A Christmas Film, and a lesson in persistence.

byLucyLee

344 followers

6 years ago

If you happen to be bored of what's on TV this Christmas, here's a film with an interesting lesson.

This film is drawn entirely by hand, by the great animator Richard Williams (and his studio), and won the Oscar for best animated short in 1972. What does this mean to you?

It is been made of about 50'000 separate drawings. So if you start to feel that your online business is alot of work and you start to flag and feel sorry for yourself and think that it's too much work.... have a look at this film and think - thats 50'000 drawings to make that one film. He's lucky, it won him an oscar, but remember that there are people all over the globe, even today making animated films by hand (and even CGI films take just as long to make if they are done with great care and craft), making drawing after drawing (and they love every minute of it), just to make their film. Thats just one art form, and they don't all expect to win an oscar for it.

But they are not the only ones to put a huge ammount of time and effort into what they do. Sports people, musicians and entertainers train for hours everyday, to be the best they can be. Writers write everyday, sometimes for years, to get to the good stuff, and throw the rest away. And what about the unseen labourers? Mothers cook and clean everyday, mop up tears, guide their children (and husbands) to do the right thing. Fathers do the same.

There are many endeavours that require a large ammount of unseen effort to achieve something. And so often nobody knows what went into achieving or making that one thing. Listen to a musician playing a three minute song - you are listening to years and years of daily practice. Watch this 25minute film, you are watching years and years of practice and 50'000 drawings flicker past your eyes.

Look at a successfull affiliate website - you are looking at years of work, thousands of possibly unread words, and daily personal battles. Thats what you are actually looking at.

So watch this film today or tomorrow, and think about this; people in all areas of life, in all endeavours, put a huge ammount of work into what they do, whether others see that work or not is irellevant, whats important is that - it's what we do - it's normal - it's how things get done - great things (even small things) are only achieved by taking a lot of action.

So keep working, keep blogging, keep studying, and watch the film.

By the way, even a great short film, winning an oscar, is still is not released on DVD. And this copy here on YouTube is taken from a poor quality 16mm print copy, not a better 35mm copy, so applogogies for the sound quality and the damage to the print. Much of our work goes hidden for years, but we keep going regardless.

Happy Christmas!

Here's the link to it on YouTube, incase the embed video doesn't work here! In case that doesn't work, it's called "A Christmas Carol" by Richard Williams (1971)

Happy blogging (and YouTubing!)