NEWW: You left a church staff and became a freelance filmmaker in the middle of COVID. How did you make that jump?
Sawyer Skipper: I feel extremely blessed. I can’t say anything else but God, because I didn’t really have anything lined up. I just knew that was what I was supposed to do.
I weighed my options. I was in my twenties, I didn’t have much overhead, and although it was still a risk, I asked myself, “What is rock bottom if you jump?” I didn’t have a family depending on me. If I was going to do it, that was the time.
I had dropped out of college because I couldn’t afford it. It was a private school, so it was extra expensive, and one day a professor put on a YouTube video and said, “This is what we’re going to learn today.” We were always watching YouTube videos. I thought, “What am I paying for?”
I ended up getting hired by the church where I had been volunteering. I learned almost everything on that job: how to be responsible and how to execute ideas against a deadline. I called Sundays “the spanking machine,” because no matter how you feel, you have to get it done. I submitted my resignation on the four-year anniversary of my first day.
NEWW: Did you already know you wanted to direct?
Sawyer: I probably knew my whole life. I remember being fifteen and telling my dad, “I think I’m going to be poor for the rest of my life. I want to be a director.” I got my first camera when I was eleven, then immediately dropped it on the driveway on Christmas Day and broke it. My film career was done for about four years after that.
What I love about film is that it is a collection of everything art can be. Painting, photography, music, performance, design: it all comes together. It is the largest collaborative creative process in any medium. Stories are so powerful that countries will ban them. They can literally change the way you look at something.
As I find myself as a director, I’m realizing that I’m a surrealist and a conceptual person. I love stories, but I also love random concepts I can go after. I like the journey even more than the destination. I’ll jump from genre to genre because, at this stage, it is about the challenge.
NEWW: Are you already doing the thing you imagined, even if the dream clients have not arrived yet?
Sawyer: Pretty much. There are always dream jobs and dream clients, but I’m getting to do what I want creatively. The only difference may be my ego and the name attached to the work. I am directing. I’m making a living, and I haven’t had to do anything else.
When I drew the line and said, “I’m doing this,” I decided that I would do it the way I wanted as much as possible. If someone comes to me with a project, I pitch my idea. If I can’t get excited about it, it isn’t going to help anybody.
Most of my clients have said, “Here you go. Take it over.” I give them a concept and try to pitch something that excites me. I’m not working for Nike yet, but I’m making my ideas because I am asking for that opportunity. They can say no. A few people have, because the idea was too far left field. But when they say yes, I get to make work I am actually excited about.
NEWW: Where did the confidence to trust your own ideas come from?
Sawyer: I didn’t fully trust myself at first. I wondered, “Am I good enough? Can I trust myself to execute something?” Every project is like inventing a new product or business for a little while. You create something from scratch, finish it, and then move to the next thing. There is always the possibility that it will be bad.
I got cut from the basketball team going into my junior year of high school, so I joined the broadcast team. My best friend and I started making short films for the school. They became popular enough that I would walk through the hall during seventh period just to hear people reacting to them. Looking back, the films were garbage, but that was the first moment I thought, “I might have something.”
Around the same time, I became popular on Vine. Both experiences gave me positive feedback, but more importantly, they gave me repetitions. Creativity is a muscle. I was working it more than most people my age, and those years shaped my conceptual thinking. The work compounds because I started exercising that muscle young.
When I moved into church work, I felt like I was back at square one. I didn’t know lighting or how to operate a real camera. I had spent three years getting good at six-second videos and didn’t know how to tell a three-minute story. At first that was intimidating, but eventually I learned to trust the process.
NEWW: Do skills carry from one creative discipline into another?
Sawyer: I see that with multidisciplinary creatives who move between film, painting, fashion, and music. Once you understand the process, you can enter something new. You don’t know the tool yet, but you understand what it takes to learn.
At first, every new thing still feels like, “Oh my God, I don’t know how to do this.” But then you begin trusting the process. That season at the church allowed me to grow in every area. If I appeared composed when we worked together, some of that came from church and some from the repetitions after I left. It is cool to see how the dots connect.
