It’s okay to feel discouraged. 

This week, continuing to update us on her feature film for Sony Affirm Pictures, Sydney Tooley shares her struggles as a first-time director and about the dark times, she went through after the first phase of principle production.

Watch a quick highlight reel of the amazing locations in Taiwan and the wrap of the shoot for “Sun Moon.” 

Links:

#39 Directorial Debut | Part 1 with Sydney Tooley
Sun Moon Film Instagram 
Sydney Tooley Instagram
But What I Really Want to Do Is Direct: Lessons from a Life Behind the Camera

Transcript:

Sydney (00:00 )

Good morning, Practical filmmaker. We’re here in Taiwan.

Tanya (00:09)

Welcome to The Practical Filmmaker, an educational podcast brought to you by the Filmmaker Institute and Sonscreen Film Festival, where industry professionals talk nuts and bolts and the steps they took to find their success to today. Find the full transcripts and more at thepracticalfillmaker.com I’m your host, Tanya Musgrave and today will look a little different than normal episodes. It’ll be a bit of a mini update with Sydney Tooley, who we’ve been following during her journey as a first time director. I’m putting this one together, actually, right before I’ll be seeing her at our sponsors event, Sonscreen Film Festival. It’s a student film festival dedicated to creating relevant productions for social awareness, outreach and uplifting creative entertainment and it’s held in SoCal and it starts today, technically, and we’ll get a chance to do a live practical filmmaker panel with some Sunscreen alumni, see where their feature projects have taken them, where they’re at in the process, what challenges they face, all that fun. And Sydney will be on that panel. But if you remember back to this past July, we did the first episode of a series with her and she was in the throes of shooting her first fully funded feature, Sun Moon for Sony Affirm. And I was able to drop in and day play for a couple of days there in Nashville, and then they were supposed to quickly jet set to Taiwan for the second round of production. But 2021 and international travel, you do the math. So fast forward five months and Sydney recorded an update. It’s the day after Christmas and she’s caught in limbo.

Sydney (01:43

Okay. Been a minute since I made one of these videos. I think the last one I made literally was after Sun Moon finished. And I was extremely discouraged. And I spent the last five months really living in that discouragement and trying to find myself again because there was a lot of things that happened that I wasn’t happy about. I didn’t handle things 100% well, but I was blessed with time to find myself again. And today is December 26, and I spent Christmas alone this year because I’m just exhausted and it was really good for me. I woke up on Christmas Eve day and was like, I got to get myself together. I started reading screenplays I started reading this directing book by Ken Kwapis, who is just like such an inspiration and is so his book is I wish I had read his book before because I think it would help me a lot in my own journey directing. But you know what? I’m going to get back up today and I feel like I suddenly have the strength to go forward again and finish this film because I went through, like, some really dark times where I was like, I hate this movie. I don’t want to finish this movie I feel like I’m never going to finish this movie. And I grieved it. I think. And I let myself grieve it because sometimes we need time. And I look back at the last five months and I think, oh, shoot, I had so much time, and that’s so rare to have that so much time that feels just so wasted because I could have done something, I could have written the next thing. I could have moved forward, and I was too depressed to do it. And I kicked myself for it because it’s just like it’s such a luxury to have that much time. And I felt like all of my drive was gone. I felt like everything that I worked for was gone. And I was teaching and I had these College kids who were just making stuff. And I was like, man, how great would it be to go back there and make short films again? It was hard because you have a lot of them looking up to you. And I’m like, I’m dying. I feel horrible. I felt horrible. After we finished the first week, it was really difficult acting like everything was fine, and then everything ended fine and that everything was like it was fun directing and because parts of it were fun. But the last half was absolutely horrific and not fun at all and horrible. And I walked away thinking, I’m such a failure and I haven’t. And I just couldn’t get it together, man. And now I feel that fire again coming back, being like, you’re going to do it, you’re going to do it. Because what else can I do? So I’m going to keep us updated here because this is really important part of the healing journey, I think, and just being okay with where you’re at and being okay with moving at the pace that you need to move. And I’m hoping that these next two weeks are going to be some of the most productive weeks that I’ve ever had and get sh*t done. That’s what’s going to happen. So I’m pulling out this book again. I put it down. The last thing I put down in here, man, I stopped so early on, like in May, but I’m starting this today. My journey again. This book helps me track my journey. I want to be healthier. I want to be more productive. I want to do all these things, and I want to be healthy and mentally okay while I’m doing it and not killing ourselves, because we have this mindset that we have to continually be grinding, grinding, grinding, grinding. And we don’t listen to our bodies or our minds or anything that tells us, like, you need to take a break and step back. And I have been fighting that. And now I’m not going to anymore. This is my update to myself. I’m going to go back and re watch those videos and see what happened. But it’s not over and I’m not done and I’m not going to drive the phone 30 and I’m not going to freak out about the future and everything’s going to be okay because it has to be. It probably sounds like I’m having a whole existential crisis which I am all the time which is fine. I just feel hope again. It’s been a very hopeless five months. I just thought I’d update everybody. Okay. That’s it.

Tanya (07:46)

Well, after Christmas covid, wildfires and drought

finally in February they were able to go to Taiwan

and kickstart the adventures of shooting with an

international crew.

If you want to see the accompanying videos to

this audio, check out our Insta @practicalfilmmaker

Otherwise enjoy.

Sydney (08:07)

Good morning Practical

Filmmaker. We’re here in Taiwan. It is a beautiful, stunning day and so we’re going to go out to a couple of our filming locations. We’re shooting in a grocery store but we are trying to go fast because they are not super into it It’s really cool We are at Sun Moon looking at the wedding location. It’s like Lord of the Rings. What a pretty shot. Everything is like Lord of the Rings. Don’t fall in the ditch. So are you ready? My dad got my ATM card stuck in the ATM, so we’re buying pliers, and now we’re going to go and get it out. What happened today? You shot some moon lake in the sun. I’m tired, but we got some beautiful shots and sunset shot and lots of really cool gimbal shots. And it’s beautiful. This is insane. This is like busting. Everybody was crying. That’s all. I’m going to go to bed now. This is my room. This is what happens when you’re drafting. Don’t let this happen. It’s chaos. Yes. This is bad. And I have less than an hour to get it all together. I can’t talk very much because, I’m gonna cry. I didn’t think I’d be this emotional. Okay, I’m better now. This has been crazy. I love this team. It’s a lot. I need a process. I need a vacation. We did it. Now I’m going to go edit after I go on vacation.

Tanya (11:08)

Stay tuned for when we actually sit down with Sydney to get the full scoop of production in Taiwan. Until then, be well and God bless. We’ll see you next time on The Practical Filmmaker.