Tacit anticipation among film students: an ethnography of making movies in film school

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Content TACIT ANTICIPATION AMONG FILM STUDENTS: AN ETHNOGRAPHY OF MAKING MOVIES IN FILM SCHOOL by RITESH MEHTA A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (COMMUNICATION) AUGUST 2015 Copyright 2015 Ritesh Mehta ii For my parents iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation would not have been possible without the generosity, incomparable intelligence, and untiring mentorship of my advisor, Professor Henry Jenkins. Henry, you showed tremendous faith in my instinct and ability to carry this work through to its end, were open to my idiosyncratic turns, and were aptly cautious when I overindulged. You understood me in ways that reveal your largesse, nuance, and sense of humor. For all that and much more than I can convey here, I thank you. The dissertation would also not have been possible without the vision, mentorship, and discrimination of Professor Larry Gross, who opened doors and introduced new directions. I am also very thankful to my committee members, Professor Patricia Riley and Professor Nancy Lutkehaus, for their insightful takes and perennial support and enthusiasm. Other faculty members have been invaluable as well. Professor Gerald T. Goodnight, I thank you for allowing me to exercise my backbone of philosophy. Professor Paul Lichterman at USC Sociology, I thank you for the gift of methodology and judicious channeling of my love for detail. Finally, I am vastly appreciative of Professor John T. Caldwell at UCLA’s Theater, Film and Television department for opening my eyes to the academic sub-field of production studies of media industries. I can’t thank enough my home department, the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism; our ever-vigilant graduate advisors Professor Peter Monge and again, Professor Tom Goodnight; the care bestowed on us by our staff; and all the faculty members I took classes with, who in various ways influenced my research and writing process. To USC’s Graduate School, I much appreciate the funding I iv received as an Annenberg Fellow, and to the Annenberg School, the Annenberg Innovation Lab, and the Media Arts and Participatory Politics (MAPP) research group, I feel sincerely obliged for the funding provided in the form of teaching and research assistantships. It is hard to describe how crucial various intellectual influences at previous institutions were in shaping this dissertation. So I would like to thank my professors, colleagues and friends at the University of Missouri St Louis’s Department of Philosophy, where I got my Master’s degree, at the Washington University of St. Louis as well as at the University of California San Diego. I also want to acknowledge the numerous strangers who responded to my emails and questions nine years ago, on the wings of whose chorus I was encouraged to leave the Shire, so to speak, with singular purpose and determination. The kindness of strangers is one thing, but the flesh-and-blood love and encouragement of friends and colleagues who have become friends is entirely another, without which I could not have completed this intellectual and personal peregrination. At Annenberg and at USC, I am immensely grateful to so many of my PhD colleagues and my incoming cohort. I feel privileged to have met truly wonderful people here, too many to single out, but I will mention Neta Kligler Vilenchik who most closely understood my project and helped me in numerous ways. I need to pause and reflect on the quality that sparked this all: my love for the art, craft, and media form that are movies and television. I feel extremely fortunate to have been able to nurture, actually indulge, in this passion over six years, even during the really difficult times when its allure seemed jaundiced or eclipsed. In the same breath, I v voice deep thanks to all my research subjects, especially the film students and faculty who trusted me and provided me access to the field. You allowed me to channel my passion in ways I discovered were remarkable and new, and without you, I would literally be bereft of work and industry. Finally, words cannot communicate how thankful I am to my family and folks back home in Mumbai. Their support from far away has meant the world. In this space, I will thank just one of many childhood teachers, Ms. Flora Gonsalves, to whom I owe my love and command of the English language. I am grateful for the proud encouragement of my cousins, aunts and uncles, nephews and nieces, friends of old, as well as my community. Particularly, I am extremely thankful to my sister Priyal and brother-in-law Miten for their trust and understanding, as well as for the blessings of my dearly departed grandparents. And to my parents, for whom and only for whom the word “indebted” is virtuously deserved, I don’t know how else to express my feelings but to say that I am forever, blissfully, in the bonds of your debt. I dedicate this endeavor to your love. