You never really understand the struggles of the film industry or movie making in general until you go out and try to make a movie yourself. There are so many obstacles you have to overcome and many truths you have to realize, however you'd be surprised by how many of these things can be implemented into your daily life. Here are 5 life lessons that I learned from making my own movie.

1. Nothing Ever Goes Perfectly As Planned

During the pre-production phase, I tried my best to get everything as organized as possible, so that way, nothing could go wrong. Just the idea of something not going as I planned it in my head stresses me out. But when it came time to begin shooting, I slowly began to realize that not everything I wanted to happen was going to happen. You run into so many different road blocks, from people being unable to make it to shoots, locations not being available, to the weather just ruining all of your plans for that day. It would be great for everything to go just how you want it to, but life never works that way.

2. It’s Okay to Makes Changes

Change is a scary thing for everyone. Especially if you’re making a movie. When writing the script, you have all of these visions of what you want the final outcome to look like and you have no desire to change that image. Unfortunately, not everything you see happening can happen, so sometimes you have to compromise. Maybe an idea you had doesn’t flow well with the other people you’re working with. Maybe a decision you made doesn’t hold everyone’s best interest. My group and I were making changes to the script all the way up to the editing process. But change can be a good thing. At the time, you might hate giving up the idea or changing the decision you held on to for so long, but looking back at it, it’s a much more relaxing feeling when you realize that change worked out better for everyone in the long run.

3. It’s Okay to Make Do with What You Have

When my group and I were getting everything ready to begin shooting, we had all these big, grand ideas that would help with the finer details of the film. That’s always a good mentality to have, but when it came time to shoot, we realized we didn’t have the money or the resources to make a lot of ideas happen. That’s when we had to sit back and go over all of what we did have to work with, and use those things as efficiently as we could. It would have been great to have all the gear or people we needed for a shoot or to have every little prop accounted for, but for a student film, that’s always a hard thing to do. But being able to adapt and use what you have available is a great trait to have, especially in the movie business.

4. You Can’t Always Be The One In Control

A lot of people hate group projects or having to work with others in general. I was that way too, but then I realized very quickly that you can’t have that kind of mentality if you want to make it in the film business. Having complete control over your project sounds great, because that way it will come out exactly how you want it to. But movie making and watching movies is a shared form of communication. If you make a movie just for yourself, then you will be the only one who enjoys it. It’s okay to let other people give their input on the project, because then your work will have a better chance at reaching a wider scope of people. It’s always a good thing to let other people add their visions to your work when it comes to making movies, because most of the time, they could add something that you would have never thought of that makes you enjoy the project even more.

5. Nothing Can Be As Perfect As You Want It To Be

This realization hit me especially hard during the post production phase. I began to notice, especially with editing my own footage, that the more and more I worked on the movie, the more I began to dislike what I did. I started finding little details that no one besides myself would notice. I just kept tearing my own movie apart. To a certain degree, it’s okay to be your own critic, but not everyone is as meticulous as you are when it comes to your own work. You can hear “It looks great!” a thousand times and still find things wrong. Nothing can be perfect, no matter how much you want it to be. And there has to be a point where you realize that. It’s perfectly okay to look at what you’ve created and say “I’ve done the best that I can do,” add finishing touches, and call it a day. Because sometimes something you think isn’t perfect, could be the best thing to someone else.