We don’t often consider how strange it must be for Hollywood actors to watch the mega blockbuster movie they’re in for the first time. Especially when the actors spent most of their time in front of a green screen, with fake weapons, fighting CGI enemies, and filming the movie out of order.
Now, in the theatre, they can remember filming this scene, but it feels different. There’s the background and the CGI monsters they were fighting. The sounds and effects are in too. To top it all off, there’s an emotional component that was completely missing thanks to the musical score playing underneath.
While the audience can enjoy the scene, none of the hours of hard work are evident. They melt away and disappear. The actor is left with a scene that they can be proud to be a part of, but none of the hours of training, restricted eating, and character work are apparent here.
The audience is left with an amazing final product with none of the hard work that it took to put it there evident at all.
Similarly, for two summers I was a part of one of the summer DCI groups. For you nonband nerds out there, these groups are basically professional marching bands. It’s really challenging work. You essentially work all day from sun up to sun down your whole summer and you can only participate until you’re 21, when you’ll “age out.”
One time, we were brought in to the auditorium so that we could review a promotional video they had been creating for us. It was familiar and foreign all at the same time. The people that were in this video were clearly us. It was our work on display here, but it was different. The editing and music made the experience feel completely different. The shots cut quickly to each other making the video exciting. The music elevated the mood. It made us proud of what we were working so hard to accomplish and it pumped us up.
What was interesting was going back outside in the July heat to rehearse. Outside, there was no power of the montage. It was just the heat and the work and the will to become something stronger. When the music and the action and the perfectly timed clips disappeared, I realized the only thing left was just a bunch of hard work.
The training montage in any movie quickly transforms the title character, and you appreciate what’s happening here, but there’s none of the feeling of just how much the work sucks.
When you’re in the middle of trying to transform your life, there is no montage. There is only work. We all have the things we’re working on, just know that the work is worth it, and you should keep going. It’s never as easy as the movies make it out to be, but it’s important that we do it.
There was an amazing Michael Phelps ad by Under Armour that came out several years ago. Scene after scene shows images of Phelps putting in the work and making sacrifices, all against the backdrop of Phelps in a dark morning pool that seems to stretch on and on forever. The tag at the end reads: “It’s what you do in the dark that puts you in the light.”
The ad is inspiring because we peek in at how hard it must have been for Phelps to achieve his greatness. It’s clear that he put in a lot of hard work in the dark but what is inspiring during the montage doesn’t show how hard those moments feel and how much uncertainty there is in the moment. It inspires us to put in our own hard work, but the inspiration leaves us when the reality of the work sinks in.
Instead, it may be helpful to realize that there is no montage scene in life, that motivation will likely fade very quickly when faced with hard reality, and that basing your goals on habits and consistency will be the only thing that lasts.
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