Intriguing post. Which is why I always click on your essays! I can see that calcification in my own brain after having climbed the ranks of in the building profession. And the real friction that it's created now that I'm in a Division which are not all design professionals. It's been an interesting mindfuck to figure out how to work with humans who have not been brain-trained-washed in the ethos of how engineers/architects operate. Of course those people are all wrong any my people are right....
Haha! That's the right attitude! It's very interesting to figure out what percentage of the way people are in adult lives is the ethos of their profession and how much is how they actually are.
Bravo, Sam. Lots to say about your more general points -- am literally sending a ms revision back to the publisher for copyediting, but for now, I was really interested in the description of documentary film making. Keep up the good work, and Happy New Year!
The e-book will be open source, so I'm hoping to secure a broad audience (lots of Substackers!) for Social Thought Among the Ruins or Quixote's Dinner Party. You in particular might find it interesting, given its struggles with how to be an intellectual under present circumstances . . .
I can't believe how similar your industry is to mine—very astute of you to see similarities across industries! As I've not been as mobile with my own career, I was not aware that documentary filmmaking was so similar to marketing and advertising.
Yes indeed, the focus is never on good work or doing right by the audience, is it? It's CYA, making the client happy (read: not successful, but happy in the moment) and being affably unscrupulous.
I share the same disinterest in credentialing. Yes, I suppose I "write for a living." No, that doesn't really mean anything and yes, I just sort of fell into it once journalism took its nosedive.
Lastly, I agree with you about the importance of maintaining a "beginner mind." The more we learn and get comfortable with our own expertise, the harder yet more vital this becomes. Getting outside our own industries or life experience can certainly help but it's something we have to continue to strive for.
Thanks James! "Affably unscrupulous" is a perfect way to describe it. I always felt like a mercenary, trying to read the room when I showed up for the first day on a job and to adapt as quickly as possible to the reigning institutional mindset - and then looking to jump to another job as soon as that project was about to wrap. It felt like a suit I was putting on. I sort of enjoyed it but it felt like a waste of time ultimately.
As others have noted, there are similarities to what you describe in documentary filmmaking rampant in other fields. The observation about time in place illuminates A circumstance of often stifles Innovation. "the more that a person stayed in one place, and rose through the ranks (which is to say, the more they are ‘credentialed’), the less inclined I am to trust them, actually, when it comes to general statements. The fact that they have been part of one institution or industry will have tended to limit their experiences and their horizons; they will have an institutional loyalty that will be hard for them to shake off, and all the more so the longer they spend in their field" One of the ways that they ensure that they get to stay there in circumstances that favor them is by being part of the group that promulgates controls. As organizational theorist Charles Perrow noted the most effective of those controls may be the 'third order controls', which show up in forms, procedures, routines that are almost invisible but ultimately shape the life there so that the organization becomes an operate and maintain entity.
This is fabulous thinking, thanks so much, and a clarion case for trying one's darnedest to be open to a "diversity of impressions" rather than settling in, complying for the easy accolade, riding along ... killing it off, for remaining as humble and curious and alert an amateur ("beginner's mind") as possible.
This has been the situation since the corporation was invented. Just as monopoly takes over it absorbs more workers into it. It’s why Americans are so timid and conformist while constantly talking about how individual they are.
It is paradoxical, isn't it. I saw a stat recently that Americans, on average, work for companies with 600 employees. Not a lot of room for rugged individualism there!
Excellent read. The real credential is the way someone can or can’t relate, feel and honestly express, qualities which don’t always or indeed rarely translate into career progression.
Yes, so much of our real life happens outside career progression. It's so difficult to get actual social benefits from any of this though - that's part of why writing is so valuable.
This is spot on. The themes are reflected in a book called Range - Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, by David Epstein. Highly recommend. And, if you need any further evidence that I agree, check out this essay about how even NFL officials have become so institutionalized, that they are getting really bad at their jobs.
Very interesting and depressing! If you can't trust an NFL referee, who can you trust? I've heard about the Epstein book for a while but haven't read. Makes me want to check out!
Long ago I was on documentaries at the BBC. I recognise the guilds you speak of.
Eventually they were wiped out in cost-cutting and we were all of one mind. Going from a 5-person shoot to just one or 2 would ruin quality. We saw 'quality' as an abstract thing, quite unrelated to the journalism or the story.
Yeah, it's interesting. For a while, I was mostly working with crews of 6-8 and then I was working on crews of 2 and liked the crews of 2 much better. (It really was possible for a DP to do sound recording, AC work, everything in the camera department, and for a producer to handle all the logistics and soft skills of a shoot.) But something was lost (the glamor, I suppose) from slimming down to skeleton crews.
