If It’s Not Delusional, It’s Probably Not Worth Doing

Being an artist isn’t just self-expression. It’s self-delusion.

It’s deciding to chase something way bigger than your budget, skillset, or common sense says you should… and then stubbornly convincing yourself you can pull it off anyway. It’s a willingness to start building the bridge while you’re halfway across the canyon.

And the more I work, the more I believe: “delulu” isn’t a bug of the process — it’s a feature. Without it, most ideas would never leave the notebook.

I. The Spark

This one started with Guillermo del Toro’s teaser for his upcoming FRANKENSTEIN:

What hit me was the story underneath it all. Frankenstein has always felt like the perfect canvas for deeper questions about what it means to be human. Seeing Guillermo’s take made me want to tell my own version. And somewhere along the way, I realized that pieces of his Pinocchio had snuck their way into my film too.

Sidebar: one of my very first Kickstarter donors for my first short film TREJUR randomly happened to be Pat McHale, who co-wrote Guillermo del Toro's PINOCCHIO (amongst many other masterpieces like ADVENTURE TIME and OVER THE GARDEN WALL)! I sent him the final film, and he forwarded it to Guillermo as of this morning!

From the start, I had nearly no crew and absolutely no business production designing, costume designing, or doing half the jobs I ended up doing. But I had the vision. And that alone was enough to start.

II. The Puppet Problem

The very first scene of the film shows our main character building a puppet:

In my head, was a beautifully crafted, four-foot-tall wooden puppet puppeteered by strings hanging from the thin ceiling.

In reality, I bought piles and piles of wood, glue, and saws… before realizing that actually building and rigging it would be a logistical nightmare.

So I pivoted, I carved a much smaller 1 foot puppet from blocks of balsa wood, then superglued chopsticks onto its fragile hands so I could maneuver it like a marionette. I’d scale it up in post.

Not exactly the imagery I pictured, but it totally got the job done!

III. $0 (Almost)

The budget was just large enough for a Papa John’s extra large pizza. It also consisted of:

• Amazon returns

• A friend’s filming gear (free camera’s, lights, lenses, etc)

• Another friend’s free 10x12’ office space

• My friend Brandon Fennimore-Chan, who generously gave a day and a half of his time to help out during our 5, 12 hour-day shoot.

After we wrapped, I spent an entire day scrubbing every prop, beaker, and surface until they were flawless enough to return. Filmmaking isn’t just festivals and red-carpets… it’s being in your PJs filming/editing/scrubbing props all night.

IV. The Gap Between Vision and Reality

I’ve realized that your work will never perfectly match the version you see in your head.

In my mind, this short was a gothic Frankenstein-meets-existentialism masterpiece. On set, it was me praying that I wouldn’t splash paint on my Amazon return gloves and my chopstick puppet hands wouldn’t break mid-take.

That gap between the perfect dream and the imperfect reality? That’s the path. The only way to get to perfection is to fail at it over and over — just like our main character, Mr. Mad Scientist. You try, you fall short, and that shortfall becomes the foundation for your next attempt.

V. The Takeaway

Creating anything from scratch means being dogged with the grand vision whilst being flexible with the details along the way.

You commit to the dream so fiercely that it feels inevitable, even if it isn’t. That belief, that small act of self-delusion, is what gets you through the hard parts, the dead ends, the moments where no one in their right mind would continue pushing.

Because eventually, if you hold the vision long enough, your skills catch up to your taste. And when they do, the impossible thing you believed in stops looking delusional… and starts looking inevitable.

This episode has been the hardest thing I’ve ever made solo... and right now, it’s sitting at ~4.8K views. Either there’s no correlation between quality and viewership, or the algorithm hasn’t noticed yet… alas! Onto the next, dropping Sept. 9th… :)

If you want to see the FULL behind-the-scenes of this madness, I made an hour long featurette above! Thanks for supporting the channel, see you again soon!

~Thomas Percy Kim 😁