From Distance: Our Youthful Guides

Four point play….

1. Over a beer and Döner, a young movie director friend and I were talking about his upcoming projects. Ya know, as Berliners do. So far he has made some impressive short films and music videos. He’s also a talented photogtapher with a keen eye and a good sense of pace.

It’s finally time for him to tackle his first feature length film. In discussing the nuts and bolts of the project, he excitedly told me that he plans on shooting it on film. As in, digital age be gone, let’s go old school and record this bad boy on 35 mm film. I probably didn’t react in the way he expected.

I’m 36. He’s exactly a decade younger than I am. For my generation, the flexibility of the digital age is still astounding. I finished college when disposable cameras were still common and YouTube was still in its infancy. Photoshop was even easily detectable!

For him, his entire schooling was with digital work. He has long ago mastered the digital editing process on his Macbook. He’s part of a generation that can make a movie for next to nothing with no physical cutting necessary.

It’s easy to take that for granted and romanticize the past. I, not being one to be impressed by doing things the hard way, asked him why he really cared to shoot on film.

It’s not that his reasons weren’t without merit. He discussed the way scene lighting varies depending on the tech. He lamented the mentality of people on set when they have an “unlimited” resource on which to record.

He wanted the challenge of working with a different medium.

2. I decided to question his decision, not because he shouldn’t do it, but because he should do it for the right reasons.

Visually, it can be heavily debated whether anyone can actually detect the difference unless one is comparing back to back on a huge high quality screen.

As far as the challenge goes, I questioned why he would wish an additional challenge to the already daunting task of making one’s first feature length film. Mind you, his previous work has been digital.

More importantly, I asked whether he wanted to shoot on film so other young film makers would be impressed.

“Wow man, that is so cool,” says no one in the industry over the age of 35.

It’s a response that would only come from those young enough to consider it exceptional to do something that everyone had to do before. Not a reason to receive a cookie.

He’s a great guy. Self-aware and introspective. He allowed that some of it probably did come from a bit of ego. That’s fine.

The last point I discussed with him was about the idea that the elimination of “unlimited” takes would make a difference in the artistic process.

I asked him why it was that he needed the physical limitation of film. Why couldn’t he strictly self impose a limit on the number of takes he was willing to do for each scene. It isn’t easy, but surely he could decide on a max.

Maybe. If one’s goal is to abstain from eating ice cream, it’s certainly easier to be successful without ice cream in the freezer.

It’s a fair point from a director’s point of view. As an actor, I don’t really consider whether it’s film or digital. But then I’m old and from the stage.

He’ll end up making a good movie regardless. There will be pros and cons to whichever medium he chooses. But the confidence to consider such a different task was interesting.

He is comfortable with the idea of competiting with old film pros as a relative novice.

It got me thinking about the confidence of youth.

3. Most young people compare what they believe to be their future fully realized potential against what the top professionals are currently doing.

They compare that perfect moment they accomplished in practice against a cherry-picked mistake they see in a low-light video.

Young people can chalk up their failure to consistently accomplish a task to their inexperience. “Oh, I’ll get there”. Meanwhile, they condemn fully mature professionals for making the smallest of mistakes.

This is worse in schools. I hear young singers rail against working professionals for missing one note without having the slightest idea how many miles that pro has flown over the last month, or what 300 performances in two years will do to a voice.

They take the pro’s “mistake” and compare it to their best student practice room version and fill with pride.

And that’s okay. No, it is good! There is a chance that that young singer will actually be all that she thinks. Maybe the young baller who shoots without fear really will be the guy who takes Big Shot Bob’s crown for clutch shooting.

It’s better to maintain that youthful confidence as long as possible. Life constantly hacks away at us all, challenging our strongest delusions of grandeur. Let a kid dream.

https://youtu.be/sT5yXYhjEX8

That being said, this might take awhile. Logically, I understand the value of unbridled confidence. I am even opposed to referring to a player as an “irrational confidence guy”.

We often have no idea whether that confidence is truly “rational” or not, especially early in someone’s career. Lou Williams had been referred to as an irrational confidence guy. Dude has consistently been one of the top rated pick and roll players in league for years. Maybe the media didn’t know that his confidence was actually rational, but he did.

Of course, there will be guys who do have a supremely different idea of their skill level than may be accurate. There was a reason fans got upset by Iman Shumpert dribbing, shooting, and basically doing anything that wasn’t “shumping”. Ironically, Shump “shumping” someone was pretty great.

Still, that confidence in one’s potential abilities is paramount to success. There is no irrationality to that.

Perhaps it should be called “ignorant confidence”. We, both media and player, don’t really know whether that confidence is warranted until the shot is resolved.

4. And so it is with Jordan Clarkson. Every trip down the floor gives me a bit of coach anxiety.

“Dude, pass the rock, please!” Why are you determined to shoot threes off the dribble?”

It’s somewhat painful because I have been burned before.

His habits remind me of basketball girlfriends of the past. I project a negative conclusion to his shot-selection before the ball even leaves his fingertips because my sweet Larry Hughes and Iman Shumpert took away my ability to love a chucker.

So it will take awhile, Jordan. I’m working to see you for you. I will try not to bring my emotional baggage to our new table.

You are a confident individual ready for a healthy relationship. I will try. Keep drilling those open catch and shoot opportunities and I will be yours.

Just try not to get too frustrated with me when I give a sigh of exasperation with every stepback three.

Oh, and if you end up like the ones before, I will rain a fire upon you!

There are repercussions after all.