I was obsessed with The Amazing Race. The competition show where contestants travel around the world and solve challenges. When the news broke they were making a Norwegian version, I knew I had to get involved.

I had no experience working in reality competition shows.

I didn’t know anyone who worked on the show. But I found out where their production offices were located. I’d worked on a show as a prop master next door, so I knew I could get in there. I was finishing up another project in Oslo, and right before catching my flight back home I swung by their office.

I rang the doorbell.

“Hey, I want to talk to someone who works on the Amazing Race.”

“They’re busy, sorry.”

“I’m wondering if they’re hiring for the show.”

Whoever the receptionist was, they were very kind and asked if they were hiring.

“No, they’re pretty much staffed, they’re only looking for sound people.”

This was my in! “I can do sound.”

The door opened and I went upstairs to talk to one of the Executive Producers of the show.

I was face to face with the people in charge. I came at them with the passion of a thousand screaming fans, told them how much I loved the show, and why I would be a perfect fit for their team. They were skeptical at first, but my excitement was contagious and they soon warmed to the idea. We had a nice chat, and they asked me to send over my resume and a list of references.

A couple of days later I was hired as a sound mixer for the first season of The Amazing Race Norway.

Lucky, right?

Today, let’s talk about luck and how we can use luck, and expose ourselves to luck, to improve our chances of breaking through as filmmakers.

Ready?

The 4 types of luck

We have a tendency to think luck is random. And we prescribe luck as the deciding factor when we can’t  find another reason why someone is successful.

If we want to use luck to increase our chances of breaking through as filmmakers, we need a more nuanced approach. In his book Chase, Chance and Creativity: The Lucky Art of Novelty, Dr. James Austin breaks down luck (he calls it chance, but who’s counting) into four different types.

Let’s figure out how we can use this framework to engineer luck in our lives and careers.

The first kind is the one we all know; blind luck.

This is luck at its most random. It doesn’t require any effort from us, and we don’t have any influence over it. Think getting struck by lightning or winning the lottery.

The second kind is luck from motion.

*"Something else has been added—motion...A certain [basic] level of action 'stirs up the pot', brings in random ideas that will collide and stick together in fresh combinations, lets chance operate.[It] springs from your energetic, generalized motor activities... the freer they are, the better.

[Chance II] involves the kind of luck [Charles] Kettering... had in mind when he said, “Keep on going and chances are you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I have never heard of anyone stumbling on something sitting down.”*

You have to play the game to win. This luck comes from taking action, taking part in an industry or community.

Say you just started a new job as a PA, and you say yes to every opportunity, talk to everyone on set, and show a good attitude no matter the task. You talk to everyone, and make connections and one day the head of art department needs help, and you get the opportunity. You got “lucky,” because you’ve been hustling and taking action.

The third kind of luck, is luck from awareness.

This is where our professional experiences start to influence the luck we’re able to attract.

"[Luck] presents only a faint clue, the potential opportunity exists, but it will be overlooked except by that one person uniquely equipped to observe it, visualize it conceptually, and fully grasp its significance. [Type III Luck] involves involves a special receptivity, discernment, and intuitive grasp of significance unique to one particular recipient."

Now it gets personal. This kind of luck is dependent on someone’s skills and experiences to emerge. We’re able to make connections and form ideas because we’re immersed in our field of expertise.

Say you’re a VFX artist who dabbles in AI. You see how rapidly AI technology is developing and build an app that helps remove backgrounds from videos, which creates a second income stream. Your skills and specific knowledge opened you to the “luck” of seizing this opportunity.

The fourth kind of luck, is luck from uniqueness.

This luck relies on who we are, as opposed to luck from awareness which relies on what we know. Luck from uniqueness is extremely specific to an individual. It relies on behavioral quirks, personal hobbies and interests.

*"[Type IV Luck] comes to you, unsought, because of who you are and how you behave...We must bear in mind that, by the time Chance IV finally occurs, the easy, more accessible problems will already have been solved earlier by conventional actions, conventional logic, or by the operations of the other forms of chance. What remains late in the game, then, is a tough core of complex, resistant problems. Such problems yield to none but an unusual approach...

[Chance IV involves] a kind of discrete behavioral performance focused in a highly specific manner.”*

This quote helped me understand it better:

“Whereas the lucky connections in Chance II might come to anyone with disposable energy as the happy by-product of any aimless, circular stirring of the pot, the links of Chance IV can be drawn together and fused only by one quixotic rider cantering in on his own homemade hobby horse to intercept the problem at an odd angle.”

This is the realm where stories are born. Our unique perspectives and interests open us to ideas only we could execute on. Think of George Lucas coming up with the idea for Star Wars. He took his love for old school sci-fi, his knowledge of the Hero’s Journey, and his interest in emerging technology and created a movie no one else could have imagined.

How do we engineer luck in our filmmaking efforts

I love this breakdown of luck, because it puts the power back in our own hands. We can’t do anything about blind luck, but the three other forms of luck are ours to make our own.

So how do we make ourselves lucky?

To attract luck from motion bias towards action is a good starting point. We need to be active in the film community, make films and help others make theirs.

To attract luck from awareness we need to hone our craft. We need to have a combination of high competency and a curious mindset that lets us see new connections. To get there we need to always be learning. Without learning we won’t grow, and this kind of luck will evade us.

To attract luck from uniqueness we gotta be ourselves. That means embracing our weirdness, nourishing hobbies and interests and having a life outside filmmaking. When this kind of luck strikes it requires a certain level of courage to act on it. It won’t always be obvious unless we learn to listen to what resonates deeply with us.

Conclusion

Today we talked about four kinds of luck; blind luck, and luck from motion, awareness or uniqueness. We can engineer luck for ourselves as filmmakers when we:

• have a bias towards action
• hone our craft and stay curious
• are ourselves

Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed our exploration of luck.