A few weeks ago was the Chinese Mid-Autumn (aka Moon) Festival. A couple of friends came over and we made dumplings from scratch. A couple pounds of meet, a pound of cabbage and an assortment of traditional ingredients added up to a couple pounds of left over dumpling filling. We froze it, and I have finally worked through it all cranking out a couple hundred wontons along the way. The first few were awful: they were ugly and would come open and the skins split. But eventually I started to figure it out. Now, I happen to be a perfectionist. Most people wouldn't really care about the execution, my friends made a damn tasty filling, so even the ugly split ones tasted fantastic. But I was fairly unhappy about how they turned out until I had cracked out at least a hundred of them, maybe more. Then a funny thing happened; they started to turn out alright.
Even as my knuckles cramped while crimping the last of those little bastards, I was still getting better. Here is the thing: I had to make a bunch of really crappy wontons to get there. I wish I could have made that many movies that quickly.
The thing I think that is most exciting about the dramatically reduced barrier to entry is that you can crank out as many bad movies as you want, and you know, actually get better. At this point, there is really no reason not to make a ton of small projects and really learn the craft. This also gives you an excellent opportunity to hone your storytelling and visual style.
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