I have been drawn into a conversation on LinkedIn about film and video.
The group is called Film and Television Professionals and the specfic discussion that caught my eye was:
“Now that Digital video cameras are affordable and take such good pictures a lot of people who might not have been are becoming filmmakers. Is that bad or good?”
Well, good.
Obviously.
Not everyone seems to think so.
In fact, there is enormous hostility toward the ‘video revolution’.
OK.
Their concern is that what all these people will produce will be ‘junk’, or in the words of one correspondent”
Problem is, most filmmakers aren’t content to just try it out and learn. Instead they want to clutter my eyeballs with their astonishingly bad attempts
Fine.
I have been teaching people to make their own films and videos for more than 25 years now, and the thing that never ceases to astonish me is how well they do and how fast they learn. I have always said, I can teach anyone to make perfect films in four days.
That has been my experience with more than 40,000 people worldwide.
The question is, why?
Why do people learn so quickly.
The answer, I think, can be found in Malcolm Gladwell’s book ‘Outliers’.
Gladwell says that if you practice anything for 10,000 hours you can become an expert. Spend 10,000 hours practicing tennis and you can become a world-class tennis player. Spend 10,000 hours practicing the piano and you can become a concert master.
Fair enough.
Well, the average American spends an astonishing 5 hours a day watching TV (and films). Every day.
That means that by the age of 22 (assuming they started at 5), the Average American has spent an astonishing 30,000 hours watching TV and films.
That, according to Gladwell, makes you THREE TIMES a world expert in film and video.
And you know what?
It’s true.
Everyone already knows what a TV show or a film is supposed to look like. They instinctively know what works and what does not work.
What they don’t know is how to use the tools to make those things happen.
That’s the part that takes 4 days.
But once ‘liberated’, they can do amazing things. I have seen it 40,000 times now.
The idea of three years at ‘film school’ (at $46,000 a year) is, in a word, crazy.
Not to learn something you already know now to do.
Copyright Michael Rosenblum 2013
5 Comments
ROSS October 30, 2013
HI Michael….This is completely true! I think it is awesome we now have the freedom to see so much great new content when and where we want to see it. I love that everyone is now able to be in the game.
Peter DEREK October 30, 2013
Like the tides we can’t stop it – but we can warn.
Editors protect from wrong false information being broadcast. Engineers and operators maintain quality – brightness, sound, levels. This tech revolution allows for instant headlines with breaking news and help those in dire need. That one voice can now add live images with validating scenes. That is powerful. Hopefully technology will protect technical standards….the content is harder to monitor.
Gerrit Haaland October 14, 2013
Hello Michael,
I have been following your ideas casually for some years now and I really appreciate your thoughts – I see you as an avantgarde person, someone who is able to think ahead.
But I honestly think you are off here. There seems to be a misunderstanding of Gladwell, who refers to 10.000 hrs. of dedicated, active practise of a skill, like tennis or the piano (your examples). That takes dedication, stamina, discipline and hard work. The sweat any athlete, musician, artist, who gets somewhere has put in.
How does that “according to Gladwell” relate to the fact that a TV has been running in the same room with you for 30.000+ hrs.? Watching TV is the most passive-receptive thing you can do, and most of the time you will have been on the phone or doing the household during that time. Ok, if you really focus, 10 000 hrs. of watching television will absolutely turn you into an expert couch potato, I give you that. But an expert storyteller? I do not buy that.
“According to Rosenblum” 10k hrs. of watching tennis makes you a Grand Slam Champion. All you have to do is put in 4 days of tennis practice afterwards.
Is that really what you believe?
Best
Gerrit
Michael Rosenblum October 15, 2013
Hi Gerrit
What I have found in 25 years of training more than 40,000 people, most with little or no prior experience, is that most people carry within them an innate understanding of what movies and television are ‘supposed’ to look like – shots, structure, pacing, writing, etc.
They didn’t go to film school to learn this. They have absorbed it from endless! hours of watching TV and films.
At least that is my experience.
Phil October 30, 2013
Hi Gerrit,
I think it really depends on how you watch. If you spend many of those hours as I usually do, half paying attention and half surfing the web on a nearby laptop, then yes, it probably won’t matter how long you watch TV because you’re missing at least half of it.
However, if you aspire to be a TV writer, videographer or producer, time spent watching TV is a valuable tool. It taught me how to shoot proper news video. I went from shooting 20 minutes of mostly unairable crap to a tight 2-3 minutes of ready-to-roll footage, all from spending about a week *carefully* watching news footage and taking notes of pacing, shots used, and so on. I also don’t spend a bunch of time manually fiddling with the camera – I leave everything but the focus up to the camera and it does a phenomenal job. Usually better than I could if I manually adjusted everything myself. The result speaks for itself, here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24QluXrhynM