“It only gets bigger not better.” My acting coach Harry Mastrogeorge used to say this all of the time pertaining to success. He would warn his students that all the issues you have, whatever they may be while your struggling, wouldn’t get better when you succeeded, they would only get bigger.
While making our first feature film, we felt stressed out, but it was NOTHING compared to the stress of our second movie. Because you see our first film was only our own money, and if we lost it, no big deal. But with our second movie, we had the pressure of other people’s money and the eyes of more people upon us. Failure was not an option. Not that it ever is, but the stress was bigger, not better, as we became more successful in this business.
They say your sophomore film is harder than your freshman. I think it is expectations, and the pressure you feel as more people depend upon you to deliver the goods on time, in good quality.
I wrote a whole article on “being ready to take outside investment” and I feel even stronger now that I have completed a film with other people’s money. It is a HUGE responsibility that we did not take lightly, and everyday on set, as we ran the show, I never forgot for a moment that I had to deliver this to someone who had given us their hard earned money, relying we would not let them down.
Be prepared as your star rises, with great things comes great responsibility. So wherever you are in life, it’s best to work on your issues now, because success doesn’t solve your problems, in fact it can end up being a big magnifying glass for them.
So get healthy, be prepared, and don’t ever say “when this happens,,,,I’ll be happy” cause you just might spend the rest of your life in waiting purgatory. Be content with where you are, enjoy the journey, and only accept outside money when you know without a shadow of a doubt you can deliver a finished product.