How to Stay Productive as a Creative Artist during the Coronavirus Lockdown
INTRODUCTION
QUARANTINE. ISOLATION. SOCIAL DISTANCING. CORONAVIRUS. COVID-19. We’re hearing it all over the world, this new virus attacking us without a cure. We know for a fact that states and countries are doing a complete shutdown with no access to outdoor activities, entertainment and restaurants/bars. Matter of fact, we can’t even hang out at our usual Starbucks because they’ve eliminated the seating arrangements and like all places, they only allow you to take out! We’re witnessing on social media about toilet paper and cleaning supplies being wiped out while face masks are like gold in the streets.We know that small businesses are taking a hit. Venues are locking us out, states are shutting down, travel bans are being enforced, lots of our clients are required to cancel or reschedule due to minimizing group activities to 10 people. So how do we continue to run a business and stay productive during the Coronavirus stay-at-home orders?
Instead of panicking, we know there is so much to achieve while staying home and not worrying about client expectations. So, here are some things photographers and videographers can do to stay productive during these tough times.
1 | Plan for the Future
This is a great time for you to plan out future endeavors for your business. You can take the time to re-evaluate your business plan, your values and/or business models. Take a look at the moment you decided to start your business to this very moment. You can ask yourself, did I accomplish my short term goals? Did I accomplish my long term goals? How has my business changed since the 1st year? How about 5 years or 10 years ago? What about planning out shoots with other creatives who are in the same situation? This is the moment for you to plan that one thing that was always on your mind, but you couldn’t do it because you just “didn’t have the time” for it. Now you have time.We’re taking the time to plan out a few projects. We have a few styled shootouts and workshops in the works with other vendors, including a short film script that is currently in pre-production. We’re taking the time to review our business models, focusing on the wants and needs and making sure we’re on the same page with ourselves and our extended team members.
Productivity Software We Use: Trello, G-Suite, Dropbox, Microsoft Office
2 | Become an Author
Take this moment to write something. Anything. A Script. A Journal. Or a letter. Go ahead and hand write it or type it out. It can be about your day, your life or your family and friends. Just simply reflect. It’s something about writing it all out that makes you feel calm and at peace. You don’t have to share it, you can save it or go back to it at a later time. It’s the fact that you took the time to write out whatever is on your mind. This can help bring peace to all the craziness that life brings.
After years of not writing anything, I forced myself to free write because it took all the things that were flowing in my head and gave me something to physically look at so I could organize what goes through my mind. Writing gave me a way to release my thoughts and be a powerful storyteller, educator through these journals and creator by clearing my mind. The more I write, the more ideas that come and go, which in the bigger picture helps me become a better business person for my clients.
3 | Connect with other Creative Artists
Since the recent stay-at-home orders, the majority of creative artists lost clients, rescheduled shoots and are forced to close business temporarily because of social distancing. This means we're spending our time on social media with the rest of the world and connecting with other creative artists is our next best tip.
A lot of us are witnessing creative artists on social media follow each other and repost chain stories to gain viewers. Despite being that person who thinks they’re too cool, following this trend is actually helping creative artists appear more on social media. But now is a time to connect with a creative artist that you like, would like to know more about or idolize to make that dream collaboration happen. This is also great for education, learning how to be a better business or teaching another creative artist something new. But connecting us all together to help one another and help our community stay informed about the Coronavirus is the biggest blessing we can provide as a creative artist.
We’re currently running a creative artist social media campaign to get the public to learn more about our peers who are affected by the temporary business shutdown. It’s not about gaining any money or any publications, but we believe it’ll allow our followers to get to know some of the other creative artists in our community. We also have learned to connect with other creative artists because it can inform us of how we can deal with the loss of business and try to find a way to pay for our subscriptions/bills. We are all going through the same thing, but connecting with others can help ease the stress.
4 | Educate Yourself and Learn A Skill
<p>Many of us learn our techniques, workflows, tips and tricks through our peers, online or in a classroom setting. We all have that one favorite filmmaker or photographer who makes those tutorials about everything and anything. It's them who are giving us the strength to be confident in ourselves as filmmakers and photographers. Share the knowledge, it’s the power of community that makes our creative artistry grow. We like to believe that there is a “secret” to doing things, but there isn’t! Educating others about your struggles and gains will allow you to grow as a business owner. We love growing in our craft and the challenges it brings us because it makes the best version of ourselves and better yet, teaching our craft and the challenges we face to others makes us better humans.