Novelization ( the director nested unto herself) of a documentary, good idea. The pointofview was confined to the camera starting and jumping, just the dp and director...if you compare that much to Grey Gardens: the Maysles must have had a year of editing. Edie always breaking the fourthwall and clearly the bros smiled too much to restrain a maniac in the smallest. So they were like overwhelmed by good fortune like your project were flush with cash. In both instances it seems to an outsider if you wanted an oddly persuasive p.o.v. you would have the interviews relate at times to the boom operators as costars, if only not to have to cut out tiny snippets of Edie asking a Maysles, " are you gonna eat that? " .
I always felt that, that it's better for a subject to have an awareness of the camera and the circus around them. In practice, though, you were getting such short clips of a particular subject that the game was to film nothing much at all for a bit until they get used to the camera and forgot it was there. That did happen surprisingly quickly actually.
Fascination street. So that the subjects slip into postural attentiveness, a cool headspace to be in. Likely at the edges thinking they are seconds ahead of any editing that could suture their grosser expressions to their face. And Edie’s dancing on a split screen with “rock and rollers in their metier” would make her look batty. With she it is like Traylen says, good thing she had the ocean. Your characters meanwhile bhave as if viscerally aware that a heapum lot of design led them to their dead end moments. Some Substackers’ objections to fiction….in there. And after making a cold nest out of stolen moments, one of them looks for a way to pay the price of the ticket. A dangerous becoming because a lusty mountebank could tie a bow around them there.
I worked in documentary too. The weirdest part for me was spending hundreds of hours in post watching footage until I literally fell in love with subjects who only remembered spending a couple hours with me. I can’t scrutinize every word, mannerism, and tick of a person’s face, close up, without developing an asymmetrical crush. It really got to me.
It's interesting! I worked much more in field than post, so it tended to be get the material and then move on. I remember some of the AEs and loggers, etc, being driven to distraction by how annoying some of the shoot subjects they had to watch were.
Fascinating stuff!
Thanks Blake!
Intriguing post. Which is why I always click on your essays! I can see that calcification in my own brain after having climbed the ranks of in the building profession. And the real friction that it's created now that I'm in a Division which are not all design professionals. It's been an interesting mindfuck to figure out how to work with humans who have not been brain-trained-washed in the ethos of how engineers/architects operate. Of course those people are all wrong any my people are right....
Haha! That's the right attitude! It's very interesting to figure out what percentage of the way people are in adult lives is the ethos of their profession and how much is how they actually are.
Great post. Really enjoyed this.
Thanks Felipe!
Bravo, Sam. Lots to say about your more general points -- am literally sending a ms revision back to the publisher for copyediting, but for now, I was really interested in the description of documentary film making. Keep up the good work, and Happy New Year!
Very cool David. Happy New Year! Good luck of course with the MS!
The e-book will be open source, so I'm hoping to secure a broad audience (lots of Substackers!) for Social Thought Among the Ruins or Quixote's Dinner Party. You in particular might find it interesting, given its struggles with how to be an intellectual under present circumstances . . .
I can't believe how similar your industry is to mine—very astute of you to see similarities across industries! As I've not been as mobile with my own career, I was not aware that documentary filmmaking was so similar to marketing and advertising.
Yes indeed, the focus is never on good work or doing right by the audience, is it? It's CYA, making the client happy (read: not successful, but happy in the moment) and being affably unscrupulous.
I share the same disinterest in credentialing. Yes, I suppose I "write for a living." No, that doesn't really mean anything and yes, I just sort of fell into it once journalism took its nosedive.
Lastly, I agree with you about the importance of maintaining a "beginner mind." The more we learn and get comfortable with our own expertise, the harder yet more vital this becomes. Getting outside our own industries or life experience can certainly help but it's something we have to continue to strive for.
Thanks James! "Affably unscrupulous" is a perfect way to describe it. I always felt like a mercenary, trying to read the room when I showed up for the first day on a job and to adapt as quickly as possible to the reigning institutional mindset - and then looking to jump to another job as soon as that project was about to wrap. It felt like a suit I was putting on. I sort of enjoyed it but it felt like a waste of time ultimately.
As others have noted, there are similarities to what you describe in documentary filmmaking rampant in other fields. The observation about time in place illuminates A circumstance of often stifles Innovation. "the more that a person stayed in one place, and rose through the ranks (which is to say, the more they are ‘credentialed’), the less inclined I am to trust them, actually, when it comes to general statements. The fact that they have been part of one institution or industry will have tended to limit their experiences and their horizons; they will have an institutional loyalty that will be hard for them to shake off, and all the more so the longer they spend in their field" One of the ways that they ensure that they get to stay there in circumstances that favor them is by being part of the group that promulgates controls. As organizational theorist Charles Perrow noted the most effective of those controls may be the 'third order controls', which show up in forms, procedures, routines that are almost invisible but ultimately shape the life there so that the organization becomes an operate and maintain entity.
