We recently connected with William Macaulay and have shared our conversation below.
Hi William, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
Like a perfect three act structure, I wish I had a particular moment or turning point to punctuate my transformation from susceptible amateur with a camera to grizzled film director, but I’m not sure that kind of metamorphosis ever truly occurs for any one person. It comes through persistent knocks to the gut, and when it starts to hurt less we start to identify that in ourselves as “resilience.”
As I see it, I don’t have any “resilience” in the traditional sense. I grew up in the lap of luxury under the parenthood of self-made doctors and an immigrant family who lived a much harder life than myself, so I had the convenience of turning to art as a career. My great grandfather hid amongst the bodies of his siblings to survive the Armenian Genocide of 1914. My grandfather had his business stolen and every drachma he ever earned in life taken from him by the Junta Regime of Greece in 1967. As a 7 year old immigrant, my mother was placed in a special education program when she first came to America because she did not know a word of English. By the time she graduated high school, she was valedictorian. My poor father slept on the couch of his single mother’s 1 bedroom apartment until he was an adult and worked 3 menial jobs to earn enough money to supplement his scholarship to college and medical school. These are stories that signify in resilience in my mind — not my own. And with that in mind, it is almost ironic that my “resilience” comes from art – a life of filmmaking.
A filmmaker’s only true goal in life is to create emotional art, thus I don’t believe it is a leap to claim that we are inherently sensitive beings. We grind our own spirit to the bone as we process the audio-visual problems of our own conception, wrestle with our ideas as we watch them play out on camera and just when we finally can tolerate our own Frankenstein creation enough to stop slicing and cutting a truly laughable paradox becomes fully transparent as we toss our art out into the world where it is ritualistically subjected to audience criticism. So growing “resilience” as a walking contradiction in this wild world of ours can actually be quite easy, when the ultimate form of self-humiliation is baked into the journey. And peeling back layers of skin to grow thicker callouses is good for just about anyone. However, for an artist – “resilience” can come at a price.
Resilience isn’t simply perseverance, but a numbed sensation to the pain of your passions. And if you are unable to retain that virginal fire in your stomach for creation – it can become completely extinguished by “resilience.” So in the end, I guess what I really require as a filmmaker is a resilience to my own “resilience.” Im still working on that though.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I unfortunately don’t have much to hawk right now. I am first and foremost, a filmmaker with the goal of one day making a feature films, but for now much of my focus is put into my conduit for creation, a small production company I helm, that I have narcissistically called “Modern Day Auteur LLC”. I sunk my savings into production gear and left my 9 to 5 to start this business in November 2019, just before the pandemic, so I was thinking about mentioning this when talking about “resilience” earlier, but to me that story is painfully cliche and not original at this point. At MDA, I create commercials and music videos that hopefully embody a cinematic spirit true to the name. I’ve shot commercial work for luxury brands like Grey Goose & Bulgari and visuals for musicians ranging from Sting to Riff Raff. I distribute a lot of my work through my clients on youtube, my own instagram and of course my website, a canonical portfolio of my work thus far.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Everyone’s path is different, so “different strokes for different folks” always applies, but the 3 lessons I’ve learned over the years that have kept me afloat as a filmmaker are as follows:
1. Work on projects you are actually passionate about.
Nothing “great” ever comes from a lukewarm approach. If you are having trouble stirring interest in yourself, do something to alter the concept of the work into something you can be proud of. If it’s a business, the customer is always right, but the customer has also come to you for your own professional opinion and expertise. So don’t lose sight of that.
2. Never stop learning about your craft.
I’ve talked to so many lavish directors about their experiences making a film and am always surprised by their lack of technical knowledge of their own films. If you seek a certain effect or technique, learn it yourself – it will make you into a better leader on set and in the editing bay that can actually assist in the process when you have the budget to hire a specialist to do it for you.
3. Treat your mind like you do your body.
I’ve spent countless sleepless nights in disturbing edit holes. I’ve let my health slip away from me for work. If you aren’t focused on your physical health it’ll eventually stunt your mental health soon after. This honestly may be one of the harder qualities to embody, but maintaining healthy hobbies and consumption outside of work amongst the oversaturated landscape of frivolous fast food content we currently live in is so important if your goal is to be an emotional creator. Instead of doom scrolling a catalogue of pointless content, dissect your favorite filmmaker’s filmography one by one. Watch every film in order even if you’ve seen some before and analyze their evolution as you would in a film class. Instead of pouring time into a game with no benefit over the horizon, pick up chess or read a classic. Your hobbies should also focus on sharpening your mind, just as your craft does.
Okay, so before we go we always love to ask if you are looking for folks to partner or collaborate with?
I want to take a moment to thank the extremely talented Nikki Buatti, a musician I’ve been working with for a few years now who referred me to the Bold Journey for this interview. She like many artists I collaborate with is invested in deeply in her work and strives for impact through her art.
Filmmaking is a collaborative process, and as an author of my own work – collaboration can be daunting for me. So I am, intentionally selective when embarking on a visual journey with some one. Thus, when I lock in to work with a client, producer or a fellow artist – those connection usually last a very long time, perhaps even a lifetime. I’m always looking for impassioned individuals with a loyalty to their own cause.
I have several films, documentaries and series I hope to make in the future, and It will take a strong collective of collaborators to achieve my goals in the future. My door is always open to friendly creators.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.moderndayauteur.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moderndayauteur/?hl=en
- Other: https://vimeo.com/moderndayauteur
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