Work Life Balance.
When I hear that phrase, I throw up in my mouth a little. It sounds so aspirational—like a clean kitchen or color-coded closets. But the reality of life is messy. There’s no such thing as balance. Life is an improvisation. Somedays we are John Coltrane but most days we can barely pick up the saxophone.
So when I met Vanessa Carr, a seasoned documentary cinematographer and creative entrepreneur, I knew I had to interview her for Lingo on Docs. Her story speaks to how necessity really is the mother of invention. How our intimate lives can never be fully separate from our work lives. And the only way to get through this thing called life is to keep improvising until sound turns into music….
Meet Vanessa
Vanessa Carr is a veteran documentary director of photography (DP) whose lens has shaped major nonfiction projects for HBO, PBS, Netflix, and Disney. She’s spent over a decade behind the camera—often in the trenches of vérité storytelling. She’s also the first below the line filmmaker I’ve interviewed for this Substack, and her take on the state of the documentary industry hits from a whole different angle.
Cinematographers in the documentary world are typically hired by the day. While the rates are decent, the working conditions on documentary sets are often punishing. DPs can be on the road 10 to 15 days a month, working 12+ hour days.
“This is like a manual labor job. A lot of the issues that we’re dealing with are like not getting fed lunch within an eight-hour period,” Carr shared.
But she also loves the work of being a DP.
“I absolutely love [shooting]. I would say it’s almost like a spiritual practice for me, honestly—being behind the camera.”
But when Carr decided at 38 that she wanted to try to have a baby, the realities working in production stood in her way.
After two unsuccessful rounds of IVF, she put down the camera to prioritize her health and improve her chances of getting pregnant. But like many people trying to start families in creative industries, she couldn’t afford to walk away from her career completely.
So—she became a filmmaker entrepreneur.
Her big idea? An online education platform for documentary filmmakers.
She named it Doc House. (Her summer course is open for sign ups until Monday!)
It’s now both a thriving community and a financial lifeline that allows her to stay creative while being more present at home. (I recently spoke to her class on how to make short documentaries.) She also just started her own Substack.
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