I have spent the last few months seriously thinking about my current choices when it comes to my career. Having the career I want is incredibly important to me, not because I want huge success or to make vast sums of money, were that the case I have certainly picked the wrong profession. I want to make documentaries for a variety of reasons. Not only is it an industry and medium that fascinates and inspires me but I am intrigued by people, their stories and the variety of ways in which people live their life.

I believe that documentary, as with writing and photography, represents time documented for the future. I want to tell people’s stories and I want to make films that show aspects of our current time that I believe are important. However there is no set model for this career, I have studied the career paths of many filmmakers I admire, I have even been fortunate enough to ask a few and everyone has followed a different course.

There are several people I know very well, all of us starting our careers in the same company and all sharing the desire for the same end goal, to make films. We have all chosen different paths.

It is easy to obsess about time frames, why aren’t we filmmakers now? This is a question that has weighed on my mind for the last few months, should I be trying to achieve this now? Of course there are successful filmmakers in their twenties, but to be honest being one of them terrifies me. The more I have thought about it the more I realise that I want the process of becoming a filmmaker as much as I want to be one. I want to learn and make mistakes. I am in no hurry. The notion of not needing to achieve quickly initially made me think that I was giving up but I realise this is far from the case, I want to experience the process, and I am. I currently have two jobs within the industry and while they are not directly filmmaking they challenge and provoke me every day.

In a panel discussion on Friday, Havana Marking, the Director of Afghan Star, was asked by one of City University’s head lecturers what young graduates should do if they want to make films and change the world. Havana said that they need to learn, they need to get a job and learn how to be filmmakers. In addition to that they need to make films in their own time and then in ten years time they may get a commission to make their own film, maybe.

There were many young people in the audience when this was said and you could see the look of horror on their faces, the idea of having to wait ten years being too scary to comprehend. It is scary, it’s a long time and a huge gamble because it could never happen. I know that this is a career that is going to take time but I am enjoying each step I take and as much as I shouldn’t like sitting in front of my laptop on weekends clearing my inbox, watching screeners, and generally stressing about the amount of work I have, I am glad for the stress because it means that I am doing something I care about.

I found the image below today and it truly sums up how I feel about my life at the moment. The section in the middle should probably be bigger but it is a section I am really looking forward to travelling through.

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