Turning your Passion Project into your Day Job

Spoiler alert - I haven't managed it yet...

Everyone has that secret bottom drawer dream of making their passion project their main source of income. As some of you will know - my day job is running Citron Violet - a SE Asian based production company. It’s a fun little business that pays the bills and I get to work with some amazing people.

Now you would think that a production company would provide me with all the creative outlet I need in life - but you’d be wrong.

If you’ve ever had a client in a creative business then this won’t come as a surprise, but nothing kills creativity like clients.

Write a great script for a TVC. It’s punchy and entertaining - but your client wants it stuffed full of keywords or dumbed down to feel more accessible, or more cringey product placement added or 1000 other things.

The client is always right - we work for them, so we make the changes and give them the video they asked for. But a little part of you hates watching that first perfect script die - never to see the light of day.

Which is why The Lore and I started Pretty Neat Productions. We both love our day jobs but we had so many more stories we wanted to tell and ideas to entertain, horrify and delight.

So before everyone jumps on me and says,

“Wait till you sell a script to a streamer or broadcaster. You’ll be in the same situation - another client making changes to your “perfect script” so it fits a demographic or a political sentiment.”

And to be clear we will 100% cave to these demands because the desire to see our production made will outweigh many (although not all) of our artistic high ground.

And… you’re probably right. It will be the same, perhaps worse given how much longer we spend on our screenplays as compared to a TVC. I absolutely run the risk of my creative outlet company, becoming as “client wrangled” as my day job.

So how to avoid this…

I’m not sure you can. I hope to be posting on here one day, about our frustrations with a character being changed or a scene being axed - frankly that would be a great problem to have. I guess I have to remember that - It would be a GREAT problem to have.

That, and hopefully just enjoying the journey. Right now we’re having a blast. We’re optioning stories, writing screenplays, producing audio dramas and feeling creatively fulfilled. The goal will be to hold on to this feeling when we feel our creativity being curbed and hopefully find ways to still tell amazing stories within the confinements placed on us.

I’ll let you know how that goes…