Behind the Lens: Capturing Grit in the Wild

In this modern age, there are infinite options available to us as humans that are centered around a universal principle - “ease”. You’re hungry - food appears at your front door. You forgot the diapers while you were out - check the front door. Your truck is broken down and you still need to get somewhere - there is a driver at your front door. 

We live in what is faster than instant gratification. If an order is not delivered same day - it better be at that front door the next. 

But, I will ask you, this: what in life do you remember? 

I would bet with a high degree of certainty it was the moment or moments in your life that were anything but easy. I would argue, that the pieces branded into your temporal lobe isn’t how the story ended or this mission complete status you labeled it in your mind — it was the struggle. 

There is a magic to that acute stress. That short term struggle that heightens your alertness. Your focus is the secret sauce to those vivid thoughts and memories. 

I feel we as a culture of creatives see stories of races and pursuits told only at the finish line. The runner, the medal, the tape being broken — but we missed the miles that got us there. 

What happened to grit, to grunge? In a world so polished by megapixels and aftereffects we have become afraid to rub some film grain into the wound. 

At Zero we tell the story from the trenches, we sweat as you sweat. Capturing the finish is but a blip on our story board. We want to know what happens in the middle of the book, before the crescendo of character arcs - miles before the podium. 

There is a beauty in failing that is a key ingredient to the recipe of success. We have been there, we live there. We are looking to tell the stories from behind the lens of the ones in front of us, amidst the struggle, the agitation. 

We are documentarians concerned only with passions and grit, emotions and failure. And for when success comes, we will be there to close the storybook —

but you will remember the in-between.