Meet Adrien Marquet

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Adrien Marquet a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Adrien, appreciate you making time for us and sharing your wisdom with the community. So many of us go through similar pain points throughout our journeys and so hearing about how others overcame obstacles can be helpful. One of those struggles is keeping creativity alive despite all the stresses, challenges and problems we might be dealing with. How do you keep your creativity alive?

Creative burnout feels like the steepest mountain to climb. You feel every negative emotion known to man, from a lack of confidence to major imposter syndrome. It’s something everyone in the creative industry has experienced and will continue to experience, it’s just part of the process. Interestingly, however, once you realize that it’s a part of the process, it can be a great reminder to look elsewhere in your life. We often experience burnout when we are fixated on one idea, when we should always be open to receiving ideas that can come from the most unexpected places. The words on a street sign, a random artwork, an interaction with a stranger, noticing a problem in your life or in society, all of these moments, everything we do in life can inspire a new spark of creativity if we are open to noticing it. So, what do I do to keep my creativity alive? When I feel stuck, I go do something completely unrelated, something new, and enjoy that single moment while not forcing ideas to come, but being open to them.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

First off, hi, my name is Adrien Marquet. I’m a French film director. I was born in Miami and had the privilege of living all around the world as I grew up. I first lived in Miami which I don’t remember much of as I left when I was 8 months old. I then moved to Puerto Rico where my sister Chiara was born. Here, I learned my first language, Spanish, which I later forgot and replaced with English. After 4 years of living in Puerto Rico, my family made their way to the Philippines. Which is still to this day one of my favorite places on the planet. Everyone is so kind for what feels like no reason. They are unbelievably supportive and I don’t think there was a better place to spend my childhood. Then, after 6 years in the Philippines, we moved to Ghana. These next 4 years proved to be very complicated times but, simultaneously, some of the best. This is where I discovered filmmaking. I started this passion with some of the most generic, boring, useless content with the single goal of being famous. A terrible goal. The result may not surprise you, it didn’t work. Yet I stuck to it and started learning. I developed my skills as a storyteller and it showed in my videos. I even made a kick-ass short film called Kung-Fu Dudes starring Kai Richardson and Myself with my sister Chiara Marquet giving us a hand. Because of this development, I slowly started to gain interest in the concept of art rather than fame. After 4 years of creating films on YouTube, I moved to South Africa. Here, I discovered wildlife photography. I learned how to be patient to get the right shot, always looking through the viewfinder making sure not to miss the moment. I also learned the art of framing and composition, two things I admire in some of my favorite directors such as David Fincher and Stanley Kubrick. After an amazing year and a half in South Africa, I moved to Toronto where I still live today. I wanted to document my life here in high school so decided to start daily vlogging. This taught me the most important yet painful lesson, consistency. I posted 100 vlogs straight on YouTube, editing them every day after school. Some were boring, some were interesting, but they are all very nostalgic to look back on. During my time in high school, COVID-19 struck which meant no more school, and no more leaving the house. After some time watching Peaky Blinders on repeat. I decided to try and come out of it with something. So I decided to start creating TikTok videos, in particular, visual effects videos similar to the videos of the great Zach King or Kevin Parry. I was just doing this to pass the time but it took hold on social media, and through making that my life and posting every two days, I gained 150,000 followers on TikTok. I had the privilege to get reposted on major platforms such as LAD Bible, Memezar, Pubity, and many others. All while deciding to go to Ryerson University for Creative Industries. I really felt like I was at the top of the mountain with the new adventure of university starting, but as my mom always told me, what goes up, must come down. Although this was what I wanted as a kid, recognition, it was a bit bittersweet. I didn’t feel posting at that volume was sustainable during university or if it even was what I wanted to do at all. Here is where I experienced one of my biggest creative blocks to date. I met one of my closest friends Dhruv Gogia, a content creator as well, and started to experience university life together. Drinks on the roof of our building, walking around campus at night and playing hockey at the pond, but we both agreed time and time again that when it came to creativity, we just couldn’t get it going. This lasted the entirety of my first year when I finally caught a big break, one singular sequence, an idea for a YouTube video that was going to be called 8 Ball. I developed this idea into a small four-page badly written script planned for a two-person crew. Then came my second big break, meeting Patrick Smietanka, a novelist at the age of 20 that I met in a creative writing class. I told him about this project I had going on called 8 Ball and he asked if he could take a look at it to which I said of course. That night he got back to me with a page full of notes and a vision to make this thing bigger than I ever thought it could be. Through one year of hard work, it became a 24-page script with a $5000 budget and over 40 crew and cast members. We gathered the crew and cast by making posters with a big QR code on them stating “Crew wanted. Unpaid, but you might win an Oscar”. I first taped them on the normal advertising boards but quickly realized no one cared about what was on there, so I paid more attention to where everyone was looking. Because this was the dead of winter and everyone was freezing, I realized everyone was looking down. So I started taping the posters on the floor in front of entrances and stairs. People would stop right in front of it and block the whole way. So people would naturally get curious as to why people were standing in doorways and they would see my poster. After two days and an email from Ryerson warning me not to do it again, I had 200 applicants looking to be a part of my short film. 8 Ball went on to be an Internationally awarded short film and sparked that creativity for me once again. Along the way, I met amazing individuals, started and failed many projects, and made so many fantastic and dedicated friends such as my producer for 8 Ball Stéphane Normandeau who should never go unmentioned. After 8 Ball, Patrick and I continue to write scripts every week and developed two more short films called ‘A Menina Das Caixas’ and ‘Tick’, both starring the incredibly talented Caterina Rossiti. A true actress with an amazing gift.

