Shazam! Director Has Uplifting Message For Aspiring Filmmakers

Shazam! director David F. Sandberg has a message full of inspiration for aspiring filmmakers and creatives alike. Though Sandberg is now known for helming huge Hollywood flicks, he started out making no-budget short horror films that he released online. In addition to Shazam!, Sandberg also directed the horror feature Annabelle: Creation and is now working on Shazam! Fury of the Gods.

Sandberg’s path to success started in 2014 when his three-minute horror short Lights Out went viral with the help of horror fans on Reddit. This led to a production deal for a feature-length version of the short with the same name and a collaboration with producer James Wan. The feature version of Lights Out, as well as Annabelle: Creation, and Shazam! were all critical and box office successes, and Sandberg has been working consistently ever since.

Yesterday, Sandberg released a video on YouTube titled, Can You Be An Introvert Director? He quickly gets personal, revealing his own struggles with public speaking and social interactions, both of which he finds draining. When he was younger, he was diagnosed with Atypical Autism and explained that while he feels comfortable making movies, he dreads their premieres because he needs to be in the right headspace to speak in front of crowds. He also talks about how he struggles with pitching movies and shares how he lost a job as a direct result of that. Here’s a bit of his advice:

“There’s always room for improvement. And how do you improve at something? By doing it over and over and over […] You start out making really shitty movies but you keep at it and as the years go by the movies get a little less shitty […] Dedication can often make up for a lack of innate talent. But that’s the tricky part. Not the learning. The dedication. Not giving up. Because progress isn’t always linear. There will be moments where what you’re making is worse than what you made before and it feels like you’re going backwards but that’s ok. Even in those moments you’re learning things that might be useful later on. Or you’re learning what just doesn’t work for you. Experience is never a waste.”

Check out the full video below:

Sandberg is one of many directors who have successfully made the transition from the horror genre to superhero movies. Other recent examples are Andy Muschietti going from It to The Flash and Sandberg’s own producer Wan moving from Saw to Aquaman. This is no coincidence because to do a horror movie well requires an incredible amount of skill. Not everyone can seamlessly balance the tone with a compelling storyline amid special effects and often fantastical elements. Though Sandberg is now directing films with massive budgets, he hasn’t forgotten his more modest production roots. Just last year, he released the three-minute horror short Shadowed, made in quarantine with his frequent collaborator and wife Lotta Losten.

Success often appears like nothing but glamour from the outside, so it’s refreshing to hear from Sandberg about his own challenges and setbacks on his journey to becoming the director of Shazam! An especially profound point that he makes is that you often see where an artist began and where they end up, but you don’t see all the drafts and failures in between. He also smartly declares that the most important thing with pursuing filmmaking, or any craft, is simply to not give up. Fans are certainly glad that he never did.