With the Visionize Styled Shootout, we aim to be better educators for our photography and filmmaking community. The feeling of gratitude when someone learns something from us or achieves a personal/business goal because we were able to teach them, is the greatest feeling of all. We are working on a few journals that give a behind the scenes look of how we operate as a business or on a set and we are also continuing to plan styled shoots and workshops during these Coronavirus stay-at-home orders. You can educate others about your workflows, what you’ve learned or how you solved an issue through social media, YouTube or on your website. Knowledge is power!
5 | Practice Makes Perfect
As a creative artist business owner, we are self-driven human beings and believe in hard work and sacrifice. It’s not a trait that we’re born with; but we learn it, practice it and most importantly, act on it. Practice your creative skill, you don’t need much, this trait of working with what you’ve got is something we’re used to. Practicing our photography and filmmaking skills during lockdown can be as simple as using your relatives, using items around the house or creating a self-portrait. Focusing on composition, story-telling, editing, retouching, color grading and the list goes on. All it takes is dedication and a little time a day to get your mind, your body and craft right.
6 | Catch Up on Editing
Now that some are forced to stay in our homes and away from others, this is the PERFECT time to get some editing done. Many times we’re so busy with meetings and shooting that we get behind on editing our projects. No excuses now! We can focus on our editing and get things done without client expectations or worrying about getting to the next shoot. We can now be ahead of our production schedule and even tweak our current projects that we’re editing. If we’re stuck, now we have the extra time to learn some editing techniques and maybe try something new for once.
For us, we love to be ahead of the schedule because it gives us time to be more creative on a project. We can spend the extra time tweaking a clip’s color, adding some motion graphics and even create an additional edit for our reel. If we’re lucky enough to be in constant contact with our client, we’re able to go back and forth about ideas that would make our edit more effective. If you have an ear for music, editing also consists of sound design and music production. You can now spend even more time building a soundtrack for your project too.
7 | Store and Backup Contents
Storage Workflow is very important. Period. This should’ve been at the beginning of the journal because it’s important to every photographer, filmmaker and creative artist. Take this time to back up everything to another hard drive then online through cloud storage. We’re not here to do a pros and cons or comparison of cloud storage sites (you can do that on your own time) but taking action to having your past and current projects backed up more than once will save you in the long run.
With that said, we use large capacity external hard drives to back up past and current projects. We also use Dropbox and Amazon Drive to back up photography projects as well. Fun note, if you use Amazon Prime, you have unlimited storage for photos on your amazing drive!
8 | Take the time to check your gear!
This can be anything from camera gear to lighting gear and studio equipment to computer software. You can go through your inventory, clean your gear and update your firmware. Have a loose tripod? Tighten it, lubricate it and give it a little TLC. You can test your gear and make sure they meet standard requirements and label any gear in your inventory. That’s what we are doing, making sure that everything is up to par because our gear is an essential part of our business.
9 | Marketing and Branding
During this time, marketing really doesn’t play a vital role because there’s nothing to sell to a client during an epidemic. In fact, if you’re a creative artist that is an essential service to our community and the world, this is a time to think about “we” rather than “me” in the middle of the Coronavirus stay-at-home orders. But you can focus on the foundation of your marketing for the future: Product, Price, Place and Promotion. In the long run, you want to understand the value of your product, the value of the price in which you're selling your product, the places where you are distributing your product and the marketing campaigns in which you are promoting your product. Now, replace the term product for photography, filmmaking, creative director, creative services or anything along your business. What are we doing? We are taking the time to focus on our social media presence, updating our website and making sure all our online outlets are SEO optimized. After all, we’re so busy planning out projects, on set shooting and editing projects that we don’t have time to organize our portfolios for future clients.
10 | Rest, rest, rest!
Enjoy this temporary break. Most of us don’t get the opportunity to sleep but we’re going to need this rest for the comeback. This may be the least productive thing to do but just know that rest is important for your body and mind to recover and repeat all of the above suggestions because we don’t know when this Coronavirus stay-at-home order will end.
CONCLUSION
As the war on Coronavirus continues, we are continuing to keep all of you and your families in our prayers. We are not here to tell you what to do during this Coronavirus epidemic, but we are here to suggest some ideas for you to stay productive and optimistic during this time of crisis. We are just like everyone else: we don’t know all the answers, we’re unsure of what the time period will be, we’re glued to our phones and computers to stay updated, but we do know that in order for us to recover from our loss of clientele, we have make sure we take care of the little things.
We’re going to be focusing on releasing more educational journals, online workshops, live tutorials and Q&A’s focusing on filmmaking, photography, growing your business, behind the scenes of our workflows, lighting breakdowns and more! To stay updated, subscribe to our newsletter here. So comment below on how you are staying productive during the Coronavirus lockdown?