This is a page dedicated to all the media projects I took on that lay abandoned, but happily abandoned across the internet. Filmmaking is something I’d never abandon, but still, I haven’t made a short film in years. Although my student films are lost to time I did successfully complete a short film after university. I’m kind of proud of it, but I won’t be doing another short completely alone anytime soon. Or maybe I will, I haven’t quite decided.
For a short period I also had a YouTube channel where I talked about film, random ideas and the suchlike. I don’t do it anymore, because I found if you want to make a really good YouTube video you need slightly better technology than I had, also you have to put in a lot of work, and also I find myself uninteresting to listen to and watch. So editing became a bit of a challenge. Essentially it also became less fun. Ideally I think I’d be cut out for storytelling or teaching film on YouTube. The problem is that people really don’t think they have to learn anything about film, and I don’t have the fame or sense of authority for people to want to listen to my stories. Also telling stories on video would be weird, something like that is probably best on podcasting. You can see my old videos here, here’s one where I rail about my BA film dissertation.
Also under the heading of projects Julia started but never followed on with, I also had a podcast; Julia & The Joy Of Film. I’ve always been a bit of wannabe radio broadcaster and I’m proud of my run of podcasts. The problem is I watch a lot of films and I’m not great at self-editing so the actual editing procedure became quite long. Also I sort of realised that I didn’t listen to anyone else’s film podcasts, and the fact that a lot of my interviewees didn’t actually listen to mine sort of put me in my place. Ultimately, like the YouTube videos I became a little too aware of myself and didn’t quite relax, then it just turned into a lot of work and anxiety and became a lot less fun. You can still hear some of the podcasts here on SoundCloud.
I also had a Twitter account for a while; Julia & The Joy Of Film, where I posted bitesize reviews and also scheduled alerts for films that were going to be on TV. Which I enjoyed but, again, fun turned into me putting too much work in and stress and anxiety inevitably followed. But I don’t feel bad about giving up on these projects, they stopped giving me joy, who would feel bad about dumping something that didn’t make them happy? Ultimately I realised I’m much better at, and am much happier, putting in the research but doing things in my own time and in my own way.
So now I spend months over a feature on Film Inquiry or spend just a day writing a short story. This ebb and flow is much better for me. The problem with social media is that people expect certain things and expect them at certain times, or else they just won’t be bothered in following your work. I suppose the same could be said for what I do here, but I get soo much joy out of writing. Writing scripts, writing short stories, writing for Film Inquiry I don’t actually care if no one’s reading it. The joy of it is enough.
Unstuck Monsters 