Meet Blake Butler

We were lucky to catch up with Blake Butler recently and have shared our conversation below.

Blake, thank you so much for joining us. You are such a positive person and it’s something we really admire and so we wanted to start by asking you where you think your optimism comes from?

My optimism comes from years of pessimism. Acknowledging that this is a dark and bizarre world helped shine light on the amusing parts. I attribute a lot of my optimism to corporate art/design. Seeing all of these amazing artists express themselves through commercial avenues gives me hope. I love the idea of being so selfless with your creativity and all the while helping the economy. I aspire to focus more on profit based art after I’m done with my movie : River Des Peresite.

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?

I, Blake Butler, am a filmmaker residing in St. Louis. Currently I am working on a movie with my friends Dylan Schnitker and Pug Bromley titled : River Des Peresite. It’s a documentary about a guy trying to make a documentary about River Des Peres (a beautiful river that runs through the heart of St. Louis.) It’s been really exciting to shift from a commercial landscape into more of an entrepreneurial creative seat. We’ve been taking weekend seminars on how to generate ROI’s in the entertainment industry to ensure we make a movie our investors will love. Although we want it to be an entertaining movie, we’re more interested in making money.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Hindsight is always 20/20 as they say. When I first started out as an entertainer, I only wanted to express my own visions. It turns out I’m pretty near sighted.. Hindsight is always 20/20 as they say. Essentially, I had no plan for my financial future. I know this is probably a hot take, but I would advise artists to practice compromising their vision as much as possible. If you already have a good financial foundation, then I would advise entrepreneurs to take as many business risks as possible. A financial advisor once told me that you should always invest in whatever fits the mold of whatever’s hot right now. Being creatively adventurous does not generate revenue. You always have to think of entertainment as a business.

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

Filmmaking is one of the most overwhelming duties. There are a lot of long days and sleepless nights. Over the years I have found that setting and achieving simple goals calms me down. At the beginning of each project I create an excel spreadsheet and a number of analytical graphs to track the films progress. After a long stressful day of shoots I will come back to my spreadsheet, look at the cost of that day, and set a goal of how much money I think that scene will generate in the grand scheme of a feature film. Some people are stressed by spreadsheets but I find them comforting!

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Image Credits

All photos : Theo R. Welling

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