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments iii Abstract viii Chapter One: Film Students Work Together Knowing What? Introduction and Methodology 1 ‘Work’ and ‘Industry’: Two Foci 1 Methodology 14 Chapter Two: The “Resocialization” of Individual Students into Film Crews 35 Opening Shot 35 The “Individuality” of Individual Students: Four Discursive “Factors” 38 “Directorialness” & “Resocialization”: Paths to Film School & Film Crews 52 Conversation with the Literature – Part 1 74 Centerpiece Example: An ‘All-in-the-family’ Production Meeting 84 Working Definition of Resocialization 93 Conversation with the Literature – Part 2 107 Back to the Field: Directorial Contradictions & “Individual Reputation- Preening” 113 Chapter Three: “Tacit Knowing” in Film Crews as “Getting (the) Work Done” 123 Opening Shot 123 Four Modes of “Give-and-Take” 128 “Gets-it-done” Factor #1: “Roles” and “Hierarchy” 136 “Gets-it-done” Factor #2: “Routines” 155 “Gets-it-done’ Factor #3: “Tacit Knowing” 160 Working Definition of “Tacit Knowing” 169 Conversation with the Literature 182 Back to the Field: The Furthering “Momentum” of “Artistic Discourse as Emergent” and “Social Reputation-Making” 196 Chapter Four: “Tacit Anticipation” as “Agentive Embeddedness” in Film School and Media Industries 204 Opening Shot 204 The “Dialectic of Artistic Discourse”: Moving Past “Embeddedness” 208 “Is this too film school?”: Artistic Discourse as Sustained “Self-Reflexivity 238 The “Dialectic of Reputation”: “Hustling” as “Industrial Reputation- Posturing” 249 Conversation with the Literature 268 Working Definition of “Tacit Anticipation” 299 Chapter Five: The “Dialectic of Professionalization” as “Dialectic” and as “Professionalization” – Contributions, Theory, and Reflexivity 302 Contribution #1 – “Dialectic”: A Meta-structural Concept via Hegel 303 vii Contribution #2 – Dialectically Catalyzing Conversation Among Literatures 317 Contribution #3 – “Professionalization”: Conversing with Boys in White 322 Concluding Remarks: Reflexivity as a Researcher 327 Bibliography 331 Appendices Appendix 1: Demographic Breakdown per Student Film 343 Appendix 2: Visual summary of Dialectics and Grounded Theory 345 viii ABSTRACT In this ethnographic study of aspiring filmmakers working together to make movies in film school, in the backyard of the film and television industries, I argue that students undergo a “dialectic of professionalization.” Using participant observation, interviews and grounded theory, I found individuals enter film school with varying “factors of individuality,” such as ambition, restraint, and aesthetic subjectivity. Interfacing with curricular requirements to make films, they undergo a tentative, messy yet social process I term “resocialization”: they need to repeatedly ‘fit with’ film crews considered as temporary organizational structures {Chapter 2}. Once resocialized as crewmembers, they exhibit a variety of “tacit knowing,” not only of filmmaking roles, hierarchies, and routines, but also of story, emotion, and characters, thereby “socially making” their reputations even as they discover “artistic discourse” {Chapter 3}. Simultaneously in the classroom, students find themselves embedded in a “cacophony” of conflicting pedagogical discourse about industrial norms, and vacillate between resistance and appropriation in order to extricate their own “authorial” voice. As they form particular reputations and make particular films, they take on the “posture” of “tacit anticipation,” a perpetually alert ‘shape-shiftiness’ that does not fully embrace but cannot fully ignore the call of industry {Chapter 4}. I theorize these changes as “dialectic,” building on philosopher G. W. F. Hegel’s ontology {Chapter 5}. I submit that student filmmakers are not fully socialized in film school as future labor for media industries. Since they have undergone resocialization, practiced tacit knowing, discovered film as formal story, and “hustled” for work, they leave school having been, in various ways, “made productive.” That is what “professional” finally looks like: the more self-reflexive mode of tacit ix anticipation. Future media production studies must adequately theorize their subjects’ relationships to “work”, “career,” “knowing” and craft “form,” before they can write them off as mere neoliberal “labor.” 