I have an incredibly exciting short film written by Patrick Smietanka and myself which as we speak is in production called “I’m not supposed to be here”. The story follows Canadian Soldier Frank Richardson who finds himself in a perplexing situation during the Korean War. As he navigates through the chaos and danger, he encounters unexpected twists and turns that place him in a moment to save his closest friend’s life. Frank tries to grapple with the uncertainty of his surroundings and the true nature of the warfare he finds himself in. It stars Steve McCormick as Frank, Mitch Cox as Donald, and Shawn Abramyan as Ryan. This story is based on a short story Patrick Smietanka was writing at the same time that I was writing 8 Ball. We can’t wait to share this amazing work with all of you and add another short film to our collection.

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?

Firstly, in filmmaking, it is extremely important to be adaptable. Money isn’t a resource everyone has to tell a story, especially when you start, and you need to make do with what you have. Remember that it’s about the story in its purest form and not about how many explosions you can have in a movie or the number of fancy cars. If you can adapt the story to be told with the resources available to you, then you have a film that can actually be brought to life. Secondly, it’s discipline. This is something I struggle with the most but you must have the discipline to see this through and give it your all, consistently, rather than scrolling through TikTok. You need to be disciplined enough to put the phone down and do what you need to do. The great thing is that these two skills can be learned with time. However, the third one, drive, cannot. Drive stems from passion and if you don’t have that, it makes both adaptability and discipline incredibly difficult to achieve. The key to having drive is a simple one, do what you like to do, and if you don’t know what you like to do, try everything. Once passion kicks in then drive follows, always.

What do you do when you feel overwhelmed? Any advice or strategies?

I get overwhelmed all the time, but often realize it’s much more internal, therefore there is a solution to solve this. When I’m on a film set the last thing I can do is show that I’m overwhelmed as it might throw the entire production off. Lucky for me I think I found a solution to this when I was rather young. My family is very last minute, and by that I mean we usually get to the airport 45 minutes before the flight, so it was quite easy to get overwhelmed, but I didn’t that often. When overwhelming moments happened I would take 2 deep breaths because in any situation, no matter what, you always have 3 seconds to take a breath. After that, I would ask myself, what can I control? If there were things I couldn’t control then I wouldn’t even care about them because there was nothing I could do. Then from the things I can control, what is the priority? What needs to be done first so I can move to the next task? Finally, I’d get it done. Tom Hanks said something in an interview that really stuck with me. He said ‘this too shall pass, are you feeling happy, this too shall pass, are you feeling sad or angry, this too shall pass’ (or something like that). The concept that this too shall pass made me reflect on all the things I’m feeling, especially being overwhelmed, and knowing that the feeling will pass usually calms me right down.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://marquetfilms.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marquetfilms/?hl=en
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@AdrienMarquetTV

Image Credits

Nour Abboud
Kevin Moc
Elliott Koffi Adogony
Caterina Rossiti