Something I do when replying here in indietalk is to put my personal
situation aside and consider the situation of the original poster.
Not everyone posting here makes their living making movies. Most of
our community are just starting their journey. Folks who are making
movies recreationally. We don't always need to see each idea through
the filter of a professional who must make their mortgage and feed their
family with every project we do.
I would rather be encouraging and supportive to people with ideas who
want to try challenging themselves. Or even trying something with no
prospects at all of returning a profit. Those things are very important in
my opinion.
I see the point of trying to put a lot of restrictions on an art form so difficult to
succeed at already. As a working professional I have restrictions which is why
I love ideas like this one. I even feel some envy reading posts from filmmakers
who can still experiment and play as they learn.
Well Rick, what can I say, that's a perfectly valid and balanced response. Looking back at this post, I can see that I probably didn't take the high road here. Sometimes the sheer frustration of my situation gets the better of me, and I vent in a way that may or may not be particularly fair to others.
I do understand that many people are just starting out. I often go to great lengths to try and help them. Sometimes, like in this post, I have a migraine that lasts for 48 hours, and I'm just not at my best. At the same time, I have to wonder if maybe showing new people an unfiltered perspective of a person that keeps getting paid less and less the harder they work is a very valid lesson in starving artistry.
People selling ideologies like "a movement" often become extremely wealthy, and it doesn't seem to matter how stupid they are, or how little they've done. If you watch the docuseries "Waco" you'll see that a guy with a pitch like "A ghost told me that I should sleep with your wife to keep you from sinning, so build me a castle so I can write a magic book" had 100 dedicated followers. Many of them literally died for him, not because he contributed anything to society, but because he made a list of magic rules that started yet another movement. Now compare that with the life of a teacher at an inner city middle school, up all night grading papers on a salary that practically guarantees that their life will end in a financial death spiral, and maybe you will understand why I lash out at ideological thinking. It creates situations where some of the least deserving people get rewarded hundreds or thousands of times as much as the most deserving. That teacher cared more about helping those students than drawing attention to themselves, and the reality is that you'll never know their name, and they will likely end up in a paupers grave. You know what name you do remember? L Ron Hubbard. A million of his followers will probably pave over that teachers grave some day to make another parking lot for wealthy halfwits who think tiny aliens are swimming around in their veins.
I think your viewpoint is 100% valid, and I think mine is too. Today we have a new cult of unrelenting positivity, Huxely's soma, the almighty smiley face emoji that constitutes the only acceptable response to any stimulus. Being nice is nice, how deep, how thoughtful, I'm glad I have facebook to do my thinking for me. I would posit that if you remove the minus signs from math, you start getting a lot of wrong answers. If there were no real world consequences to this, I'd probably just go along with it, but I see a lot of quiet, humble, hardworking people get buried in the landslide of attention that goes to shallow people who can amass likes on social media by echoing popular sentiments. It's irrelevant to my point that I am only one of those three things.
I really do agree with everything you just said. But try to understand my perspective as well. You know why we don't tell women "maybe you'd get promoted if you just smiled more"? Because it shows no respect for the hard work, long hours, and personal sacrifices they made to advance, and puts a shallow focus on whether their appearances please others. That's how I feel about busting my ass for 14 years and watching social media pile rewards onto whoever keeps their comments confined to easily digestible pleasantries, or trending ideologies.
I don't have a lot of respect for this post that copy pasted a creative fashion trend from a few decades ago and called it their own. If you enjoy it, that's great. Personally, I'm so sick of "creatives" copying off of each others test papers, that I'm probably going to continue being negative when I see it. Zoom out a bit from this post though, and you'll notice that when I see real effort, I'm the first to praise it. About half of the upvotes in the video section are just me. That's on a site with 200 active members or so. When a person works hard at their craft, I owe them respect, and I appreciate their contribution to film.
Go back and look at the tale of the tape. When people worked hard on a film, I was always first in line to congratulate and support them. Often I was the only one. People that confidently present the ideas of others as their own, or preach from the sidelines as I'm getting my ass kicked inside the ring, not so much.
Lastly, let me show you something.
Scenes from select projects filmed over the course of 2019. Filming locations: New Jersey, New York City & Boston, MA Shot on: Canon C300 II, C100 II & DJI Mavic 2 Pro Projects include work for: Nike, Jordan, adidas Originals, NBA 2K, Shore Car Club, NYC Jam, BET, Glenfiddich, Reebok...
indietalk.com
This is a real filmmaker, out working hard, investing in his equipment, fighting for contracts, and getting some pretty good shots. He worked for a year, compiled the best of his work into fast cuts so as not to waste our time, and then came here, probably just looking for someone to say, "Hey man, thanks for trying so hard at your job, that looks nice" but no one did. He came back months later, and posted again "any feedback is appreciated" or to translate, why is no one responding to my year of hard work? Still no one cared. There are now 21 posts paying attention to this derivative manifesto, which I doubt had a single hour of work put into it. Think about that.
