I Made a Short Film 🎥
And it's out now
It’s finally out!
After graduating college, I spent the following year doing something any normal person would do: building a print zine about youtubers.
A lot of things in my life changed very quickly during that year. So I documented it (the good and the bad) and eventually made a short film. It’s called Buildin’, and it's about growing up, moving on, and yes, making a magazine.
That film is out now—you can watch it here or find it by searching @powderbluemedia on YouTube.
I have a lot of people to thank for making this whole thing possible, and I’ll get to that down below. For now, in the spirit of what I’ve been using this space for, here’s five things I think about this project (I think).
— NGL
P.S. If you enjoyed the film, consider sharing it with a friend or family member. It really goes a long way in supporting my work!
P.P.S. Last blog, I wrote about cable television’s beautiful curved desks, the wackiness of Venice Beach, and how I wore the wrong shirt. If you missed it, check it out here.
I think this is the best thing I’ve ever edited. Like many kids of my generation, my first creative love was making videos and uploading them to YouTube in high school.
By the time college rolled around, though, I knew I wanted to focus on my writing. So I did, and any dreams of reaching my potential as the best possible video editor or cinematographer I could be fell by the wayside.
I’m not too upset by that decision. I think my voice comes through strongest in written form, and regardless of the medium I’m playing in, I’m confident that most of my time will never be spent holing up in the edit bay or adjusting the shutter speed on a camera.
Yet I’m still really proud of the work I put into Buildin’. It took two years of on-and-off editing, of watching tutorials just to remind myself how exactly layer masks work and posting up in cafés for several hours on Sunday afternoons.
One of those afternoons, I was sitting with Vicky in Tryst, a popular Adams Morgan spot located a fifteen-minute walk away from our apartment when we lived in DC. Our waitress noticed I was quite plugged in the whole time, headphones on and deep into an edit. She waited until we were packing up to go before popping the question:
“So are you, like, a YouTuber or something?”
I laughed before telling her that no, this was just a personal project I was working on. She mentioned that it looked pretty good from what she could see over my shoulder, and we talked a bit about how it’s never too late to keep improving skills we care about.
No one will mistake this film for a professionally-edited feature. And I don’t think it’s the best thing I’ll ever make. That ability to follow through on something, though, to just keep showing up—even when Premiere kept crashing or my old hard drive became corrupted—made it all worth it.
And I believe High School Nate, the one who uploaded silly “decision” videos and mockumentaries, would be proud.
I think you have to create your own mythology. In the early phase of building something, the stakes are pretty low. Nevertheless, I’ve found that it doesn’t feel that way given you’re attached so closely to every single decision.
When I hit the highest of peaks, I try to remind myself that hard work got me here, sure—but luck played a role, too. And when I hit the lowest of valleys, I have to point to some of those previous wins as proof that there’s always good days ahead.
I explored this idea in the film because I didn’t want to become the product of my own mythmaking. The more time that’s passed since I published Creator Mag.4 and decided to hit pause, I find it’s easy to paint the venture as a complete success story in my head because of all the doors I opened through this journey—even though those around me knew about all the pressure I was putting on myself in order to make this thing happen.
Still, regardless of cashflow, regardless of my feelings about the product itself, I do believe there’s magical moments in every startup company or project’s grander arc that are necessary to point to in order to stay in the game and keep the dream alive. For me, there’s too many to count—though the moment the cofounder of Reddit tweeted out my magazine is one I’ll never forget.
I think we’re constantly moving forward—even if we don’t realize it. When reflecting on forks in the road, my parents like to use the phrase, “You can only make the best possible decision for yourself at any given moment, at any given time.”
I tend to obsess over the specifics, treating every single thing like it’s irreversible. Does taking on this project help sharpen the skills I want to sharpen? Does trading a Friday night of writing or editing for relaxing or seeing friends set me back on the road to creating the things I want to create? Should I have stayed in this place longer than that one?
The answer to a lot of those questions is…maybe! Or maybe not! We’ll never truly know.
What really unlocked this project for me—as well as my approach to building a creative career—was a quote from Tinker Hatfield, the legendary designer behind the Air Jordan 3:
“Get out there and experience life. That gives you a library in your head to translate into new design.”
When I first heard it, this idea of the “library in your head,” of the mystical place where creative inspiration must absolutely derive from, made me believe that art—whatever that means—could only come from places of pain, of grief, of loneliness.