1 CHAPTER ONE: FILM STUDENTS WORK TOGETHER KNOWING WHAT? INTRODUCTION & METHODOLOGY ‘Work’ and ‘Industry’: Two Foci The location was quite the treat. It was a strange strip of a motel, nestled next to the empty road and the mountains. That day, the gray clouds and the neon-lit sign, the huge fans and rain towers, and the eeriness of the curious guests, lent our location a certain mood… Once the first shot was done and the sun had set, Elena, the gaffer, remarked to Seth, the 1 st assistant director, “[The next shot] is going to take us a lot of time to set up.” Seth agreed; after all, it was one of the key shots of the film: the lead actor scrambling to the find an open motel door in the hurricane. I decided I could write up tomorrow’s call sheets on the long ride home with Seth, so I just hung around observing the camera crew… Once we were ready, the rain tower and the fan started. Lara, the production designer, started throwing leaves into the wind. The lead actor began gasping audibly over the sound of the machines. Seth shouted in a loud and clear voice, “Sound rooollling.” “Camera rooollling.” Against the rain, wind and leaves, in the last light of the dusk, Ben, the director, yelled, “Aaaactiooon!” - Excerpt from field notes from the second day of filming on Ingrates 1 This dissertation is an ethnographic study of how student filmmakers work together to make movies in film school, in the backyard of media industries. It is a 1 Individuals, films’ and organizations’ names are all pseudonyms. I haven’t changed my name even though I had a position (2 nd assistant director) on the crew of the two films I followed. See Appendix 1 for a list of all crewmembers and LAFilm faculty that I refer to in this dissertation. I also haven’t change the names of the movies, TV shows, filmmakers, or actors my subjects occasionally reference. I refer to the people I was observing as my “subjects.” I am aware this has political implications, and I don’t intend them. I believe my use of the word “subject” is justified given my resort to the philosopher Hegel and his dialectic. This becomes clearer in Chapter 5. 2 research project, but started out as a passion project. I love movies and have a deep curiosity of how they are made. Entry into the anthropological and academic field(s) was driven by my personal interest. My initial excitement of securing access to the making of two student films at LAFilm, a film school in the Los Angeles region, was quickly mediated by a host of questions. How did the students I was observing come to be interested in movies and filmmaking? Did they always know they wanted to be filmmakers? Was everyone I was observing a ‘filmmaker’ or were they just ‘students’? How did the director play his role so authoritatively when he had directed only a handful of much less ambitious projects? Would the director of photography (DP) put this shot on his reel? Just who were these individuals, how did they come to be working together, for whom were they working, and with what expectations? And what would they be doing a few years hence, after graduating? This was one set of questions that raced through my mind on my second day of playing the dual role of researcher and 2 nd assistant director (2 nd AD) on Ingrates, an MFA thesis film. I was a bit surprised to find myself, a movie lover, thinking less about Ingrates’ screenplay I had read earlier that morning and more about the individuals and their collaborative activity. As the afternoon progressed, another set of questions struck me. The first take went well. There was a positive energy and excitement in the air. As 2 nd AD, I was just standing by as the camera rolled, so Wade, a grip/electric (G/E), asked me if I could help out with one of the lightning strike machines. After the second take, the practical effects guys, who controlled the wind and rain machines—and who I could tell were not students but industry professionals— 3 came over to the camera to suggest they might move the rain to a certain part of the roof. Yasha agreed. Elena and Wade, who was on the other lightning strike machine, looked real excited. He said, “I enjoyed playing God.” Yasha gestured the take had gone well. Wade beamed, “If my DP is happy, then I am happy.” Ben came over from giving notes to the actor, and asked Elena to increase the lightning even more. She responded enthusiastically, “Of course we can!” Yasha asked Ben to look at the playback; Ben responded, “I trust you.” Seth would later comment that Ben was like Christopher Nolan [director of The Dark Knight trilogy], who did not look at video monitors. At the end of take 4 or 5, Ben high- fived Elena. Overall, it looked really good. Lara told Jolene, the producer, “That was an epic sequence!” - Excerpt (continued) from field notes Spoiler alert: the hurricane scene ended up looking really good in the final film as well, and Yasha did put it on his reel (in fact, when I last checked, his 2014 reel still had it, even