Article Response: "Lessons from Van Gogh: Why You Should Keep Making Films That Nobody's Going to See"

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    We all know the story of one of the most famous painters to this day, how he began painting and sketching works in post-impressionism, that people from his time would find worthless. They called him insane, but that didn't stop him from creating. He sold only one painting during his career, even though he had made over 900 paintings and 1,100 sketches. Long after his death, his works became worth millions, and they had influenced many different painters from the 20th century. His name was Vincent Van Gogh. 

    As filmmakers, we can learn from Vincent's will to continue working, even though the people around him didn't pay much attention to his work. Most of the time, we do certain things for our films, such as copying specific movie tropes, that we believe will help them become noticed or popular. This, however, isn't exactly the best way to go about making a film, as originality is usually what people are looking for. With Vincent, he didn't look at his work as something that could help him become famous, otherwise he would've changed his style of painting to match the style of other famous painters so that people would buy them. Instead, he looked at his work as a creative outlet when he was going through a tough time. He painted for fun, not for fame. Truthfully, creating isn't about how you do it, it's about why you do it. It's about how passionate you are about the thing it is you're creating, that even if it doesn't become a success, you're still proud of it.

    Moving onto the next two videos featured in this article; they describe the life and work of another famous painter, Leonardo Da Vinci. He also struggled with finding a job in which he could use his creative talent, and after sixteen years of hard work, he created The Last Supper, his most famous piece of artwork. Sixteen years is a long time if you think about it, which was full of failures and letdowns for Da Vinci. But that didn't stop him - just like Van Gogh, Da Vinci was ambitious. He always practiced sketching and working on learning more about the art of drawing and painting, for his own benefit, for fun. Almost all well-known people in history had to deal with this waiting game - a long period of time in which they worked to get better at their craft, not just to gain popularity.

    Today, our society is considered to be so fast paced, that most people work just to gain fast popularity. People need closure that what they're doing is worth their time. They don't want to waste time for years and years working towards becoming better at something for themselves and their own happiness, they believe that being popular is what truly brings happiness and pride in your work. This article made me question my own thoughts towards popularity and my own films. When I was younger, I remember only really working on videos because it was fun, but now I seem to only do it for popularity. I will definitely keep this in mind when working on future projects.