Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Teaching as Learning (Again)

Too often I forget that teaching is the best way to learn.

I'm trying to be particularly transparent with a small crew of filmmakers who will be accompanying me on a three-week shoot near New York in January. To that end, I've set up a private blog wherein I'm deconstructing the process of film making. Recently, I wrote about a long shower during which I considered the composition of interview footage and the purpose of a "B" camera. It shouldn't surprise me by now (but it always does) that the act of explaining my ideas gives me even better ideas. As I blogged about the emotional intensity that a "B" camera's extreme close-ups might convey, it occurred to me I might mount the "B" on the jib we're hauling to NYC. I know I'm not the first person to think of putting a "B"camera on a jib. Even so, it might add a rare and distinctive lilt to the footage.

The lonely shower is a fine and reliable an incubator of good ideas. But perhaps it's not the greenhouse. Perhaps the necessary transparency of a master explaining (even justifying) himself to apprentices improves the creative product and process of both.

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