Pay Your Dues

Or Creative Deserts will come…

Some of my comments/opinion below might not apply to your industry (especially if you’re not in the creative industry or have anything to do with content/marketing in Singapore) or might even seem harsh, but I’ll nonetheless expand on a piece of knowledge that was imparted to me more than 2 decades ago through family & mentors, that seems to have been forgotten (sometimes) by the majority of the creatives/content creators in an industry, that, by itself, will never move forward without a real movement behind it.

It’s been 20 years since the first time I had anything published that connected me to “the film industry”.

For my high-school newspaper, in or around the month of May in the year 2000, I was approached by the then editor (our English teacher) to write a film review for a movie I had just watched, that I thought would be fun to talk about, with any friend at school. I looked through my notes and decided on reviewing the movie (now looking back, extremely campy… and possibly SJW unfriendly) What Women Want — the Mel Gibson 2000 version.

At the time, I gave it my all (as I did & do with any of my extra-curricular activities) and came up with what, I now consider, a terribly one sided view of the film, without having dug much deeper than the overall “objective of the film — to pass the time”.
It was my first step in a rather long journey to then making it into a feature film set (with a few deviations along the way, some… pretty significant ones) and working on a film for a couple of awesome months in the year of 2006.

A first step that is, that I was then immediately told on my first day on set — that it was a proto-step, a vestigial cell of a being that was just now being inseminated/created… a “worthless step in the grand scheme of things”… my boss telling me at the time that the first real step had just been given on that day.
He told me, in no uncertain terms, that “for your career to go anywhere, you now have to pay your dues”…. “What the Hell?! What does he mean?? I’ve been looking forward to & working for this for the past half a decade, I deserve to be here!” I thought — now looking back, understanding that, in that moment, I was all ego… not a pretty sight.

I had the time of my life in that production, as in a lot of them that came as well in the next decade, having the pleasure of joining projects that always seemed to be pushing me in the direction I am at today.

But I never forgot what my producer boss told me that day.

Pay Your Dues.

Why does this phrase come to play in my text today?

Simple.

@ Bloomr.SG we have the pleasure of working with, collaborating with, mentoring, teaching and guiding several hundreds (it might even have crossed a thousand at this point) of students, content creators, interns & industry beginners through talks, webinars, workshops, projects, lessons, content, etc, that we strive to always give a clear, unbiased view of what we see in the industry — and what we see that is lacking.

In almost every single session with these creators, the point of “wanting to make it big” always comes to the fold. Every single time I have to explain that — in a small industry, especially one like Singapore, where everyone in the industry should/can know each other and all are working to get a piece of the same pie — you have to pay your dues, put in the hard work, stop, collaborate & listen (lol sorry), and not expect that riches are coming your way just because you think you’ve done enough to “get recognized”.
This is always a tough message to convey, mostly because for every person like me, trying to portray this image of hard work… you see the reverse of that coin — an IG influencer that made it big in a single day or months due to a “viral post”… a YouTube channel that puts out terrible content but still gets more views than some national news crisis reports (and no, am not talking about who you “think” I’m talking about).

That’s the problem… the majority of the content creators locally, may understand that they need to work hard in what’s to be their careers, but there’s always that single post/content they think will make them “big”.

That mindset… that “inkling that my career will be fantastic when I’m 20 or 22 or 25 just as long as I get that amazing post” is insane to me. And yes. This sounds like an old fogey complaint. You haven’t paid your dues = you wont make it in the industry. Let’s be clear though… odds are, if you haven't worked hard enough at anything, if you end up being one of the lucky few that ends up being bigger than the content they produce, that’s a hard lived life. Mostly because sooner or later, you will fall towards creative deserts that will destroy whatever you’re doing or want to do. That’s what I see happening in Singapore regularly. That Creative Desert is insanely vast…

That’s my mandate (and hopefully Bloomr.SG’s) for what I hope is the next few decades of my career (and our standing in the industry).
To be able to portray the “Pay Your Dues” message in a clearer way, in an easier way to assimilate and influence those starting out in the Singapore creative industry.
That we don’t get to a point like the current climate of creativity in Singapore where everyone wants to be the next big thing, but very few are actually willing to put in the time. To dig the dirt necessary to create the infrastructure to be a great creative industry — with or without a simple metric like “monetary impact on my bank account” or “I went viral once”.

Because let’s face it… a lot of the content that is seen around on social in Singapore, is exactly like my What Women Want review — it’s peripheral, it’s not deep enough to create an impact in the viewer, it’s easily forgettable (sorry for those that have been doing great work, I am, after all, not calling you out here) but most of all — it’s indicative of something that is lacking. Something that can and will be fixed. If not now. Soon.

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