“I used to work as a producer at a media company. It was one of those cultures where you worked until you had nothing left to give. My boss’s voice would be the first thing I heard every morning. He’d phone me at 5 AM, asking ‘Have you done this? Have you followed up with that?’ He’d put me down. He’d shout at me during meetings. I can tell you the exact type of tile in the office because I spent so much time looking down. And I wasn’t allowed to grow. I wasn’t allowed to do anything on the creative side. I could only handle the budgets. Once I asked him if I could leave early one day to take a course in art direction, and he said: ‘What makes you think you could succeed at something like that?’ That’s when I finally quit. I freelanced for a while. And the more distance I got from the job, the more I realized that I’d allowed myself to be pigeonholed. I wanted to do something creative. I started trying to save money to attend the New York Film Academy, but it was so expensive that I decided to put all that money into gear instead. And for the past couple months, I’ve been making short documentaries about people. I’ve made about twenty of them so far. I let the person use the video however they’d like. I’m not sure what will come of it, and I’ve only got a couple months of savings left, but for the first time in my life I feel like I’m using all of my talents. And I’ve never had this much fun.” (Johannesburg, South Africa)
