Navel Gazing

It was an interesting week for the dumb filmmaker. As you saw in the previous posts I was simultaneously shooting a film and teaching eight incoming students. If it was 3:30, I must be teaching, 4pm, filmmaking and back and forth throughout the week. It was all a blur but it went well.

I didn’t even think about becoming a filmmaker until I was in college. There was no path, I didn’t know anyone in the business. Filmmaking- whatever that was- was something that happened in a place called Hollywood and I didn’t give it much thought. Today it seems everyone knows a little something about how movies are made. DVD extras, websites and those infotainment TV shows all illuminate some part of the process, and as I result I think the barriers to entry in the business are much lower and more accessible. This is a good thing, I think.

Yet, despite how much my students thought they knew about the business, they were taken aback by what really happens on a film set. I think it was Werner Erhard (I am not a disciple, in my first draft I originally called him William- but a good quote is a good quote) who talked about three types of knowledge. 1) There is what you know you know. You use that in your life. 2) Then there is what you know you don’t know- that is why you learn and discover. 3) Then there is big other area about what you don’t know you don’t know.

One of my jobs as a teacher is to expose students to the idea that there is a lot more out there than what they know they know and what they know they don’t know. I like to peel back the curtain to expose something they didn’t know existed, and then let them learn and discover on their own. When it works, like this past week, it works well.

PeterH