I’m a very competitive person, very. My wife makes fun of that all the time, and to be honest, I don’t even notice when I’m being competitive (most of the time there’s no need to be), that being said I don’t usually compete in anything, I used to love my Judo and Tae Kwon Do competitions back in the day, but other than that I’ve only competed in a few film festivals, and boy did I get competitive that time. Uff. So I don’t chase competition at all since I get somewhat anxious, I don’t really care for awards (maybe because I’m not chasing them, lol), but I came across the #FilmsupplyChallenge online and that all went out the window, this seemed like it could be so much fun!
Filmsupply.com has an immense video library filled with pretty amazing footage, you can find anything from a busy city street timelapse to some really cool abstract stuff, I was really blown away by the variety and quality. So in order to compete, you have access to 40 videos that you can download and any 5 songs you might need from musicbed.com a website stacked with pristine music, not your typical ‘stock’ music website. Anywho, I felt the itch to get in there and compete, I started to think about it a lot and started to play around with many ideas and what could get me to win (the prizes are great), and then something weird happened, I stopped obsessing about like I was expected to do, all the ideas I had floating around went away, it felt like path had cleared in my mind, this path took me directly to a new idea, an important one, an idea that I really cared about, so I ended up doing a piece about sexual harassment and how parents (dads) can start a conversation with their boys at an early age about consent and respect for girls and women. I thought about a website where you can get information on how to go about doing this, as a dad.
I was lucky to have had great parents and I grew up surrounded by women most of the time, I understood at an early age that being a man comes with the ability to physically overpower most women or people smaller than you, and taking advantage of this fact for the wrong reasons would turn me into a bully and a or a potential harasser later in life, and also, not being in touch with my feelings could impair me to empathize with others. I understood at an early age (a lot via martial arts) that we need to respect one another.
So, I took this opportunity not to compete, but to learn a new way of competing, it’s not only about winning but it’s also about having a chance to edit a piece that can get some people talking and who knows, maybe I can get a website like that going in the future, I would personally love to do so. bearealman.com is a mock website, but let me check if that URL is available, brb.
Dudes, we can all better at this, we can call out of friends and family when their on the wrong side of this issue.
You can watch the video here: