How I Found My Passion for Filmmaking

I remember going into my freshman year of high school without knowing what I wanted to do in the future and terrified that I would never figure it out. I was never passionate about anything, never interested in any hobbies, and never had a favourite school subject. Now that I’m a senior in high school, I can safely say that I had no reason to worry. While it did take some time and a lot of personal growth, I eventually found a passion for filmmaking. 

When I started grade 9, I was very focused on academics and studied especially hard for science and math courses. Growing up in an Asian household with parents who hoped I would become a doctor, a lawyer, or a professor, I always had this mindset that studying these courses were the only option for me.

So, I was always cramped up in my room studying for math tests or staying up late at night for science projects because getting high grades for these courses was my only priority. The big problem with this mindset was that I never let myself go out and explore what other options were out there for me. 

It was in my sophomore year that I started to narrow down my interests. Towards the end of grade 9, I was choosing my courses and remember dreading every moment of it. I hated the feeling of being conflicted and frustrated because none of the elective courses sounded appealing to me. Eventually, I ended up saying “screw it” and picked whatever course my friends were taking: communications technology. 

For those who may not know, communications technology is a course that explores different media platforms such as television, film, radio, and broadcasting. And to my surprise, I ended up loving every single aspect of it. It started off as pure fun. My friends and I were able to goof around and make silly music videos or cheesy movie trailers. But as the course progressed, we were assigned more elaborate projects like creating a short film. I fell in love with the creative process of brainstorming the first ideas to editing the final product.

Even though the short films I made were shot on my iPhone 6s with poor quality and zero budget, I realized that films were a way to tell a story of my own. Once I had that tiny spark of interest, I knew that I needed to figure out if this was truly something that I wanted to do in the future.

I began by getting involved in different activities in and outside of school. I spent hours searching on job forums like Indeed and Workopolis for media companies looking for high school volunteers. I was able to find a volunteer position at a film festival where I got to review short films. Although I wasn’t creating the films, volunteering did give me an insight into the film industry and the chance to connect with some filmmakers. I was able to meet some amazing people and one of them even offered to let me volunteer as a production assistant on their film set. In addition to this, I joined different clubs where I got to produce videos about school events and learn more about video production in ways that I was never able to learn inside a classroom. I was no longer limited to class projects and so I self-taught myself how to use creative software that wasn’t offered in school like Adobe Premiere and Adobe After Effects.

In my opinion, I think that passion never starts off big. It starts as a tiny spark of interest and if you never explore it, it can simply burn out. My passion grew as I went out and took the initiative of finding different opportunities that I knew would help me learn more about myself.

I learned about my strengths, my weaknesses, and what I can do to improve even more. In the end, these experiences all came together like puzzle pieces and helped me figure out that I was passionate about filmmaking. 

Saying this, I would like to mention that finding your passion can take years and is different for everyone. There isn’t a specific formula as to how you find what you’re passionate about or how you figure out what career you want to go into in the future. While I was fortunate enough to accidentally stumble upon a course that I ended up loving, I don’t advise doing what I did and choosing a course based on your friends. However, the one piece of advice that I would offer to students is that you should always explore your interests further. If I had never gotten involved, communications technology would have just become a fun course that I took back in grade 10. 

So, go get involved. Go join a club, apply for co-op at your school, volunteer for an organization, or even reach out to your local church. There are so many opportunities for high school students out there that are related to all career paths and if you look hard enough, you might even end up finding your passion.