Learning to Ignore the Noise
Lessons from Running and The Growing Need for More Climate Stories on the Big Screen
Welcome to this week’s Sunday Evening edition of The Backlot. These newsletters will include stories from my recent experiences working in documentary filmmaking, helpful resources for emerging filmmakers, and other posts covering topics in the documentary industry.
NOTE - The Sunday evening version of the newsletter is free. Future mid-week posts on Wednesday evenings will require a paid subscription.
This week, I’m sharing a few of the many things I’ve learned from running and how they have changed my perspective on a career in filmmaking…
🎞️ Why We Need to Ignore the Noise
🎬 The Film Industry Needs a Climate Reality Check
🗞️ Wrapping Up & Recommendations of the Week
Don’t Focus on the Noise
Over the past few months, I’ve started training for an ultra-marathon in October. This marks my second race of the year and means most of my weekends revolve around long runs and workouts.
Last weekend, I woke up early to try to beat the excessive heat warnings and run my long run in the early morning. Let me tell you, pretty much everything that could go wrong with this run went wrong.
During the first few miles, I felt completely exhausted, and the humidity made me feel weak. My stomach hurt, my legs felt heavy, and I wondered whether I would even make it through a few miles.
On top of all that, my Strava which helps record your workout, tracking mileage, pace, elevation gain, and a variety of other data points, didn’t start. In the running community, not documenting your run is a cardinal sin. It’s our obligatory form of social media, and runners often joke that if you didn’t put it on Strava, did it really happen?
For myself, I’ve been training hard for the past few months and like many runners, was aiming to track my distance and pace for this workout. Unfortunately, the app closed, or I forgot to start the workout. Therefore, a few miles into my run, I realized I was running without any acknowledgment of pacing or time.
This lack of acknowledgment of any data points or record of my run seemed almost forbidden. For a few moments, the run felt pointless. I felt lost.
That's when something shifted in my mind. This was ridiculous, I thought.
Why did I care about my pace or my time? Who cares if my run was recorded for a couple of dozen people to see on my profile?
As my mindset shifted away from comparison and expectation, my feelings of tiredness started to dissipate. I felt a newfound freedom after being released from the constraints placed upon me by a documented pace and time. I let go of any thoughts about being good or bad, and suddenly, all I cared about was that I was running.
I felt freedom in the practice that I hadn’t felt in a long time. I felt like I had just reignited my passion for running and was falling in love with it again.
These unexpected feelings brought me to a realization - not just about running - but one that spoke to me in every single facet of my life, including filmmaking.
Why do we spend so much time worrying about how things look on the outside and not how they feel on the inside?
In this age of social media and virtual existence, we too often get caught up in worrying about how we are doing and whether we are meeting society's expectations of us.
I’ve felt this in many different aspects of filmmaking. I’ve read stories of other filmmakers getting their projects greenlit, their scripts bought, and their films produced. It’s often made me feel like I am doing something wrong or that I’ve made the wrong decisions in my own career.
Maybe there is some truth to that, but at the same time, why should I be focused on trying to live up to someone else’s timeline?
Trying to live up to expectations can become suffocating. These ideas of what we should be can push us down and make us feel like we aren’t good enough for our careers, our dreams, and our passions.
I realized that we need to learn to focus more on how we feel and less on how we are seen. We need to stop worrying about the data, the numbers, and the expectations and look inward. In this way, we can rediscover our passion for our work and focus on enjoying what we do because that’s why we do it in the first place.
That’s why we should spend less time worrying about the accolades, the routines, the expectations. Instead, turn off the outside noise. Stop worrying about everyone else and worry about whether you love what you are doing.
A fellow filmmaker and friend of mine has recently adopted the mantra “This is the dream.” He tells himself this to remind himself of this concept: Focus on how it feels and less on how it appears.
I think this is the key to unlocking our potential. Just as I found a deeper passion for running, maybe we can find a deeper passion for our work. And in time, that passion will lead us to paradise.
We are already living the dream.
Where’s the Climate Conversation
This past weekend, I spent my Saturday morning at a movie theater watching the biggest blockbuster of the summer, Lee Isaac Chung’s Twisters. The legacy sequel to 1996’s Twister, one of my favorite films as a kid, was an impressive follow-up to the original.
Led by a cast of actors who are at the forefront of movie stardom, especially Glen Powell, this film was an incredibly fun and harrowing portrait of storm chasing in Tornado Alley.
Truthfully, I deeply enjoyed the film. However, I had one criticism of the movie, which has been considered a major flaw by many, especially scientists - the failure to mention anything about climate change.
In a film about a series of weather events directly related to changing climate patterns around the world, you would think this updated version of the beloved classic would directly mention the ongoing climate crisis. Instead, the filmmakers decided to stray away from the topic and leave out any explanation of climate change’s role in the film’s weather events.
Unfortunately, this lack of mention of climate change has been pretty common over the years.
We’ve had plenty of post-apocalyptic films about a far-off future where water has disappeared, nuclear war has decimated the planet, or machines have taken control of society. Although some of these films have mentioned climate change as an explanation for their post-apocalyptic nature, only 9 percent of the 250 most popular films between 2013 and 2022 featured climate change prominently in the story, according to Climate Reality Check.
This is an incredibly interesting and unfortunate phenomenon happening in the film industry, especially with the growing prevalence of climate change in our society. As we witness the onset of stronger weather events, record-breaking levels of heat, and disastrous fires scorching the globe, climate change seems to be the perfect topic of discussion in film and media
Yet, it’s not, and that is a big problem.
That’s because films are so much more than films. They are gateways to discussion, works of art that spark the collective conversation around different topics and ideas.
For example, take last summer’s blockbuster goliath Barbie, which took the world by storm and created a societal discussion around different ideas of gender roles, women’s rights, and even equity in the film industry.
We need the same type of film to spark the discussion on climate change because our lack of powerful films about the climate crisis is weakening our ability to bring meaningful discussion on the topic. We need films about the potential effects of the climate crisis, stories that give us hope that we can enact change, and ones that tell the stories of real individuals at the center of the crisis.
I believe filmmaking—narrative and documentary—is a critical pillar of societal progress. Right now, we need filmmakers to tell more stories that advance the discussion and get us talking about the climate crisis - our future may depend on it.
Wrapping Up & Recommendations of the Week
This week, we’re sharing a movie of the week and offering a few other recommendations from across the industry…
How to Change the World (2015)
Greenpeace is one of the largest environmental organizations in the world and easily one of the most recognizable. This film documents how the mega-corporation we know today was originally started by a band of passionate environmentalists fighting to save whales in the North Pacific.
How to Change the World tells the story of Greenpeace's development, including the history of this tight-knit group of activists whose efforts to prevent the killing of whales sparked a worldwide environmental movement. It’s an intimate portrait of the organization and provides a deeper look into the world of activism in the 1970s.
Other Recommendations
The Climate Reality Check allows writers and industry professionals to check their work and analyze if climate change is being accurately displayed in their stories.
The IDA recently spoke with Rebecca Day and Malikkah Hollins about new research on mental health in the documentary film industry.
Sundance released an updated list of six cities, including Park City, that are being considered for the next location of the prestigious film festival.
One critical book for any documentary filmmaker’s reading collection is This Much Is True: 15 Directors on Documentary Filmmaking by James Quinn.
Last reminder, the Bend Film Festival is hosting Base Camp in Central Oregon from October 7th through 10th.
