Making A Life Worth Living

Skye Fitzgerald is a filmmaker in Portland, OR. Through his production company Spin Film, he’s created films to address social issues throughout the world. He produced with Patti Duncan “The Bombhunters,” about children who dig for landmines in Cambodia to sell the scrap metal, “Finding Face” about Cambodian women survivors of acid attacks. He’s currently working solo on “Peace Commandos” about stockpiles of weapons in the Congo. He shares his thoughts on making a life worth living. I recently interviewed Skye and Patti for my KBOO radio show.

Skye Fitzgerald at work

Every week I receive at least a handful of inquiries from young budding filmmakers wanting to know how to make a living in the industry. And every time I find myself thinking: “Hell, I don’t know.  Who says my answer will be your answer?”

The second thing that always comes to mind is something a mentor in college once told me when I was struggling with whether there was a real value in getting a liberal arts education. To paraphrase:

A liberal arts education is not designed to learn how to make a living, but how to make a life worth living.

And that stuck with me.  It has guided me in strange and mysterious ways since. Maybe there is a power in simply sharing things we have learned over the years. With that in mind, here is my first pass at some precepts I live by as a working filmmaker:

Skye on location

1. Keep your overhead low – it allows you to squeak through in the stretches you like to euphemize as “challenging” once you’re through them.

2. Seek out artists attempting the same kind of work you are doing and join forces. In filmmaking, as a collaborative art form, it often pays off.

3. Pay it forward – we all get a boost from someone at some point in each of our careers.  I believe as working artists it’s our job to reciprocate when we can.

4. Work to cultivate an abundance mentality.  In the production community there is a tendency to hoard – whether it be jobs, clients, gigs or grants.  By living within a dearth mentality I think too many of us get trapped into a mindset that there isn’t “enough” to go around rather than reaching out and collaborating in ways that result in stronger work, more contacts and often – more work!

5. Always be working on at least one project that you deeply care about – it will carry you through what might be a roster of smaller projects with lesser meaning, but that need to be done nonetheless.

6. If someone burns you, let them know it. If they do it again, cut them out of your creative circle without a look back.

Now, I am no superstar.  I haven’t won any big awards, don’t have an Oscar to my name and certainly am far from independently wealthy.   But I make a living doing what I love and am passionate about – creating nonfiction films on human rights and social justice topics – on my own terms. And to me, that makes a life worth living.

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