Meet David W. Frey

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to David W. Frey. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

David , we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.

As I was growing up, I learned that culture is an important key in one’s life guidance. One has to be open-minded, respectful, and inclusive of what other cultures are and could be. And it is not helpful to be angry toward, or fearful of, those whom YOU deem to be different. It is a huge responsibility that kids and teenagers alike take on before they become first, and only time, adults. And it comes in different shapes and sizes. Some grow up to bring it into the next generation, while some others may not do that and either spread some, little, or none at all.

And lastly, it is likely nowadays that some no longer participate in the one they have grown up into and take another. Which is positive and fair. Being a mid-20-something who has yet to find his place in this world, I’d say my purpose is drawn from an effort of being kind and fair to everyone. I draw from this that my purpose is found in everyone, and it ultimately inspires me to treat others the way one wants to be treated; good originates from acts of selfless gratitude and love to spread.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

That has varied over the years-how I both look at and define what I professionally am focused on. Or, for that matter, what I am doing to help establish a “brand” for myself. To start, I am a filmmaker. I graduated a few years ago with a BA degree in Film Studies and Production, and as a student, I had really fallen in love with screenwriting-all because how else would a film even start! However, I won’t say that this was initially what I wanted to do. And then say that, over the years, it became less of a passion and more of a way to find my happiness and calm. I’m just taking a ride down Memory Lane, but my story takes place center stage.

I don’t remember exactly how it happened, but I do recall being asked one day by my mom if I would ever be interested in learning to dance. Me, being the fun-loving kid that I was, said yes. It was a hip-hop/breakdance beginners’ class. I know I didn’t have the right shoes on-I think sneakers I had., or maybe just socks. But after that, I became hooked. Obviously, I am not going to go through every minute detail that happens since then, but the choice which I made that day has given me a thought whether I would ever be at the place where I am at right now today. Me being interested in dancing during elementary school started an 8-year journey for me. From 7/8 years old up to 15/16, it had gone from dance classes, to competing in dance, to stage productions.

That was when I started performing stage productions at the age of 6th grade because of seeing a flyer on the walls advertising a musical adaptation of Aladdin throughout the entire school. Again, I really don’t remember how it was that I came to be there, but I decided to go and got so enthralled with ACTING/SINGING that I was a part of my school’s drama club from 6th grade all the way up until 10th grade. I didn’t get a HUGE role within Aladdin, but I remember being THEIF that stole the loaf a bread and tossing it to Aladdin offstage. Which led to his arrest. Besides acting within my school drama club, I was also doing theater off-stage in a school nearby my house; and with them, I did a few stage productions. This “hustle” I guess, really started resonating with me, and I aspired to become an actor. And by the time I was going into 10th grade, it stopped. I grew too weary to further be on stage.

Relentless days after school for rehearsal and juggling responsibilities of class work, and then the “Are you looking at colleges? Whatever school you decide to go to will be your home for 4 years.” (Because that is what my school wanted to stress out about.by grade 9th) had become too much.

I decided to put in more effort at school until the end of the school musical, and well, we shall see where I stand by 12th.

My ambitions to become an actor came to an end. It wasn’t until the near end of the summer of being a rising junior in high school that I really started looking at what I was good at. “After all these years, what am I good at?” I asked myself. Then it hit me. “Screenwriter, no?” I mean, was always told by my loved ones that I was an extremely good writer. I LOVED movies. Especially Martin Scorsese ones. I enjoyed “filming” events and trying to get a good laugh in there. I enjoyed choreographing movements, and I had an endless amount of viewing of a YouTube video labeled “Top 100 movies quotes/insults of all time” replaying endlessly on my phone. So that became the objective. Upon completion of high school, then subsequently after trying to find the RIGHT college with the right degree, I found it. And in my freshman year-heck, my first semester-of college, I was in this screenwriting class with an extremely highly regarded professor, and one of our first assignments was to write up a draft of at least 10 to 12 pages of an idea you have and introduce it to the class.

