional issue or social objective is confronted with the full force of an engaged, lively, and capable problem solver.

That’s how we do it.

Every day that you decide to push yourself, you will be confronted with challenges.  The very nature of being a difference maker can lead to being in difficult situations that require emotional fortitude and mental tenacity to endure. A difference maker welcomes those challenges with open arms and a smile!  Being a difference maker doesn’t mean that you don’t fail sometimes or that you’re never afraid or lost.  It just means that you don’t give up.  It means you confront fear when it confronts you.  You find your way out when you’re lost.  You get back up after you get knocked down.  When someone tells you NO, you move on until you find the person who will tell you YES.

It’s a high calling. It’s not something we do perfectly every day.  We all have our limitations of will, of time, of resources.  Yet, it’s something to strive for, and it’s a filter that you can use to look at challenges in a clearer light. Embracing the difference-maker mindset will grow your muscles. By pushing yourself and those around you, you find yourself able to accomplish things you used to only dream of.  Things that used to feel difficult will get easier.  You’ll find yourself realizing dreams, making them your reality, then setting new, more challenging dreams and pursuing those. That’s being a difference maker!

So, come on.  Join us.

Be a Difference Maker.  Today.  Everyday.