Salomon Ligthelm is a filmmaker and creative director at Hillsong Church.
How did you know making your creative passion your profession was the right thing to do?
I just went for it. I had parents who were extremely open with us kids. They wanted us to do the things we really felt like we wanted to do. For me that was audio engineering — which they paid my tuition fees for. Eventually audio engineering turned into filmmaking and now I am making pictures move for a living.
I’m a full-time creative director/editor at Hillsong Church in Sydney, Australia. We get to work on some amazing projects, with some of the most amazing people. My side jobs hardly ever pay bills. The best side jobs usually have no budget, and those are usually the ones I would say yes to. There’s often an inverse relationship between budget and creative concept when it comes to art. I’d much rather say yes to great concepts that pay little or nothing than getting paid a lot of cash for a weak idea or a very restrictive client.
Where do you go when you’re frustrated and need to be re-inspired?
I’ll often go to Spotify to listen to some music and just zone out. Or I check out blogs like designspiration.net, convoy.tumblr.com, fubiz.net, or 500photographers.com.
I think the best way though is to remove yourself from everything else that is vying for your attention. It might sound like I’m contradicting what I mentioned before, but actually I think this is such a crucial part of the creative process.
I’ll usually be inspired by an idea from a blog or something I see online, but then I need to flesh it out and give it some sort of creative structure. This is usually done in solitude and away from the noise of the Internet.
Are you encouraged by the artistic community around you?
People are generally very supportive of what I do. The online creative community, especially when it comes to filmmaking and music, are very encouraging and hungry for content to share and be inspired by.
I’ve never actually felt harmed in any way by the creative community around me. There will always be haters, but at some point you just realize that it will always be the case and then you just have to not be fazed by it. It’s not really an issue — and it comes back to doing what you love. If you can keep doing that then all the other voices [of discouragement] will grow silent.
What is some practical advice you have for people thinking about becoming professional artists?
I think artists, including myself, need to learn how to do honest work. Do work that you love. Work that you are inspired to create. Learn to play. I actually don’t feel like I can call myself a professional, because the stuff I really love doing I hardly ever get paid for, and it’s done in such an amateur way. I usually find that when sets and crews get too big that my whole creative process gets thrown out of its flow. So I tend to opt for quick-moving, small crew setups where I can keep being spontaneous, keep playing. As soon as art turns into work, it’s not fun anymore.
What do you think “Christian artist” means? And are you one?
Probably like many others, I really dislike that term. I am an artist and I am a Christian. But as soon as you marry the two it conjures up a whole array of notions that are actually very unhelpful in allowing your work to make a mark on this world. You don’t get “Christian doctors” or “Christian architects,” etc. Rather you get a doctor or an architect who loves Jesus. In the same way, I’d much rather just be an artist who loves Jesus than a “Christian artist.”
Photo courtesy of Salomon Ligthelm
