today marks three years since i started a practice that will only end when my life does — making one little movie a day, every day.
y tho?
the short answer is that i want to make movies and it's easier to do something every single day than to make constant exceptions to that rule. for me, anyway.
the long answer is the rest of this post.
when i was 8 i declared at the dinner table that i was going to become the next steven spielberg, and that was that. it took a while for the technology to become diffused and affordable enough for me to actually make stuff, but once it did, my camcorder was never far, and after a full day of shooting, i'd stay up all night ingesting, editing, rendering, exporting, uploading.
in my mid-20s, i was a lonely transplant in london, living someone else's dream to pay the rent in a city i didn't even want to be in. after a couple of crushing experiences of being paid to make moving images for others, i soon gave up on it, even as a personal hobby.
i eventually found my way back to it in my mid-30s, but also discovered that knowing what you want to do, and being able to do it, are separated by a decade of procrastination, perfectionism and paralysis.
for example: i shot and edited a 2-minute video of a trip to london in november 2021, that i only finished and published in august 2023. 21 months. all i had to do was choose a soundtrack and upload it to youtube. it took less than ten minutes to do that.
the other thing that happens after years of inaction is that the gap between your taste and your ability to execute your vision grows into a gulf. you can still tell what's good; you just can't make it, yet. and every attempt is a reminder of that distance. ugh.
in 2019, i hit the proverbial rock bottom. it wasn't just the saturation of chemicals in my body, but being increasingly haunted by an abandoned creative life from a decade before, its embers still smouldering, asking to be relit.
i got sober, and in the clear, terrifying expanse that opened up from the absence of substance abuse, i have been able to fill my days pursuing the dreams that i'd given up on to party more, longer, harder (and perhaps to forget that i had ever dreamed of anything at all).
it didn't take long to see the compounding value of these daily choices, so when i finally published that video that had gathered virtual dust for nearly two years, i decided it was time to act.
on the 11th of august 2023, i committed to creating and publishing one motion picture a day, every day until… well, i realised about 700 days into it that this is something i’ll be doing until my last day on earth (that's why they're numbered with five digits — i'm good through the 23rd century).
for the most part, they're b-roll devoid of any real story or character development, but on a good day, each is an attempt to find and hold a moment — of light, of movement, of ordinary life — before it disappears. a moving image diary of a splendid day somewhere, or prototyping a shot idea at a location i like. i’ve heard more than a few times from others that they stand out in their feeds as a kind of anti-content; deliberate acts of cinematic stillness amongst twitchy slop. recording and editing them is always an act of much-needed presence in my own life. if nothing else, i'm grateful for that.
gotta be real honest with you though. there are days, weeks — sometimes what feels like whole seasons — where i don't like anything i make. where i'm anxious about how to pay the bills and the work feels like it's coming out hollow. but i do it anyway, because i know by now that this is temporary. the dry spells end. something always catches my eye again. another day, another episode of DAILIES.
it's also helped me hone my craft in a low stakes way, as i jumped from smartphone to pocket camcorder to cinema camera. i grew up in the videography paradigm of "just hit record", but now feel at ease with exposure triangles, manual focus, and colour correcting LOG footage every night. and there's always more to jump into, suck at, and get better doing over time.
paired with a morning writing session that i start every day with, DAILIES has also been a generative practice, leading me to produce more intentional and complete work.
earlier this year i finished three short pictures i first wrote down in 2019 after giving up the drink. one of them, "consumido", has just been nominated for Best Portuguese Horror Short Film at the 20th edition of MOTELX International Horror Film Festival happening 3-13 september, and is being considered for a dozen more around the world. you can watch the other two right now — "contained" is about a malcontent chasing what he keeps locked away from the world, and "when you do" features a woman who ignores her calling, until she doesn't.
there's so much more in the pipeline — half a dozen shorts, a couple of music video concepts, a cosmic horror miniseries, at least three features — and DAILIES is the foundation on which all of this is built.
i marvel at the idea that the tools that once cost many millions, and that only a select few could ever hope to access, are now things i bought for a few thousand. but a motion picture isn't the equipment that makes it. even at the most micro of budgets, with me wearing a dozen hats, there's a limit to what i can and should do alone: those who act, compose, design, build, assist all deserve to be paid properly for their time.
as AI increasingly decimates opportunities for the day jobs i take on to support this work, i'm less sure than ever about how i'll make them, but i'm also more certain than ever that i will.
in case you didn’t know, the term “dailies” comes from the age-old hollywood practice of developing each shooting day’s footage so the studios can make sure the director is doing a good job. i'm the director and the studio here, so: looking back, i'd say about a third of these are shite, a third are not awful, and a third are good enough that i'd watch them several times over on a big screen. that ratio feels about right for showing up every single day.
so happy 3rd anniversary to DAILIES! tonight i will publish # [01099] — that’s a few more than there have been days, because in the first week i got overexcited and posted a couple of doubles. i haven’t missed a day since.
you can follow along, er, daily on youtube, instagram, and tiktok.
here's a youtube playlist of my faves from the start until now:
thanks for your time, i really appreciate it.
matt