Yew is here everyone! How Elliot made his passion!
Throughout my travels with One Week Job Australia I met some amazing people along the way whose lives had taken them on their very own journey to discovering their Passion!
So to continue sharing all the different ways that we can find our Passions (One Week Job being just 1 example), I thought I’d share the story of Elliot who I had the chance to work with back in Week 20 (Theatre Usher, Astor Theatre) of the project. Each shift we worked together I would hear more and more about this idea he had been working on called “Yew!” A Skateboard Film Festival Competition that he’s now got up and running.
Here’s the email I received from Elliot when I asked him to share with us his story, and the story of how Yew was born!
“
Last year, just after my 22nd birthday I made a snow trip to falls creek, to stay at my mates, chicks, sister’s dorm room. I’d previously spent a full year snowboarding in Canada and I thought I was pretty sick. Anyway, run 1 for the day, I head up the hill and beeline straight to the terrain park, still, thinking I’m pretty sick. I head down and hit a few small kickers and boxes. At the end of the park at fall most years they set up a pretty high down rail. I went for a backside board slide and lost my balance mid rail. I Fell off and landed square on my side on the snow. The second I hit the snow I knew something was wrong. I lay in the snow for a while with Midnight Marauders by A Tribe called Quest still playing in my ear buds and tried to use my arm. It didn’t work. Anyway the snow patrol came after a while and gave my arm a squeeze above my elbow. It crunched around like a bag of gravel would. This is the story of me breaking my Humerus. I called my boss straight away and told him that I would probably quit because I was soon to be made redundant anyway from my job as a 35mm projectionists at a Village cinema on Chapel St, The first of many cinemas to go completely digital and automatic, leaving literally no work to do in terms of projection. My boss was the first to make the joke, “broken Humerus, that’s not very funny is it?” It was original then, after the 324th time that month it wasn’t. Anyway I moved in with my sister as to pay minimal rent and got on Centrelink’s ‘incapacitated no hoper program’, or something along those lines. With time on my hands I needed a new project. Before I broke my arm I struggled to decide what I wanted to do with myself, I went to University to study aerospace engineering, after literally 6 hours into my first day I got my student number and I knew it wasn’t for me so I ditched it. It was nice to take some time off and really have a good think. I opened up a word document on my computer and started writing. I wrote about everything in my life that I had been interested in at one stage, what I was good at, what I liked, what I hated and what I wanted out of my life. After all, you spend 80% of your life working, not enjoying your work and not enjoying your life go hand-in-hand. Knowing this I didn’t want to spend 1 hour in traffic every morning, 8 hours being told what to do by some guy who deep down probably gives less of a shit than you do and another hour in traffic to get home, at the back of the rat race, these people, my friends and I call, kooks. I understand how different people can be though. I’m sure some guys drive their new BMWs down the street and love their lifestyle’s, looking out the window to see me in my op-shop grandma shirt skateboarding by, and if they knew the vernacular, I’m sure, they too, would call me a kook. But that’s cool, the world needs all types of different people to stir everything around and keep it interesting. After a few pages into my word document I understood. What I really wanted was a good lifestyle. I love Film, Film making and action sports, particularity board sports. I realised that for the past year I had been working indirectly at something. Yew.tv was born.
I spend 6 months in the dungeon (my room)slaving away at a website, trawling forums for how-tos teaching myself advanced server side PHP scripting for websites. I then went for what’s called NEIS or New Enterprise Incentive Scheme, which is a government program that helps people with their business start-ups. After a 2 month intensive business course I had a 30 page business plan, the government liked it, and help me financially with my idea, also giving me a mentor. I got a job at The Astor Theatre (where I met Paul), a beautiful independent single screen art-deco theatre and everything just seemed to open up for me. It feels like if you do something you like, the universe goes, “yep…. looks good” doors open up, people enter your life and things just start getting real trippy! in the best way possible that is. In the long term, Yew.tv is Australia only action sports film festival. But what I learned after I broke my arm is that I should have warmed up and done a smaller rail before hitting the big one, taken it in small steps, I feel like I learned more in the mountains in one day then I would ever have in one year at university. So this time around I’m just tackling a skateboard film festival. In a few months I’m doing snowboarding, then surfing, and one day in a few years, I will host Australia’s only action sports film festival and it is going to be fucking massive. You heard it here first. Come check out my Skateboard Film Festival at The Astor Theatre, May 21st. Or better yet submit a film! Go to www.yew.tv/competition-details for information. If you like this and/or my idea please go to www.facebook.com/www.yew.tv and hit like to keep updated and get some epic content in your news feed. yew!
Cheers,
-Elliot “
Check out this vid that Elliot sent through to me, who knows it might get your creative juices running!
- Paul
