"The Importance of Being Important"

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Bloemendaal aan zee, today. Dream [ reality ]

Min/max temperature: 7°C/7°C; humidity: 97%; precipitation: 1 mm; sea level pressure: 1012 hPa; wind WNW 43.0 km/h; visibility: 10.0 kilometres; Clouds: Few 548 m., Mostly Cloudy 731 m., Overcast 1066 m

"Foreword. The Importance of Being Important […] During the classic time of Greece a terrible thing happened in one of the temples. One night the statue of Zeus was mysteriously smashed and desecrated. A tremendous uproar arose among the inhabitants. They feared vengeance of the gods. The town criers walked the city streets commanding the criminal to appear without delay before the Elders to receive his just punishment. The perpetrator naturally had no desire to give himself up. In fact, a week later another statue of a god was destroyed. Now the people suspected that a madman was loose. Guards were posted and at last their vigilance was rewarded; the culprit was caught. He was asked, "Do you know what awaits you?" "Yes," he answered, almost cheerfully. "Death." "Aren't you afraid to die?" "yes, I am." "Then why did you commit a crime which you knew was punishable by death?" The man swallowed hare and then answered, "I am a nobody. All my life I've been a nobody. I've never done anything to distinguish myself and I knew I never would. I wanted to do something to make people notice me… and remember me." After a moment of silence he added, "Only those people die who are forgotten. I feel death is a small price to pay for immortality!" Immortality! Yes, we all crave attention. We want to be important, immortal. We want to do things that will make people exclaim, "Isn't he wonderful?" If we can't create something useful or beautiful… we shall certainly create something else: trouble, for instance. Just think of your aunt Helen, the family gossip. (We all have one.) She causes hard feelings, suspicion, and subsequent arguments. Why does she do it? She wants to be important, of course, and if she can achieve this only by means of gossip or lying, she will not, for one moment, hesitate to gossip or lie. The urge to be outstanding is a fundamental necessity in our lives. All of us, at all times crave attention. Self-consciousness, even reclusiveness, springs from the desire to be important. If failure arouses compassion or pity, then failure might become an end in itself. […] Without exception everyone was born with creative ability. It is essential that people be given opportunity to express themselves. If Balzac, De Maupassant, O. Henry, hadn't learned to write, they might have become inveterate liars, instead of great writers. Every human being needs an outlet for his inborn creative talent. If you feel you would like to write, then write. Perhaps you are afraid that lack of a higher education might retard you from real accomplishment. Forget it. Many great writers, Shakespeare, Ibsen, George Bernard Shaw, to mention a few, never saw the inside of a college. Even if you will never be a genius, your enjoyment of life can still be great. If writing holds no lure for you, you might learn to sing, dance, or play an instrument well enough to entertain your guests. This belongs in the realm of "art" too. Yes, we want to be noticed. We want to be remembered. We want to be important! We can achieve a degree of importance by expressing ourselves in the medium which best suits our particular talents. You never know where your avocation will lead you. Even if you fail commercially, you might very well emerge from your experience an authority on the subject you learned so much about. You'll be richer in experience -- and if you have been kept out of mischief, that alone will be a great accomplishment. So the gnawing hunger to be important will be satisfied at last without harm to anyone."

Lajos Egri in 'The Art of Dramatic Writing', foreword, page x, xii, xii, first published in 1946 by Simon & Schuster, INC, USA

"The [director] concerned [ was ] rather surprised that I even asked for the [ script ] -- […] asking 'Since when do cameramen read scripts?' -- but only once have I accepted a film without seeing a script (or at least a treatment) first, and on that occasion I sorely regretted it."

Walter Lassally in 'Itinerant Cameraman', page 101, first published in 1987 by John Murray (Publishers) Ltd, London

"Images, music and voice-over move independently.[…] The visual flow is […] varied. [ The ] film interweaves crucial New Wave principles: the pictorial space is moral space; that morality is an unstable equilibrium between audacity and prudence; that morality can be non-judgemental; that morales are not rules, but serious games with calculated risks; and that personal structures only intersect with the political."

Raymond Durgnat in the introduction to Francois Truffaut's 'Jules et Jim', first published in English in 1968 by Lorrimer Publishing Inc., reissued in 1989 by Faber and Faber Limited, London

"With tea, just like wine, you are dealing with terroir. The composition of the terrain and climate are crucial for the development of certain characteristics. Handpicked, traditionally produced tea from a reliable region are at the base, always. Quality tea is affordable luxury. You can drink great tea for the same price as bad wine."

Robert Schinkel in 'Exclusief, informatie magazine Sligro, Nr 15', page 29, published by Sligro B.V.

