How to Make What You Want
on creative control +sharing the treatment for the Glitter music video
Somewhere along the way, each of us must relinquish total control. The world sends you people to love and then kills them off in front of you, your job pays you a great salary and then fires you, it’s raining when you wish it were sunny, it’s sunny when you wish it were raining. Surrender is a vital part of survival.
And of course this is not very satisfying to me. I figure that I came to this Earth because I wanted to experience this vast tornado of unpredictable human experience — death, love, pain, joy, all of it… but also because I wanted to play around in the Earthly materials. I wanted to make things. And that’s one thing I can control.
I can control how I speak to people, what energy I give to the world, the words I write, the music I make. Control is something that, in the grand scheme of things, we have so little of. As a Capricorn, it is my chief goal to retain all of it that I can. This is why creative control is so important to me.
It’s one thing to feel safe enough to write the words you want to in your own private diary (and if you’re stuck at this step, I recommend The Morning Pages). It’s quite another thing to feel safe enough to take control of your vision in the presence of, and in collaboration with, other people. In a world where intuition is ridiculed and abstract creativity is stomped out in favor of marketable skills, it’s a job within itself to maintain that your artistic vision is worthy.
There are many reasons why people relinquish their creative control:
They fear that they do not have enough resources to make what they want
They doubt their ability to do something they have never done before
They believe they must be guided by someone who “knows more” than they do
They have not seen examples of what they want to do being done before
When it came time to think about music videos for my first record, I started getting nervous. I had a vision for a video for my song “Glitter,” but I had never directed anything before. I had no language of the camera. I had basically no money to make it. I kept watching high-budget, iconic music videos for “inspiration,” but mostly to punish myself for what I thought would surely not be possible for me.
But I knew that I needed to direct this video because my vision was incredibly specific, my references were carefully collected, and the subject matter was very close to me. I knew that I needed to get it right. Like all the best things in my life, I decided to plunge forward, trusting myself, and hoping for the best.
I was lucky and humble enough to ask one of my best friends, Julia Stamey, for help. She was willing to be my producer and advocated for me the whole way. She helped me create a budget, find a fantastic crew, cut corners where we could and splurge when we needed to. I will always choose to go it alone if I can’t find anyone who trusts me, but when I do, I am always better for their help. The full list of credits and thank-you’s can be found at the end of the video.
I wanted a lot of things that seemed impossible. I needed it to look like film, but I couldn’t afford to shoot on film. I needed to build a dolly track and a rig within a 5x5 space. The entire video depended on sourcing the perfect pair of real-life eleven-year-old best friends. Oh, and two other pairs of girls who look just like them. Instead of wasting time worrying about how these things couldn’t possibly come to fruition, I simply charged ahead as if it was all going to work out. And it all did.
One of the things I did throughout this process to help me maintain my creative control — to remember that I trusted myself and my vision — is create a detailed treatment. I highly recommend this step to anyone embarking on a creative journey where they are concerned with protecting their vision.
In the music video world, a treatment is essentially a document with visual references, a storyline, and other elements to help the crew get a sense of what the director is trying to achieve. For me, it was a meticulous document to keep me accountable to my vision. It was a way for me to see what I wanted to do, and remember that I could do it. You can make this for any project — a proof of concept for yourself. Be it a manifesto, a collage, or even just a sticky note that reminds you that you can trust yourself.
I’m beyond proud of the video we created two years ago on a shoestring budget and with a lot of faith. I’m currently working on a treatment for a song off of my upcoming record. The “Glitter” music video, which once seemed like an unlikely fantasy in my head, is now my proof of concept.
Below, I have linked the full treatment for the “Glitter” video.