I HAD NOTHING TO FILM, SO I MADE A VIDEO.
I nearly didn’t make a video because I couldn’t answer one question:
What’s the point?
I wasn’t reviewing anything. Nobody was sponsoring me to make a video. I didn’t have some great story to tell. I just fancied going to sit by a quiet lake and read because it was a beautiful morning. But something in me also wanted to make a video. For no reason whatsoever.
Somewhere over the years, that stopped feeling like enough. I used to do it in the past; go and film something because I felt like it. I'd sit for hours shooting timelapses. Again, for no reason other than I wanted to.
I even think about when I was a kid; if I wanted to draw something, I drew it. I didn’t ask who it was for. I didn’t wonder if anybody would care. I definitely didn’t sit there trying to work out whether it was worth the time it would take to make. I wanted to draw a picture, so I drew a picture.
But my adult brain changed how I see things. I kept trying to give videos a reason to exist. It had to be about cameras. I had to make a tutorial that helped people. I had to help people decide what to buy. And only do that. But this year I started to get comfortable with the fact that not all videos need an agenda.
Even though making videos is work for me since quitting my 9-5 three years ago (which I have zero regrets about, by the way; the best decision I ever made was to go all in), when I’m not making a video for work, I can still catch myself asking whether it’s worth making because of the mindset I got myself into. As though enjoying the process isn’t worth anything on its own.
So on that thoughtful day, I made a video. Nothing happened. I went to the lake. I sat down. I read for a while. And I filmed it. There wasn’t really an agenda beyond that. And maybe that’s actually what I wanted to experiment with.
What happens if I stop requiring a video to serve a purpose ahead of me even making it? What happens if I just film whatever comes to mind in that very moment without a plan or loose outline of what I'll shoot? Or just film myself doing nothing. Just existing.
I've realised I have to give myself creative space for making things that lead absolutely nowhere. And I'm not talking about working on a video that needs to be done and then scrapping it because I'm not happy with how it turned out. Succumbing to perfectionism as I used to in the past. I'm talking about pure creativity where the expectation is nothing. For following an idea because I'm curious. For scratching an itch. For making something simply because, for whatever reason, I felt like making something that day, even though there was nothing on my schedule to make.
And even if the video I made achieves absolutely nothing else, I now have that morning to reflect on. A random day where I sat beside a lake reading a book, along with a record of what was going through my head at that particular point in my life.
Maybe years from now that will be the most valuable thing about it. Or maybe it won’t. Either way, I wanted to make a video.
So I made the damn video.