Yet inspiration can come from a lot of different places, and it’d be foolish of us to limit our library to one or two genres—to mistake leisure as an antithesis to productivity.
Our library can be built from personal growth when we don’t even know we’re growing, the buckets and passing moments in our lives that don’t quite make for blockbuster movie fodder. It can strike after a cold run around the block or a soccer game a world away, from memories of completing a puzzle or a calm day at the lake with the people we love.
So take on that project that pays the bills for now, or invite friends over and spend the night playing board games. Do you eventually have to lock yourself in a room and chain yourself to the desk in order to make the thing? Yes.
Odds are, though, those other experiences will teach you something that will make the final product that much better. In other words, living an actual life paradoxically makes us better at our jobs.
I think I made this film for myself. I turned twenty-one in January 2020. Here’s an incomplete list of some of the things that happened over the course of the next thirty-six months:
A once-in-a-generation global pandemic
A relatively-consequential presidential election
A relatively-consequential insurrection
I graduated from college and worked with several startups
I decided to go back to building Powder Blue
I landed partnerships for creator clients with brands like Foot Locker and Spikeball
I launched a print and digital magazine about creators
My parents sold the house I grew up in
I sold some magazine sponsorships and took a swing on building the thing full time
I met inspiring creatives like Cleo Abram, Isaiah Shepard, and Cole Cuchna, writing and publishing profile pieces about their respective journeys
I left Chicagoland (after five years) and moved in with Vicky in DC
I hit a point where I realized running a one-man magazine probably wasn’t a sustainable recipe
Even though it’s been over two years (and another presidential election cycle) since most of this stuff happened, I knew I wanted to document this period because it felt like the only constant state in my life was one of change.
I was talking to my friend Mateo on the phone the other day, and he told me that the craziest part about watching Buildin’ was just seeing snippets of my life play out over multiple years.
As my roommate in Chicago, the subject of my first edition, and the person pulling out a whiteboard anytime I had a problem I was looking to solve, Mateo has a unique perspective on this story. And he said it during our call—there’s the little things (like the way I talk or the length of my beard) that have slowly evolved, as well as the bigger things (like the scope of our work and the rooms we feel comfortable in).
Ultimately, I do believe that first year in the “real world” (whether after college graduation, or high school graduation, or an entirely different path depending on one’s life or career) is really foundational. Making this film was a way to remind myself that this series of events at this time in my life gave me the confidence to take the swing and pursue a creative career.
I think you probably won’t see something like this from me again for a while—probably. While it can be powerful to document a period like this, I don’t intend to live my life in front of a camera lens, constantly letting the world in for a sneak peek.
Online platforms and attention spans reward those of us who atomize our experiences into a linear story that’s simple to consume and even easier to explain in a couple words. I’d like to believe there’s a world where nuance can still be appreciated, and the art and artists that have impacted me the most thrive on crafting collections of vignettes that push the viewer without painting a clear finish line.
Yet I also do wonder sometimes if a generation of kids watched The Truman Show (1998) and thought, Man, who wouldn’t want their life to be a TV show? Even if viewers are gravitating towards mini-Truman Shows, I’m not sold on if that medium is a sandbox I really want to consistently play in.*
There are too many people to thank for making this film (and Creator Mag itself) possible, but I’ll use this space to do my best.
To the creators who shared their stories, thank you for your trust. Without you, there is no magazine.
To Matt, Jansen, Kendra, CJ, Salma, and any other freelancers I worked with, thank you for your contributions. You made each edition better than the last.
To Andrew, RJ, Aunt Jen, and everyone else who let me crash, thank you for welcoming me into your home—along with the warm showers and élite air mattresses.
To Amelia and Jake, thanks for all of your support over the years. To Mom and Dad, thanks for the long phone calls and being my biggest fans. To Vicky, thanks for always reading my first draft and watching the final one—even when it’s inconvenient for you.
And to everyone who read, bought, sponsored, and shared Creator Mag, thank you. You changed my life.
Thanks for reading! And shoot me a reply or DM if anything resonated with you in particular—I respond to them all.
* Yes, I’m commenting on vlogging and vlogging-adjacent content here. Maybe I’m in too deep right now because I’m reading journalist Emily Nussbaum’s 2024 book Cue the Sun!—which recounts the history of reality TV and unpacks how the genre’s rise has shaped society on so many levels—but I do feel that the process of constantly documenting one’s life for other people’s consumption has severe drawbacks over the long run.
Congratulations Nate! :)