While I'm being pretty successful in meeting the people I want to meet, and kinda successful in distributing my videos, I'm having a much tougher time on the human side of things.
When I started doing video-interviews, my best friend in Frisco - a film major student - expressed the desire to help me make my videos look better. Basically, I was totally overshadowing the editing process and was posting my videos straight online. So when he jumped in the game and started to tweek things around with Vegas, things started to look really better.
I used to edit videos a lot when I was a student, going to parties, filming friends getting drunk and foolish. It would make great home videos. So I have good notions of basic editing. Where my friend added something to the videos at the beginning, I quickly noticed that we could go way farther when editing gets in the way.
However, he never really followed my pace, so after two months, I told him I could keep going without him. Tough little emotional times. But it's business, decisions are rational and not based on emotions. It's just a different game.
Two months later, no later than a few days, a business acquaintance contacts me for a video project, and asks for my friend to be there too (because he met him when we were working together). He briefs us on the kind of video he's looking to produce, and for a day or two, my friend and I worked as a creative team to come up with catchy ideas.
Before anything was written in stone, I realized that working with my friend would be synonymous to all the lack of productivity that pushed me to let go of him two months earlier. So we finished briefing ideas for a day or two, and then I sent him an email telling him that the project was his, and that I was not going to be part of it for the reasons that made me let go of him two months earlier.
Mother of God I shouldn't have done that! His reaction made me feel exactly like those times when you get back with an ex, but realize that it is not what you want at all, and you tell her (him, whichever). You think that you are doing the right move, but no.
Bottom line: Even if it's your best friend, if it is for business reasons, lie to him, because some people can't draw the line between business and personal. Since you don't know how he is going to react, go for the lie, you won't risk losing your pal.