Thanks for pointing me to Perrow! I haven't come across that idea before but I know exactly what he means!
I first encountered him in Karl Weick's book on Sensemaking — a book that has a few problems of its own many great references.
This is fabulous thinking, thanks so much, and a clarion case for trying one's darnedest to be open to a "diversity of impressions" rather than settling in, complying for the easy accolade, riding along ... killing it off, for remaining as humble and curious and alert an amateur ("beginner's mind") as possible.
Thank you Kenneth!
Love your “iron laws of production.” I see them everywhere I go!
Totally! Thanks so much Anne!
solid piece.
Thank you GD!
This has been the situation since the corporation was invented. Just as monopoly takes over it absorbs more workers into it. It’s why Americans are so timid and conformist while constantly talking about how individual they are.
It is paradoxical, isn't it. I saw a stat recently that Americans, on average, work for companies with 600 employees. Not a lot of room for rugged individualism there!
Excellent read. The real credential is the way someone can or can’t relate, feel and honestly express, qualities which don’t always or indeed rarely translate into career progression.
Yes, so much of our real life happens outside career progression. It's so difficult to get actual social benefits from any of this though - that's part of why writing is so valuable.
This is spot on. The themes are reflected in a book called Range - Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, by David Epstein. Highly recommend. And, if you need any further evidence that I agree, check out this essay about how even NFL officials have become so institutionalized, that they are getting really bad at their jobs.
https://open.substack.com/pub/brianhoward/p/how-the-experts-are-ruining-the-nfl?r=c50dd&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
Very interesting and depressing! If you can't trust an NFL referee, who can you trust? I've heard about the Epstein book for a while but haven't read. Makes me want to check out!
Long ago I was on documentaries at the BBC. I recognise the guilds you speak of.
Eventually they were wiped out in cost-cutting and we were all of one mind. Going from a 5-person shoot to just one or 2 would ruin quality. We saw 'quality' as an abstract thing, quite unrelated to the journalism or the story.
Yeah, it's interesting. For a while, I was mostly working with crews of 6-8 and then I was working on crews of 2 and liked the crews of 2 much better. (It really was possible for a DP to do sound recording, AC work, everything in the camera department, and for a producer to handle all the logistics and soft skills of a shoot.) But something was lost (the glamor, I suppose) from slimming down to skeleton crews.
As a filmmaker, writer, and real estate gangsta, I heart this message. I stay in my beginners mind.
Beginner's mind 4ever!
Novelization ( the director nested unto herself) of a documentary, good idea. The pointofview was confined to the camera starting and jumping, just the dp and director...if you compare that much to Grey Gardens: the Maysles must have had a year of editing. Edie always breaking the fourthwall and clearly the bros smiled too much to restrain a maniac in the smallest. So they were like overwhelmed by good fortune like your project were flush with cash. In both instances it seems to an outsider if you wanted an oddly persuasive p.o.v. you would have the interviews relate at times to the boom operators as costars, if only not to have to cut out tiny snippets of Edie asking a Maysles, " are you gonna eat that? " .
I always felt that, that it's better for a subject to have an awareness of the camera and the circus around them. In practice, though, you were getting such short clips of a particular subject that the game was to film nothing much at all for a bit until they get used to the camera and forgot it was there. That did happen surprisingly quickly actually.
Fascination street. So that the subjects slip into postural attentiveness, a cool headspace to be in. Likely at the edges thinking they are seconds ahead of any editing that could suture their grosser expressions to their face. And Edie’s dancing on a split screen with “rock and rollers in their metier” would make her look batty. With she it is like Traylen says, good thing she had the ocean. Your characters meanwhile bhave as if viscerally aware that a heapum lot of design led them to their dead end moments. Some Substackers’ objections to fiction….in there. And after making a cold nest out of stolen moments, one of them looks for a way to pay the price of the ticket. A dangerous becoming because a lusty mountebank could tie a bow around them there.
I worked in documentary too. The weirdest part for me was spending hundreds of hours in post watching footage until I literally fell in love with subjects who only remembered spending a couple hours with me. I can’t scrutinize every word, mannerism, and tick of a person’s face, close up, without developing an asymmetrical crush. It really got to me.
It's interesting! I worked much more in field than post, so it tended to be get the material and then move on. I remember some of the AEs and loggers, etc, being driven to distraction by how annoying some of the shoot subjects they had to watch were.