Experiments in Speed from SpindleProductions on Vimeo.

Vincent Laforet has long been an inspiration of mine. I’m considering even calling him my mentor, in a third-party-indirect-communication kind of way. While chatting with one of my associates today, she sheepishly admitted her full-out adult fandom for New Kids on the Block. I tend to only use fan when purposefully meaning to link it to the word fanatic. She’s a fanatic.

Vincent Laforet is my Donny Wahlberg.

The father of EOS 5D digital video opened the month with a post about the costs of doing business, and making sure daily rates are structured in a way that contribute to the long term viability of your venture. Amidst all the numbers indicating those areas of business which need to be considered, those which should be considered and all the others that we’ve never thought of considering (which makes him the jedi and me the padawan) rested a little pocket of cash set aside for passion projects. Hm.

Never thought much about structuring my business plan to include passion projects – even though I often find myself day dreaming of a time when I can pursue the more creative side of film (I will have a post later this week with a rock solid video about the business of the film industry and how the business and the art often work their way into mutual exclusivity). Buying out time in the year and budget in the bank to do something purely for the love of it made perfect sense. How did I not think of this earlier.

Tom thought of it.

Tom Donhou is the primary bicycle builder for Donhou Bicycles. And if you haven’t already guessed, he’s the dude featured in the video above. The guy who had spent years dreaming of those who broke records on the salt flats and in turn wanted to set his own personal record. Test his own ability. Push himself past the norm his every day life has taken on.

The project may change from Tom, to me, to you, but the fundamentals are the same. He bought out the time to research and build the frame. He found the budget to outsource the pieces he needed. And he surrounded himself with the people that could help him achieve his goal. Uno, dos, tres. The three steps to passion projecting – or les tres pasos… which as a phrase roughly equates to ‘in close quarters’ (see what I did there).

My favourite words come at the very end of the video. “I’ve been bitten by it.” I can relate. I think we all can. Being infected by something new; something exciting; something you just can’t put down.

So plan for it. I’m building it into my CODB calculation as we speak.

-C-