NEWW: You connect your creative output to your mental and physical health. What does that mean in practice?
Sawyer: I won’t execute at my best if I’m not healthy mentally. I had to go through a journey of reading, talking to people, and counseling. If I’m not good emotionally, mentally, and physically, I have a harder time executing.
It shows up internally. You might never know from the confidence I display on set. But if I’ve broken promises to myself for three weeks, telling myself I was going to do something and then not doing it, I may beat myself up and have to walk onto set pretending I’m happy. I still get the work done, but I leave a lot on the table. I don’t feel like I’m giving it my best.
There is a romantic idea of the tortured artist, and some people do make great work through that. Unfortunately, that isn’t me. If I’m eating healthy and sleeping well, I make my best work.
Those four years were about learning myself, developing a growth mentality, and realizing that nobody was born knowing how to do this. Steven Spielberg was not born knowing how to operate a camera and tell a story. I’m not Steven Spielberg, and I don’t know what my own peak is, but I can only discover it by learning.
NEWW: You seem driven to become great. Do you know where that ambition began?
Sawyer: If I connect the dots, it began in a heavier place than where it lives now. I was bullied pretty badly in sixth grade. Creativity became the thing I could control. I couldn’t control people or make them like me, but I could work hard at an art form.
I was shy and kind of a weird kid. I leaned on video. It became a way of saying, “You don’t like me? All right, I’ll go make this cool thing, and then maybe you will.” The attention and followers became attached to that. It didn’t begin from the healthiest place, but it gave me a work ethic and a chip on my shoulder.
Eventually that motivation changed. I began seeing the potential in the work and developing a more positive outlook. Maybe artists ask themselves, “How can I be different? What do I refuse not to try?” My desire to become really good started from an unhealthy place, but it grew into something else.
NEWW: What do you do with the feeling that the work is never good enough?
Sawyer: I’m never satisfied either. Something I do to help myself is state one goal for each project. I ask, “What is one thing I can do better this time?” Even if the project overall misses the mark I saw in my head, I can hold on to that one thing and say, “Remember what you wanted to improve? You did that.” It helps curb the pain because the growth compounds.
I also try, as much as humanly possible, to stop comparing myself with other people. Comparison can ruin a project because, subconsciously, I’m measuring it against forty-five other great things I’ve seen. I’m trying to compete with myself instead. If I’m trying to beat myself, I only need to make one thing better next time. Even if it takes forty-five years to become the best Sawyer, it is my life. Comparing myself with somebody else doesn’t help me beat the previous version of me.
NEWW: How do you decide which ideas deserve to become projects?
Sawyer: I’m driven by the journey. The process is what excites me, even more than the destination. Sometimes an idea comes and I can’t stop thinking about it when I’m going to sleep. That is usually a sign that something is there.
Write down every idea you have, because ideas just come. It is like fishing: you sit there, pull up an idea, and it might suck, but you don’t know what you’re going to get. Save it anyway.
I don’t execute every idea, but I usually finish the ones I begin, even if I decide I don’t like them. I may not release the result, but I get it to the finish line. Certain ideas stick to your brain. There is a strange artist feeling that says, “I have to do this.”
I’m also learning the balance between making something perfect and making it at all. Perfection is subjective. At some point, you have to go ahead and do it.
NEWW: What do you do during a creative drought?
Sawyer: Nothing. If you give me a brief and then give me a week or two, I’ll think about it and not think about it. The idea usually comes when I’m in the shower or walking down the street. I almost account for that time. I don’t know when the answer will arrive, but experience has taught me that it will.
Ideas have to flow. Even if you do not execute one, write it down and let it have a beginning and an end. Then it can move out of the way and create room for the next idea.
There is a saying: amateurs wait for inspiration, and professionals get to work. If I begin working, there is always a ten- or fifteen-minute wall. If I make it through that, I enter the zone. But I have to show up in order to get there.
NEWW: How do you get past self-editing at the beginning?
