How do I fight this professional envy?

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I'm a filmmaker. A struggling one. I've been out of school 18 months, and I've only just begun to make enough to live off of, and not much extra. Most of the work I do to make ends meet is rather bottom of the barrel: filming weddings, transferring people's home videos to DVD, and doing research or assisting on other projects.

In the free time have I work constantly, developing projects, writing scripts, planning everything out and figuring ways to make my next film happen. I've personally made four features now, and twice as many shorts, and none have mattered a damn. I do the best I can, and each project I approach with the possibility that it will be The One to launch my career.

What is so hard is when I'm confronted with people who achieve success so quickly. Like, I had NPR on this morning, and they were interviewing a pair of filmmakers who embarked on their first documentary. It was a short film they made in two months, and it got nominated for a motherf****ng Oscar. AND these two filmmakers fell in love on the shoot and are engaged.

It's almost to much to bear. I struggle and sweat and put everything into the films I make. They are labors of love, yet no one could give a f**k about them. And then I look at my own work and despise them and myself for failing to find an audience. Not to mention my whole romantic life has consisted of five or six first dates that have never gone any further, out of hundreds of tries.

It's the mathematical unbalance. I try and try and try, and fail and fail and fail, and I have to work myself to the bone just to get the smallest inch forward, while these f*****s hit a homerun on their first film and find true love. It's enough to make me wish them harm, so then the cosmic scales will balance out for all the good fortune they've received.

Of course it's not their fault, and I try to tell myself that for all I know that could be me if my next film goes well.

But what terrifies me is that, whenever I see one of these big success stories I think, "Maybe it's because I Just. Don't. Have. It." It raises doubts over whether I have the talent to make good on my aspirations, or if I'm just spinning my wheels vainly, condemned to watch everyone else pass me by with comparative ease.

I even, a few weeks ago, wrote up a contract with myself. It says that if I haven't achieved success by the age of 30, if I haven't made a single film that's done well or won some kind of award, if I'm still struggling to make ends meet, and have failed in all my attempts to get funding for my films, then it's not worth it. And since film is all I have in my life, and so my life has all been for nothing, I'm going to kill myself.

If you have links to some of your work we'd love to take a peek

Seconded

Here's my youtube, to most of the stuff I've done (and a couple things where I was the writer).

http://www.youtube.com/my_videos?feature=mhum

I fear it isn't terribly good.

The other side is perhaps even more likely and more difficult to deal with. For example, if most people like movies at level 120 and you're making them at level 130, that's a problem. And you can't just dumb it down, for that's poison. The barest hint of being talked down to, people sniff it out and they hate it.

With my own writing on peace activism, on how institutions do in fact work and how they might work so much better, often people weren't really understanding what I was saying. And it wasn't that I was smarter than they, although I am a pretty smart individual. It's just that I'd put a lot of thought and reading into these issues, and most people haven't. So, these days with my writing, I assume my reader is slightly smarter than I am, he or she just doesn't happen to know this particular thing. In other words, I don't need to do anything fancy. i just need to tell the story.

the way i see it you are doing ok (finished the school can make a living out of the job you love which is rare) just not satisfied with your level of accomplishment. depending on a person this is likely always going to be a problem for you i.e. you can get to the festival but then you'll feel like a failure not getting an oscar and so on. it is a painful life but a productive one.

I think Brianruns10 just wants what all of us do: A chance to do our best work and to be appreciated for the thought and feeling we put into it.

And it would be nice to have a solid middle-class income, and maybe even a little more so a person can do some things.

can you post a direct link? that one doesn't work.

I tested the link and it works for me. I go by the same name, Brianruns10, so if you continue to have problems, just do a name search, and my videos should populate.

From my experience, your work either engages people or it doesn't. If people see a film or read a book that they like their first impulse is to go to their friends/family/work colleagues and say "Hey, you've gotta read/see this!". If they're just saying "Yeah, that's great" and going back to whatever they were doing before, you won't succeed on a commercial level no matter how good your work is.

Some people spend most of their formative years planning/preparing for a career in film-making/writing/journalism and find they can't get a job despite years of study and internships while another person writes a book about his favourite football team (Nick Hornby) or his time in the army (Andy McNab) and makes a fortune despite having no prior experience. That's the trouble with a career in the arts; too many ifs and maybes.

It worked under your user name. For some reason it seems my noscript add on in firefox just doesn't like your link

Saw many of your non-event covering short films.

I really liked the claymation one where they were burning old films.

currently watching the lounge.

You should visit a counselor at a film school and see what your next steps should be. Maybe there is another aspect of the film world that you would be great at. In the meantime, visit a psychiatrist so they can talk with you about ways to deal with your suicidal thoughts.

I couldn't access it either- says you need to be signed in to youtube and I don't have an account.

Just a thought, if you want to get your films noticed, it may be worthwhile to have your own website with your work easily accessible on it.

Youtube is an excellent end-client exposure website but for promoting your work professionally you do need to set up your own website.. it will be your portafolio.

Here's a link to his stuff. I think he had originally copied the URL as he was looking at his own 'uploads' page.. it generates a wrong link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdB4B_OZXmY

click on his username and check his uploads.

I really liked this one:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdB4B_OZXmY[/youtube]

Thanks Dantac

(I like the stop motion one- soundtrack was really good)

Brianruns10, Vicky is right. You have too much to offer. Even on sheer quantity, you're a guy who's made four feature films by his mid twenties. And the magic kind of dances up from a base of a lot of sheer quantity, you know that. Don't you dare kill yourself. Please don't.

Now, love, relationships, that is the more difficult issue. My own issue, I tend to disclose too much all at once, I'm essentially downloading to a stranger. I'm learning, intermittently and hesitantly and imperfectly, ping-pong it back and forth in medium steps. And sometimes my 'flaws' are precisely why I am liked, in entirely unpredictable fashion.

I am not a great fan of psychiatrists or psychologists, for the usual reasons, they tend to have a pet theory and then attempt to put you in the box. Now, I understand depression can sometimes start off situational and become biochem, and a family practitioner or internist can prescribe an anti-depressant just as well as any other doctor (and no need to waste time with the doggone psychiatrist).

Now, this contract, what if you formally amend it in the style of the U.S. Constitution? Or perhaps just draw up something that supercedes it, 'The contract of Feb __ is hereby formally repealed . . . ' That kind of thing.

And to pitch a curve ball at you, since the field of medicine has a lot of narrative and case study, maybe to start seriously considering medical school at age 30? Or law school, or another profession. Maybe not quite as good as high artistic/intellectual achievement, but then again, not a bad consulation prize either. And the less time for art might be partially made up by lighter touch allowed by circumstances? Maybe. I wish you all the best, guy. Please talk with us whenever you like.