though he’s worked on several international industry projects since Ingrates). But what I remember from that day, other than the palpable excitement (which I did not feel as much on later days on Ingrates and definitely not during the shooting of the second film that I followed), was how so much knowledgeable activity was occurring. For instance, I heard Elena tell Wade over their walkie-talkie channel how frequently she wanted the lightning to strike. I wondered: isn’t Elena contributing to the look of the scene? Isn’t she doing something creative? Since Ben had given her the leeway to increase the lightning, couldn’t she interpret the actor’s performance in order to adjust the lightning? Moreover, how is it that they asked me, their 2 nd AD and a first-timer on a 4 movie set, to work on a lightning machine? Or why did the industry professionals who controlled the rain tower walk over to the director of photography and not the director with their input? How did so many different crew positions actually coordinate such an “epic sequence”? How did these students know what to know? In contrast to the first set of questions, which I later pondered was about students’ careers prior to, during, and after film school, the second set of questions was about coordination and knowing during the throes of filmmaking. I was interested in how knowing operated alongside conflict and constraints of being on a film crew. In this dissertation, I corral these two fields of academic thought into the notion of ‘work.’ This study is about the work of making a film, and additionally, the ‘workers.’ I found what they interpreted as work—careers and knowing interpenetrated—is not what is typically thought of as “work” (Barley & Kunda, 2001). The study of work as careers has a venerable tradition in many fields such as psychology and economics (Arthur, Hall, & Lawrence, 1989), but especially sociology, where it has been studied under the dual focus of “career” and “self, identity and transformation” (Becker & Carper, 1956, p. 289). The former analyzes “changes in institutional participation and the contingencies on which these depend..., which directs attention to typical sequences of movement and to the way in which these depend (at least in part) on the evaluative responses of important persons and groups.” (ibid) The latter attends to “the subjective aspects of such movement…, which direct attention to the way in which situations present the person with experiences with objects and people out of which may come stabilization of self-conceptions into lasting identities, on the one hand, and their transformation into new identities, on the other.” (ibid, pp. 289-90). In my 5 fieldwork and interviews, I found evidence that would contribute to both foci, but along the lines of Everett Hughes’ Second Chicago School of Sociology, I channel my subjects’ experiences under the former. As Barley (1989) explains, “In the hands of the Chicago sociologists, career became a lens for peering at larger social processes known as institutions.” (p. 49) One of the themes these sociologists focused on was “career as properties of collectives.” Even though individuals experienced careers, “they were not solely of the individuals’ making…. The options [individuals] foresaw were always limited by contextually defined possibilities. Careers… were pieced together from the string of alternatives and the set of interpretive resources offered individuals at any point in time by the collectives to which they belonged… People don’t make careers, careers make people.” (p. 51; sic) While I use the word “career” infrequently in the chapters that follow, favoring instead “work,” I am interested in capturing the constraints and contingencies my student subjects faced from the film school as institution, and yet how their work “ensured the institution’s very existence.” (ibid) Alongside witnessing career lines, I was also struck by the knowledge processes that ensured work was getting done. Although there is a veritable field in organizational studies that researches knowledge and knowing (see for example, Brown & Duguid, 2001; Orlikowski, 2002), one influential study from Bechky (2006) demonstrates, via its absence, the need for attention to knowing in everyday practice. Bechky’s is one of the few studies that explicitly looks at group activity on film sets (others include Henderson, 1990; Mould, 2009; Greenhalgh, 2010; Szczepanik, 2014), and like me, resorts to participant observation, interviews and grounded theory. She found two “structural characteristics [that] provide the organizational context within which coordination takes 6 place: interorganizational career progression and projects as temporary total institutions.” (2006, p. 3) She notes how “career progression