conflict of interests: being a dad vs being a filmmaker

How to balance your time, energy and commitment that it takes to be a filmmaker and at the same time be a parent. Both require huge dedication and commitment.

As anyone who’s made an independent film knows that it takes an incredible amount of determination and sacrifice to accomplish anything.

As anyone who’s a parent knows that it takes an incredible amount of determination and sacrifice to accomplish anything.

Many people have asked me how making/attempting to make a film has impacted on being a (good) parent. Going into this I set out some basic rules

Rule #1: you do not talk about fight club! Er, I mean working on Digitopia only occurs when my boy is asleep. While I am at home I spend all my time and energies on raising my boy. The second however he falls asleep…

Rule #2: you do not talk about fight club! Come on you saw that coming. I only work on Digitopia when I have done all the jobs related to taking care of baby, whether it’s cleaning, sterilising or construction work, all of these get done first. Typically for the past few months I have been getting to work on Digi from about 10pm. You can imagine how much energy is left then.

Let’s reverse this, how does being a dad affect what I can give to the project? Given I have about an hour or so in the evening and low energy levels what can I give to the project/accomplish in less than an hour? Having spent your whole day thinking about what you want to do on your project and knowing when you sit down that you don’t have much time left, you will be shocked at just how focused and energised you can be. An hour’s focussed work is equivalent to about half a day of job work – now if I could put that level of focus into my day job.

Of course there is an addendum to rule 1. I don’t watch TV with my boy, generally because UK terrestrial telly is really cr@p, if we do watch TV we watch youtube and we hunt for reference for Digi. He likes with the 3D animation stuff (Pixar and Dreamworks), but he really likes the Gorillaz and Daft Punk videos we watch for reference.

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