Being a director is me having to sort of make my peace with spending 90% of my life in front of the computer. Both in terms of planning the project, you know, writing the script, emailing people, convincing people to come on board, and trying to convey my idea to the right people in pre production. Once you've shot the project, now you have to deal with post production, which is a completely different process. You have to sort of Shepherd the project all the way till the end, once everybody has moved on. And that takes a lot of motivation and dedication to, you know, to stay strong, stay true to the vision and remember what the vision was. So always go back to the mood board, always go back to the script.

And remember what the initial spark was what motivated you to make that project in the first place. I've learned a few things on my past projects. For example, on the camera, we had to change the entire post production team halfway through a project because it took so long Long to finish, it took us almost two years to finish the polls. And throughout those two years, people, you know, had moved on. So people have reasons to come in and out of the project life, you know, sort of evolves for everybody. And a lot of these people could not continue pursuing the the work that they've had agreed on.

So I had to understand that and had to keep myself motivated, I had to find new people. But one way for me to do that is that I kept showing new people who came on board the new edits of that project, you know, with 50% of VFX done 50% of sound done, and that motivated people more and more. So, the vision and the quality of project could be seen as the Edit went further on. And that was a way for me to convince people on pursuing that goal I had said also as a director onset, you need to remember why you wanted a shot, and not just what type of shot you needed. You need to remember the motivation behind the shot that's going to allow you to tell people exactly what you need from them actor's crew and everybody else around in the shot. In post, the most important thing is that you need to update your team that's involved, you need to update them with new parts of the project, keep them excited about the project, show them that, you know, the vision that you're working towards is going to be a great one, there's going to be quality at the end of the line, that's going to motivate people to finish the work, especially if they're working on the nor low budgets shoot.

So the one thing I can tell you is that you need to learn to not give up as a director, you're the only person who is holding everything together. So if you know you give up there's gonna be weeks months that will pass you by without any further progress on the on the project. And that will be because you won't be pushing it. I've learned this the hard way. You know, at some points in my career, I've almost given up on things projects already know the entirety of this whole filmmaking thing. And if you do that Then there's only you to blame everything I've done.

And that I was able to achieve up till now was because I didn't give up on things I didn't give up on the accurate project, even though it took two years of my life. I didn't give up on temple, which, you know, we shot back to back with the accurate project with no money at all. And on hyperlight it was the biggest project so far for me. But I also, you know, didn't give up on the financing even though we couldn't find the right financing for it. I still shot it anyway, because I thought it was a tangible thing I could and should do. And I'm very proud of the end result.

The tools I've used throughout my indie filmmaking career are tools that you know you have access to. The most simple tool is Google Drive. This is where I share the shortlist, my mood boards, everything that I need to share with the team and I keep track of the progress of the project. I also use Dropbox quite a lot in terms of VFX because VFX artists can drop their shots into Dropbox from anywhere in the world. And I can give them the assets needed just by sharing a link to a folder. It's very effective.

It you know, it beats having to send hard drives to the other side of the world. So this is like this was a game changer back in the day. It's a given now but Roblox I still use every single day there's, there are a few tools to track VFX shots and give feedback on edits. One of them is frame.io. And the other one though, is Vimeo that allows the same functionality. So you can actually place comments are like draw directly on the frame at a specific time markers so you know exactly what feedback to give to the VFX artists or the opposite.

If people want to give you feedback on your edit. It's very helpful. For VFX if you work on bigger production, you can use dedicated software for VFX feedback such as f track or shotgun. These are all Inclusive software you can, you know, have all the 3d assets available in one place, it will basically replace Dropbox, Google Drive frame.io and Vimeo with one software but they are usually very expensive. And a bit of the of an overkill in terms of process when you're on a very limited production. The last thing I can say is that over the course of the last few years, I've surrounded myself with people who are compatible with me who see the same way as I do and who believe in what I want to achieve.

And I think that's the most important thing you can do as a filmmaker is that you need to find your crew you need to find the people who believe in you who will do the best work they can. And I that takes a lot of time and it's better to find a small crew that is a perfect fit for you then work with a big crew that may or may or may not work with you on Akira we worked with over 45 different artists. They were great they gave their time but it was extremely hard to handle all Have them at the same time it was almost a full time job just emailing people. So I would much rather work with a few people who are generalists who know exactly what I want without having me to, you know, explain myself over and over again every single time.

So that is the key to a long filmmaking career. I think