Land your brand™

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Kennemer Dunes, today (1/3). Break it [ make it ] 

Min/max temperature: 4°C/7°C; humidity: 99%; precipitation: 0 mm, sea level pressure: 1026 hPa; wind from SSE 8.0 km/h; Clouds: Few 152 m, Scattered Clouds 213 m, Mostly Cloudy 274 m; visibility: 5.0  kilometres

"The point in which content leaves off and technique begins is blurred, and yet they are so interdependent that one is impossible without the other. Above all, then, the filmmaker must not only be fully aware of both art and technique, but of technology as well. Film-making is a twentieth-centrury art born of science. [...] Consider ultra sensitive high-speed [ film ] that allows picture-taking under seemingly impossible light conditions, or transistors that make feasible vest-pocket synchronous units that record actual sound and speech anywhere. Such developments, which make possible so much more, may at times be an obstacle, because the temptation is so great, and so subtle, to concentrate on mastery of the technique. In the heady excitement of achieving effect or of bringing off a difficult tour de force, it is easy to find a pseudo artistic satisfaction that blinds one to the demands of a fully artistic piece of work. [...] Discipline is what is sorely needed. Often, the so-called depth and insight are in reality lots of smoke and little fire, emotionalism without substance. The […] filmmaker must clarify his substance by analysis and structure development, with close scrutiny of the causal relationships. […] In the making of a film, aside from creative effort, much is required of the film-maker in the way of technical knowledge and organisational know-how. Unfortunately, his mastery of these areas can lead to such sense of accomplishment and satisfaction that he may be trapped into forgetting why he initially set out to make a film. It is not unusual, for example, for him to become so absorbed in the technical aspects [ of lip synchronisation ] he overlooks what is being said. […] The film-maker needs, therefore, in addition to a solid technical foundation, an insight into those things involving ideas and values. He needs to know where his talents shape up best, whith what kind of material he functions most effectively, in what way he can set up a frame of reference within which to explore his material, and how to clarify his point of view. How he wants to say anything, let alone decide the most effective way to say it? To seek conscious and direct answers to these problems is next to impossible because they cannot be arrived at in the manner of mathematical equation. Rather, the answers will emerge to one degree or another, trough the actual making of the films. [...] The filmmaker has to constantly make films. The questions should be left to the critics, the scholars, and the analysts."

Haig P. Manoogian in 'The Film-makers Art', page 1, 2, 159, 247, first published in 1966 by Basic Books, Inc. New York, London

"Art comes out of craft. That's where the art comes from. Movies are craft, they're not art. Art comes out of craft. [You] may have a great idea for a painting. But can you paint? If you say "No," than your idea isn't worth a shit. […] Pretty photography is easy; it really is the easiest thing in the world. But photography that rounds a picture off, top to bottom, and holds the content together, is really the most beautiful. […] You try not to put the photography in front of the story; you try to make it part of the story."

Gordon Willis in 'Masters of Light', page 294, 302, by Dennis Scheafer and Larry Salvato, first published in 1984 by University of California Press, USA

"I want to always be free to not have to do something. I want to not have to take a picture for any other reason than because I want to […] I don't want to take a picture because I have to. That's how despair begins; when you don't have the freedom to say no to something that you don't want to do. Suddenly you get locked into not being free."

Conrad Hall in 'Masters of Light' , page 173 by Dennis Scheafer and Larry Salvato, first published in 1984 by University of California Press, USA

"Despair is the only unforgivable sin, and it's always reaching for us."

Sam Peckinpah in 'Peckinpah, the Western Films, A Reconsideration', introduction, by Paul Seydor, first published in 1980 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois, USA

"Aesthetic and ethical decisions are seldom made from a position of cool intellectual neutrality; more often they are forged in discomfort and anxiety over conflicting moral obligations -- to actual people who know and trust you, on the one hand, or to truths whose importance may transcend any individual's passing discomfort, on the other. [...] Only with maturity can you identify the surrogates to your own values and temperament, and allow them to achieve a life of their own in a film. The discipline of such a process has its own rewards. Your work alters the way you see the fundamentals of your own life -- the very source from which your documentary process sprang. In this way, each film lays the foundations for the next."

Michael Rabiger in 'Directing the documentary (third edition)', page 364, published in 1998 by Butterworth-Heinemann, USA

"The best people know more."

David Ogilvy in 'Ogilvy on Advertising', page 21, first published in 1983 by Multimedia Publications (UK) Ltd.

Left, right, fast, slow, high, low

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Come prepared. Haarlem, finish today.

"I" am as good as my team

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My Moroccan crew in the Sahara-desert. Picking the right people is essential. It may be "you" or "me" or "I" who got the call; without a unified team behind that to clear it, the results will turn out flat, pale, uninteresting and disappointing. A symptom of  the "look what a clever filmmaker I am" syndrome. This probably counts for other professions as well; even leading to endangering other people's health and other people's lives.

Conclusion: Like a brand, which may be the vision of one person -- "I" --, its strength is determined by the team behind it. "I" is "I Care" ; characterized by the ability to switch and unite, flexibilty. From the inside to the outside, on the battlefield of the (not so) free market, doing the job that needs to be done; for the sake of the team really... Outside the team, there is nothing.