in the film industry occurs between projects, as opposed to within one organization;” how crewmembers get on projects with people whom they feel comfortable with; how they tend to stick to their roles once on a project; and how especially if they are early in their careers, move on to other roles or higher roles in later projects (pp. 8-9). She observes that “by the time individuals settle into a particular role, they have experienced intense socialization through a[n interorganizational] progression of many other roles, [which] makes role-structure more visible to all crew members.” At the same time, appropriating Erving Goffman, she argues that a film is not just a project or a “temporary organization” from which crewmembers move on, but it is a “temporary total institution.” This is because “film sets are both physically and temporally isolated from outside world,… and crewmembers no longer share a weekend with the outside world.” As a result, crewmembers, who share “strongly enforced interdependent activity schedules,” must learn to work and play together. (pp. 9-10) Bechky’s ethnographic description provides much insight about what happens on film sets, especially the unexpected link between role coordination and career progression. What strikes me as sorely missing, however, is any analysis of how work gets done because of knowledge processes. Due to my own proclivity to attend to how people come to know, in this study I find myself addressing the gap in the literature by examining the confluence of students’ notions of career “progression” through roles and their project-based enactment of knowledge about roles (just as Bechky brought together career progression and project-based structural constraints). 7 In sum, I argue that it is productive to think of students’ discourse and practices on various projects and classes at film school through the lens of “work.” In their argot, they “work it!” on multiple levels: the everyday knowing associated with a role, their everyday conduct with fellow crewmembers they might see as future collaborators, and their interest in carving out latter day “stable” work-related identities. To reiterate, I was drawn to students’ work within and between projects and found that they want to—after some hurdles, as I show in the next chapter—practice, even demonstrate, to each other their knowing of various roles but also of industry norms, and simultaneously, anticipate what their futures might look like in an industry which may or may not value their work. The uncertainty about whether their work will be appropriately valued—or alternatively, the precarious position of their labor being rendered invisible—brings me to the next set of considerations. Before commencing research, I had read some of the literature from the discipline of production studies of media industries, and was struck by its emphasis on power relationships between media workers and media institutions. In particular, I was provoked by Mayer’s (2011) emphasis on labor, particularly the television industry’s underprivileged laborers such as TV set assemblers and softcore camera operators; and especially by her definition of “labor” as the “structural arrangements that extract value from work.” (p. 17) For one, her statement brought together the terms “work” and “labor” in a way I had not foreseen. Prior to my research, I always put filmmaking on a pedestal, cherishing it as an artistic activity, or at least an aspirational one, and quasi-idolizing its workers as undertaking enviable work. But given how a huge chunk of this literature persuasively underscored power struggles over creative and economic authority, and given its emphasis on media work as unique 8 because industries produce symbolic texts that have huge reach and popular cultural influence (Mayer, Banks, & Caldwell, 2009, p. 2; Deuze, 2007), I could not bring myself to ignore the imperative of labor. What’s more, I found I had to interrogate my own privilege, both personally and as a researcher. 2 So even though methodologically this is a grounded theory study (as I elaborate in the next section), I carried into the field the determination that I will not begin from a celebratory viewpoint, even though I retained my love for films. I strove to see all aspects of how my subjects carried on. I persevered to be alive to puzzles and anomalies. One such anomaly was Kelly, the key grip on Ingrates. This excerpt from our interview showcases his unique stance on work and industry. Ritesh: “Where would you like to be a few years from now?” Kelly: “Well, ideally in the next five years, I’d like to have a nice steady job in the film industry, either at a rental house or a big production company. Or if my friends and I start a production company and it’s really stable. Or [stability] from working in the union as a grip… Ritesh: “So you’re flexible with your identity?” Kelly: “I’m very flexible. I’m open to working in a key role either as a grip or maybe as a production manager or an assistant director. Those are probably my top three…” Ritesh: [I ask him a question about whether one of his actions on Ingrates was “creative” or “technical,” which leads us to the following.] Kelly: “I subscribe to the belief that this is an industry almost entirely of artists, of creative decisions… Anything that crafts a story to reflect their personality or the 2 In Chapter 5, I discuss my own positionality and reflexivity as a researcher. 