As a fan of the Coen Brothers, I have been excitedly awaiting the release of “Hail Caesar,” for the past few months. I have waited patiently, yet this Thursday night, I will finally be watching the movie when it is released into theaters. I really can’t wait to see what the Coen Brothers have come up with this time, and I anticipate it being one of my favorite movies of the year. However, when thinking about my own excitement, I recently asked myself “Why am I so excited? Why are the Coen Brothers such credible filmmakers?”
Truly, my interest in “Hail Caesar,” is almost entirely dependent on name recognition. Since, I have not allowed myself to watch any of the recent “teaser trailers,” I know little about the movie besides what great minds were involved in its creation. Producing movies like “Fargo, The Big Lebowski, No Country For Old Men, and True Grit,” it seems that anything the Coen Brothers touch turns to gold. In this way, their credibility is built upon the foundation of their previous successes.
There are many industries in which “practice makes perfect,” and a person can suffer a few failures before becoming a success. However, filmmaking is not likely to fit this description. Similar to a writer, a filmmaker is likely to be judged by the quality of his previous work as well as the quality of his current work. For example, you might be interested by the somewhat politically relevant movie “13 Hours: the Secret Soldiers of Benghazi,” until you see that it was directed by Michael Bay, the notoriously overkill director of the Transformers series. In this way, a filmmaker’s past can either serve to glorify or haunt them throughout the rest of their career.
Likewise, in writing, and in life in general, people are likely to remember your past successes and failures. A truth that can be either gratifying or horrifying to confront. When I first considered this idea, I found myself thinking “How am I supposed to become good at something with failing a few times first?” However, I have come to realize that this is not necessarily the case. Although professionals are expected to perform at a certain level, I am in no way a professional. Rather, I am a student who is being given the opportunity to try, fail, and succeed at my own will for the next four years.
If you are looking to become more motivated, consider this: these are the few years in your life in which you are expected to fail occasionally. How else, after all, would you hope to learn something new and challenging? When you graduate and become employed, experience will become your new teacher. However, experience is self motivated and the point at which your “personal experience” begins is almost entirely dependent on the amount of work you put in right now. When you have a job, failure wont be taken lightly. Depending on your position, failure could mean losing your job, and losing your job could actually prevent you from being hired at a new one. So enjoy these years while you can, and make sure to make a few mistakes along the way.
mattsrobinson 
I’ve very much enjoyed reading your blog posts, which do a consistently excellent job effectively incorporating images and also thoughtfully working through ideas in text. I’m quite sympathetic to this recent one, as well, which I think makes many great points. One note throughout: drop a source credit in a caption for each image and gif that you use, even if it’s just a URL. It’s a best-practice to get in the habit of, even though most of our images circulate almost randomly across the internet these days. Keep up the good work.
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