A film student’s guide to balancing work and play

What do you do when your passion becomes your full-time job? Finding the balance between work and play is a challenge every artist eventually faces. At UNCSA, student-artists are learning in real time how to continue finding joy in their art form while tackling a full creative workload.  

So what’s the secret to success? School of Filmmaking student Hannah Joy interviewed her conservatory colleagues to find out:  

Mixing passion and productivity 

“Everything has the potential to inform everything else,” says Maya McAllister, a student in the School of Filmmaking, describing to me the overlap between work and play when life as an artist demands both.  

As artists, we cannot easily isolate our passion from our productivity. In order to create quality work, our experiences often must tumble together: our joy, our entertainment, our experiences — they all converge in the creation of our art. 

So what do we do when the barrier between work and play becomes blurred? Is this phenomenon to be feared… avoided at all costs? Maybe not. The answer, according to some UNCSA students, is more obvious than we might think.  

A safe space to rest 

When School of Filmmaking student Shaelynn Reynolds arrived on campus to start her freshman year as a film student, she remembers feeling a little afraid, but, mostly, the excitement of being somewhere new shaped her semester. She still remembers the thrill of driving to Winston-Salem from Boonville, North Carolina as a child and carried this feeling into adulthood as a UNCSA student.  

However, as her first semester progressed, Shaelynn found that the demands of making art at a conservatory could sometimes bleed into her artistic joy. When the pressure of barreling full steam ahead into project after creative project seems too much, she returns to driving. For her, riding with friends down open nighttime streets is a chance to rest and reset.  

For Maya, it’s the people around her that make a difference. “My relationships are what keeps me sane,” she says. When what she laughingly called the “hell weeks” of February were up, Maya found herself retreating to her dorm and her roommate, where she says she can find a safe space to rest. 

More than professional networking 

In my exploration of the relationship between work and play when you are in art school — and what was once just your passion has become your work — I found that each one of us has a functional home base in our respective communities. It’s not about professional networking; it’s about having friends.  

For instance, while School of Filmmaking student Brady Malone has had two more years to perfect his post-project routine compared to Shaelynn and Maya, the common denominator remains unchanged: it does not matter how one likes to unwind amid the chaos of a life where personal and professional expression are one and the same, It matters who is in the car. 

Brady told me about the “post-set depression” that he experiences after moving a million miles per hour only to stop suddenly once “the movie gets made.” “Oh my God,” he says, “What do you do?” 

There is comfort in knowing we are not alone, and there is a particular restorative quality each of these students describes in gathering among peers who uniquely understand the process of giving yourself to something so completely during production, only to ultimately surrender it to an audience.  

Fueling your creativity 

We collaborate because we are peers at the same institution, but it is the friendship bond that develops during that collaborative process that keeps us creative. 

I work with my friends because they are dear to me. My friends are not dear to me because of the work they do. Furthermore, my friends sustain me through “hell weeks” and “post-set depressions.” They support me through burnout and self-doubt.   

Let’s be reminded that our capacity to do good work as artists stems from our capacity for human connection. If experience informs art and friendship determines what we experience, investing in our relationships is one of the most important things we can do for artistic and professional development at UNCSA.  

You don’t have to look far to see this in action. Take School of Filmmaking alumni Danny McBride and David Gordon Green — their friendship fueled their work at UNCSA, and they have remained colleagues and collaborators ever since.  

My advice? Be intentional. Invest in your relationships, treasure your friends. Good work will follow. 

By Hannah Joy

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