December 7, 2016
Amir Shehata
I find my entry into the community of filmmakers in Vancouver, amusing. Well amusing to me anyways. Film-making is a collaborative venture by nature. You can’t make a movie on your own… I guess you can, but it wouldn’t be too much fun, and there will be a limit on the stories you can tell. That said, I’m sure someone out there will prove me wrong and then I’ll learn from them.
But, like I was saying, it’s a collaborative venture, and back in 2010, I wanted to make an episode of Turning Point, as a proof of concept, which I can then use to get other people excited and recruit them to work on the project. If you’re interested in seeing a previous incarnation of Turning Point, here it is.
After completing this project my hopes of exciting people with it, kinda dwindled. Literally everyone I used to collaborate with (from my church) fell through. They were either way too busy with work or life, or just lost interest. Around 2013, I decided to think outside the box. If you know me, you’ll know that doing so isn’t that easy. It takes me a lot of effort to go outside my comfort zone.
I thought, why not try to reach out to different Churches in the lower mainland to see if they’d be willing to undertake the Turning Point venture with me. I was met with skepticism, what do you really want? Do you want money? I guess it was a new concept for the people I talked to, so things didn’t really move ahead in that direction.
Now, you gotta understand, I didn’t really know anything about the indie film-making community in Vancouver. I didn’t know that there were many like minded fellows out there. I was blind… but now I see.
When all the other doors closed, I was talking to a friend of mine who is a background performer, and whom I had worked with on two shorts in the past. She suggested that I might as well try and put an advertisement on a couple of casting websites to see if I get traction. At that point, I was losing hope that this project will ever make it off the ground. So I said, what the heck. It’s not gonna hurt. But deep down in my heart of hearts, I knew that it was a useless endeavor.
I was wrong.
I got quite a bit of interest in the project. I was actually bewildered at this point. So I talked to my friend and did some googling about how to do actor auditions. I have to admit, that was an awesome, awesome experience. I met tons of great actors. All very talented and I would’ve liked to work with all of them, and maybe I will one day.
I did my casting and from there what once seemed like an impossible endeavor, slowly started to look more and more possible. I call it divine intervention, others might not agree… but to each their own.
Lessons learned: any task at the beginning seems insurmountable, until you start. Key point is to not get discouraged by how big the task is, but think how you can break it down into smaller achievable sub-tasks; always think outside the box and don’t be afraid to try new ideas, and always listen to people with more experience than you.
I’m about to go into another Christian discourse… Just a heads up.
To my Christian fellows, I say don’t look at how big the problem is, but look at what God can do, which is anything (that’s not intrinsically impossible). Sometimes, I hear the argument, that if God can do anything, can he make a rock that he can’t carry? This is an intrinsic impossibility and therefore a false statement. It’s like saying it’s possible for something to be and not to be at the same time. (There is a good book by John Locke called “An essay in human understanding”, and of course C.S. Lewis masterfully discusses this topic)
That being said, I think it’s important not to think of God as our own personal genie. You pray really hard and then if you’re really good he’ll give you what you want. Kinda like Santa Claus. God is not like that. To my limited understanding, God is very interested in righteousness, fair play, justice, doing good, and all the virtues that I don’t think you’ll find reasonable people arguing against. And he’s allowing us to help in that field, by being active participants in carrying forward his goodness. The key point is not to do it for ourselves but for Him, and that is for a very good reason. Once we put ourselves first, then we have taken the first step on the road to self destruction. Everything I do, I do for my sake, to get some sort of a benefit. I'm in essence seeking only what's beneficial for me. My self worth becomes dependent on the results of the work. If it is successful then I'm elated, otherwise I fall into depression. Dare I say, even if the work is successful, then I'll be looking for more. I'll never be satisfied. I'll always be hungry for more success; more money; more fame. The self is never satisfied. What follows is self-destruction.
But if I keep my ego out of it, then doing good comes easy, since I have eliminated the craving for the constant stream of success, money etc that will never make me happy. My satisfaction is no longer dependent on things, but on God himself; on my relationship with Him. If we really take a moment and think about it, we'll find that the most important things in life are the relationships we forge, not our achievements. So it follows that the relationship with God is important beyond all other relationships, since in it, we find our identity, we find our purpose.
And that’s the mentality I try to take when working on these film projects, it’s not really about me. It’s for God to use in anyway he wants. My main goal is no longer to be rich or famous, but to glorify God, and if the former comes then good. If not, I’ll keep doing what I’m doing, because I’m already achieving the goal I set out to achieve.
All this is in an ideal world. Of course I realize that this is extremely difficult to achieve in the world we live in; not to say that it is impossible, since others might have achieved it already. But what do I say, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
Nough said!