Scared: Finishing My Film

Moving across the state, an entire family moving in under one roof for the first time in damn near a decade, unemployment, employment, more unemployment, global pandemic.

Any one of these things would reasonably delay the finishing of a (mostly) one-man production, and all of them have happened in an extremely short period of time.
On top of that, I no longer have a dedicated work environment, but truth be told when I had one I didn’t do much with it. Instead, I spun the wheels, working around the last sequence that needs to be completed, instead of finishing it.

Today, I’m writing this article instead of finishing it, and the reason is because I’m afraid of finishing it.

It isn’t perfect.

Literally wrote a whole article about how “Finished Is Better Than Perfect” but I guess we’re back here again.

I started shooting Mockingbird in July of 2018. In a few weeks it will have been TWO YEARS since starting the editing process, and yet here I am without a finished product. Part of that can be attributed to me purposefully putting off shooting several important sections of the film until months later, part of it to an unforeseen tragedy, but all of it is directly attributable to me and my managing of the project.

Right now I’m left with the consequences of my own actions, and that *checks notes* fucking sucks.

Pictured: The halcyon days of hating myself over a movie that’s already finished.

Unfortunately it also puts me in an incredibly discouraged mood, despite the fact that Mockingbird is very probably the best film I’ve made, or at least has a lot of my best work in it.
It’s one of those things that I’m sometimes convinced buying a new laptop, or learning a new NLE, or maybe writing a new script would fix.
But the truth is this is something that comes with making stuff you love. It’s difficult, and time consuming, and by the end you’ll only see it by it’s flaws, and maybe in retrospect see it’s merits (Scorsese said something similar while making Goodfellas, so I can only hope he’s right.)

Regardless today is the day I’m finishing this fucking thing, and hopefully unlocking some hidden eight chakra or something that makes making movies less of the miserable process of self-flagellation that I’ve made it into.

Martin R. McGowan is a filmmaker living in Reading, Pa.
He enjoys long walks in New Hanover and ignoring his responsibilities.

I can also be found on Instagram, and building a YouTube channel, about a decade late to that party.