We were lucky to catch up with Sean Clark recently and have shared our conversation below.

Sean, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

I learned the filmmaking process largely by watching Youtube videos and the rest was trial and error! I know first hand how it can be challenging when you want to do something that feels unobtainable. whether its a matter of having the right gear to get the results you want or a knowing how to do it in the first place.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I have been a filmmaker for the last 8 years working in various jobs within the film industry. I started this journey to become a director but was still open minded about all the other sides of production and it lead me on a path of discovery from there.My credits include work as a sound operator, camera operator, office production assistant, set P.A and as an actor in a few indie projects. Now I direct music videos and short film projects with more recent projects showcasing the advancements I’ve made in implementing VFX. I am still rebranding my company with my business partner Keitrell Hamilton and hope to have new visuals and a website up by November the latest this year. My goal with our rebrand is to build followings for aspiring artists and actors by creating high quality content for them as well as creating passion projects from ideas that my business partner and I have come up with.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I had to unlearn the mindset of only focus on one position, the film industry is changing constantly and especially with affordable technology that allows indie filmmakers to create stunning videos with limited resources I think now is the time to learn valuable skills in more than one area. When I first started in this business I was attending an acting school in my hometown to learn exactly what actors experience when approaching a role. One of the things that may have helped or hurt in some ways was that I had an overall interest in just being on set in any capacity. Some people have split opinions on learning multiple sides of production which can be confusing at times when you listen to both sides especially when both are right in some ways. I’ve heard from some people that you should only focus on one job; for instance if you are an actor you should only study acting and that’s it. However once I started going out for auditions and booking a few roles I still had an interest in the gear the crew was using and how everything needs to be set up in specific ways to smooth out the workflow in post production. It made me wonder how they got to acquire that kind of knowledge and experience if they didn’t learn at least a little bit of what post production goes through after the footage is shot. I noticed several prominent and up and coming names in the industry have studied and worked in multiple sides of production other than the position they are known for. One of my director inspirations is Cole Bennett who started Lyrical Lemonade. He was one of the creatives that wanted to direct, blog, vlog, promote and more which sounds like its almost impossible starting out with no budget and limited crew. That didn’t stop him from learning how to create eye catching Visual effects and shooting a lot of run and gun content that eventually grew into a following of over 20 million subscribers on Youtube today.
Long story short, I think it depends on the individual and their level of interest to learn about the business and craft. The more you know about the entire process of the content you want to create, should give you a better chance at creating something of high quality.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

One of the most rewarding moments of creating videos, whether its for clients or for a passion project is seeing how it all comes together in the editing room. There’s a special kind of excitement that should come with creating videos otherwise it can feel like a drag. Being an artist or creative does not always compensate you well even if you are capable of creating some of the best work people have seen/ heard in recent years. Which is one of many reasons why becoming a full time creative shouldn’t be just for the money, there are plenty of jobs that can provide a decent income for less effort. The most rewarding aspect of becoming a artist or creative should be the result of creating something beautiful that you can be proud of.

Contact Info:

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sean.clark.545/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwpnbq4Gxwiq3eOI3ea6RuA