Sawyer: I tell myself, “Dare to be dumb.” People edit themselves before they even say the thought. When I’m developing something, I write everything down, even if it is stupid, unaffordable, impossible, or fake. Who is going to see it? What does it hurt to write, “I want Michael Jordan coming from space”? Let yourself dream, especially during the idea phase.
When I write scripts, I tell myself, “I am about to write the worst script.” Then I’m no longer trying to make the first version perfect. I leave the typos and don’t edit as I go. The first draft usually sucks, but getting it out is the hardest part. Once it exists, I can work with it.
The supposedly crappy idea often becomes eighty-five percent of the final product. What felt bad was actually a strong skeleton. Creativity is a muscle, so I’m interested in the repetitions.
NEWW: Soon after you resigned, you accepted a reality television pilot unlike anything you had done before. What happened?
Sawyer: Between submitting my notice in June and leaving in August, a reality TV pilot came across my inbox. It was privately funded by a wealthy Italian family in New Jersey who owned a huge yacht, went deep-sea fishing, and had all this family drama.
I wasn’t ready, but my mental framework was: dare to be dumb; nobody is born knowing how to do this; somebody has to do it, so why not you? I had no experience with that kind of production, but I said yes and got the biggest job of my life right as I was leaving the church. It was a total God thing. I didn’t do anything to make that timing happen.
I wrote the overall storyline, produced it, directed it, and ended up filming because members of the camera crew got seasick. We spent five days as far as 150 miles offshore. At one point, we came across a massive dead great white shark. The fishermen had been doing this for fifty years and said they had never seen anything like it.
I was as prepared as I could be, and I was also scared. At some point in your career, you have to jump in. Somebody else may be more qualified, but this is your story, so say yes. Everything before that job prepared me for it. The church testimonies taught me to interview people. The deadlines taught me to deliver. It all added up and found another purpose.
NEWW: What shapes your visual taste?
Sawyer: My favorite director is Spike Jonze. I love Her, Where the Wild Things Are, and Being John Malkovich. I use those films as references. If I want something warm, I’ll pull images from them.
I’m drawn to surrealists and to practical effects, that handmade feeling. Maybe it comes from having to make everything myself when I started. I don’t have anything against visual effects, but I love mixing strange things into the real world. That is part of the creative process. Why make the world only look like the world we already know? I try to think of something unusual that can elevate the story.
NEWW: Which books helped build your process?
Sawyer: Mindset by Carol Dweck is a big one. The premise is the difference between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset. A growth mindset says you were not born knowing anything, so you can learn. You don’t know how good you can become, but you can grow at your own rate. A fixed mindset says, “I was born this way. I’m not creative. I’m not talented. I can’t follow through.” That is a lie, because nobody begins knowing how to do any of this.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People also changed my life. It is not necessarily a creative book, but my creativity comes from being a healthy individual, and that book is about getting your life in order.
NEWW: What would a successful creative life look like when you are seventy-five?
Sawyer: I want to be able to talk to a younger person, maybe a high schooler who wants to create, and help them believe in themselves. Achieving things would be an amazing byproduct, but I have all these ideas and mostly want to be able to say that I went for them.
I admire people who try. Success is amazing, but even if I don’t like what somebody made, I respect that they put themselves out there. That is the kind of person I want to be. I have a million ideas, and I want to live the life of trying them. I don’t have one trophy in mind.
NEWW: Do you have a commandment for yourself as a filmmaker?
Sawyer: Dare to be dumb. I say these things to hype myself up because, mentally, I still have to tell myself, “All right, here we go.” There is no reason to hold back, even in private, because one word in a bad sentence could trigger the actual idea.
I don’t want to hold onto one idea for my whole life, finally make it, and discover it wasn’t the one. Maybe the best idea was underneath it, but I could never reach it because I didn’t execute the first one and move it out of the way.
You see those drawings where someone stops digging right before reaching the diamond. That is why I try to finish things. Maybe this idea is the one, or maybe I have to get it out of my head before the real gold can appear.