I had one about a security guard in a mall plaza jewelry store who gets confronted by a stranger late one night.

Turns out, it was an old childhood friend of his brother who is trying to settle a score and get revenge on him.

And upon reading my script, the professor was very proud and happy to say that “now this is a way to write a script”.

Obviously, this was a first draft and I had to do rewrites. But I knew I made the right choice taking this path! Since then, day in and day out, I have been building on my film pallet with anything that pertains to it. I have personally been more involved in pre-productions and enjoy film sets. The most exciting part for me is working with multiple people from many different backgrounds.
And that it’s a learning phase.

Film sets are not all the same. Nobody is the same. From one shot to another shooting day, it’s completely in control and can be a different life experience. And that’s the fun. Currently, I really have a few projects that I’m a part of, which are becoming more foundational to say that they will be happening within the next few months. That is, in fact, the most exciting part: the journey is and shall be continuing!

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

So far for me, those three are:

Skill: Resilience
Quality: Compassionate
Areas of Knowledge: Repetition, and that is the toughest for me since doing the same thing over and over again is so hard to do.

The advice I would give to anybody who is early in their journey that can help best develop/improve on these would be to write down each day, or each “artist session”, the goals you want to reach that certain day. NOT long-term goals, but goals that are attainable.

I have a problem with relentless standards, and I know that writing things down and breaking them down step by step is super helpful in attending to one’s goal/goals.

Also, it is best not to push yourself to the everyday grind, grind, grind. That isn’t easy, and it’s a terrible precedent to believe you need to do this a certain way because “Sleep is for the weak”. You are actually hurting yourself that way. So go easy on yourself. Be kind to YOU on rough days. It isn’t easy, but it does get better once you start being more compassionate towards yourself.

Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?

I will not say that it is not as important in my development growing up, but this helped me in achieving my current attitude/feelings towards the world that I had when I was developing-the book called the “Slaughterhouse-Five, or, The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death ” by Kurt Vonnegut. I had started it, I believe, around Christmas time last year. This book opened my eyes not just to the horrors that WWII impacted on the world-even though I have watched tons and tons of history about WWII-but to the overall idea of what humans, post-modernism, and philosophy have on the grips of reality for human beings-good or bad.

But one valuable thing, not things, that I have learnt from this book is that, in the struggle for such an easy thing, like breathing, or even to be able to walk, a struggle seems to be somewhere. That the struggle to even have an expression, which is a sole human being right, is so hard-especially in the sense of creative expression-that it is out of their minds for anyone to choose to be unempathetic towards other people’s causes.

In the book itself, a line goes like this by Kurt Vonnegut. “I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee. I have also told them not to work for companies which make massacre machinery, and to express contempt for people who think we need machinery like that:”. It is not right to paint ourselves in danger if the case is we are not in one. Obviously, I am not going to go into philosophical rhetoric here, but my feelings go in cadence with those lines alone due to just the amount of power able to be done on either good or bad. What is life with no meaning? What is life with death?

It is about time we really understand what this world means to us and try to empower those who do not feel this way. With a mental illness becoming more prominent in society, this particular sense of the ways of living has succeeded tremendously, depending on who lives where, obviously. This has deeply affected the way people currently live.

It’s in finding the joy that gets us up in the morning, and then doing it again and again no matter what obstacles and finger-pointers are in our way. It is so much easier to begin pointing your fingers and not in a mirror. People forget if you are pointing at someone, you got three more pointing back at you.

So walk softly during this journey called life. The world is harsh enough as it is. Make life easier and not only for you, but make life easier for others, too. Life would be much easier if you chose to stand up for others, to stand justly beside all people who didn’t agree. Only don’t choose to act just like them and lash out, choosing violence as your spokesperson.

Two wrongs don’t make a right.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Tay Lite
@possibly.__.photography

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