okay kid, yep I can call you kid because that is what you are, a 14 year old kid. as a 14 year old you need to be out playing, exploring, reading, having fun. It was 10 years beyond you, age 24 that I found film and became a film editor, first in Australia, then New York, Hollywood and then my homeland New Zealand where, as I type I am ingesting 220 hours of my own doc into my 5 year old Mac desk top, I am writing on a 17" macBook Pro. It took me 43 years to get to where I am and if anyone asked me if I would do it different I would honestly reply "NO!" Maybe I would have read more, especially the classics but then again with ADD it wasn't easy to concentrate, I was a classic day dreamer. I am right where I am meant to be doing what I am doing.
Based on my own experience, this is not given as advice, I try not to do that, your life is your life to be lived as you experience it, not as someone else's expectations.
Live your life, experience life and in 20 years, if you are lucky, you will have some life experience upon which to draw. Until then you are in learning mode. Mind you, I am still in learning mode. Do what you can with what you have. At your age i worked at all sorts of income producing work, milk runs, paper runs, etc,. Also, and this has been key to me, I read books. I was a book worm. That is where our story comes from. There is nothing new in life, there is nothing original, everything is a copy of something that has gone before, it's simply people sharing their experience, strength and hope, period. In the meantime, get outside and live your life. It's not without a certain irony that today I am editing a Documentary about the American West that I took two years to shoot in 2004 &5, as a kid I read westerns, especially Zane Grey. He was my muse as a child. That is what we need, something or someone who touches us deeply, we may not know it at the time but that is setting in motion our life's work. I would highly recommend photography, writing, and some form of art, one where you use your hands, painting, drawing, sculpture, it may give you an unique voice if you do it well. What is your best subject in school, pay attention to it. Mine was comprehension and that is the basis of a good story teller, a good film editor.
Fell free to ask anything you like. All the very best for a good life.
Richard Clark's kiwicafe.com
Film | Photography | Writing
http://www.kiwicafe.com/
Aotearoa New Zealand
