My First Payment for a Video I Made Was a $20 Gift Card to an Italian Market
How a Little Act Can Change a Person’s Life
5 years after my first payout as a filmmaker, I’m filming for celebrities, athletes, and brands around the country. I still tie this back to the little bit of encouragement that I got those five years ago for a little video project I made in school.
In my high school Italian class, we had a short video competition as a project. During our studies of foods, cooking, and giving instructions, we were tasked with attempting one of two projects:
- Create a short instructional cooking video
- Write a blog post with a recipe
You’d think that because I’m on Medium, I’m a big writer and would pick the second option. Well, you’re not wrong. I do enjoy writing but the lazy 16-year-old in me thought it would be much easier to make a video than try to write in a language I barely knew.
Making Tiramisu
I gathered ingredients to make tiramisu, borrowed my dad’s Nikon camera, and set out to make the best instructional cooking video a non-Italian-speaking person could make.
Heck, I didn’t even know how to make tiramisu!
I wanted to distract my classmates and teacher from the fact that I didn’t know Italian or how to cook through comedy. I focused on highlighting my cooking mistakes through my directing, making sure that it was as overly exaggerated and embarrassing as possible. I knew that I couldn’t impress others with an amazing recipe, so I decided to impress them with an amazing sketch.
Using Roberto Benini as an idol, I broke plates and put myself in the spotlight for my peers. It was the most effort I’ve ever put into a school project in my entire life.
The Premiere
Once I finished spending hours and hours shooting, reshooting, and editing my masterpiece the anxiety kicked in. After rewatching my edit over and over, it got worse and worse. I still — to this day — think it’s an absolutely terrible video that never should have made it to the “big screen.”
This was where I learned how to finalize projects. At this point, it was more about submitting the project on time than winning any contest. I had to set my ambitions aside and accept that I wasn’t going to reach perfection.
It turns out, the effort I put into the video shined through the terrible video. My editing, video effects, and foley work were enough the make my classmates laugh. I took the instruction of “make an instructional recipe video” and turned it into “make a sketch about tiramisu” without even realizing it.
Grazie Professoressa
Years later, looking back on this, I’m really grateful for the creativity and challenge that my professor pushed onto us as students.
It takes a lot of work to teach, and it takes even more work to make it entertaining for your students.
It wasn’t the $20 gift card that I won in the video contest that made me keep going — It was my acknowledging the dedication I put into making my class smile that made me realize this is what I wanted to do.
Cara Professoressa,
Non ricordo molto l’italiano, ma la tua dedizione alla tua classe è stata memorabile.
Grazie mille!