9 emotion they are trying to get out… even if it is a seemingly technical decision, there’s still an art form to what they do… How the assistant camera (AC) will rack to the camera at just the right moment with just the right speed and precision to capture the moment the actor is trying to give them… They have to pay attention to story, more than anything…I think a lot of it has to do with taking pride in your own work. I mean, a lot of it is paying dues, just working to make the connections to meet people who will eventually pay us. And it kind of sucks to be in that situation because the director and producers obviously want to be able to pay everyone. But we are still here to make a story come to life…” Ritesh: “Even if it’s small adjustment of a dolly?” Kelly: “That’s the small little fingerprint we get to put. Like, someone will say, he must have pushed that dolly.” Ritesh: “Who says that? Who realizes that?” Kelly (laughing): “One of my friends [who] did not know I was the key grip on Ingrates saw the film. I asked him, “How did you like the [motel hurricane shot]?”… And my friend recognized that I did it. I don’t know how. Maybe he was just kidding when he said that, but it was nice to hear.” - Excerpt from interview with Kelly, the key grip on Ingrates (emphasis added) Several points ensue. First, Kelly reinforces my notion of the work done during filmmaking as having the aspects of career progression and knowing. He knows he has to push the dolly, and he knows that if others such as Yasha notice his consecutive “fingerprints” because he has paid attention to story (because he, unlike most others on 10 his level of the hierarchy, actually asks to read scripts in advance), then he is on track to get “stable” work in the industry. Kelly takes his role and “work” seriously, he interprets it as creative, and thus he interprets the entire industry as creative. He is flexible in his search for a stable career. But he told me he also really enjoys his own experience of being skillful and knowledgeable, be it the challenge of packing equipment into a truck, of ensuring expert footwork, or anticipating what lights his DP might need for a scene. For Kelly, filmmaking was good work because he works it that way. I was there in the field / on location when he was pushing the dolly. I didn’t notice his particular action, but I did notice how “alive” everyone was. This was not just because of my own excitement about finally playing a role on a set; as Seth, the 1 st AD, pointed out later, many people, including him, were excited by the wind and rain machines, the challenge of the shot, and its inherent potential for visual storytelling. And since the shot was praised in the final film, I could believe that amidst that synergy, Kelly was attending to the actor’s performance (and interestingly, the actor was also gasping loudly over the machines so the crew could hear his performance). 3 And yet this portrait is in some senses celebratory. Kelly himself might be too optimistic. Mayer (2011) would intervene and say that Kelly does not realize how much his identification with his labor—literally, laborious dolly pushes across “24 to 32 feet” (per Kelly) of rain and mud—is exploited by the film and TV industry to their own profitable end. She says, “Television industries… need a self-controlled workforce to be creative, professional, commodifiable, and regulated in supporting their profit motives. 3 In fact, Ben, the director, told me that his favorite moment of working on Ingrates involved an interaction with Kelly. He had to describe to him the pace of the shot, but did not know how to do that other than humming a tune. He said that Kelly (and Yasha) immediately got it and were able to execute the dolly push to the song’s rhythm. 11 The routine enlistment of workers who do not recognize their own labor value and who yet provide forms of low-cost and no-cost services to the industry demonstrates how the cultural processes of identity and identification are integral to… television’s labor force.” (pp. 175-6) Mayer would read the above interview excerpt and claim that Kelly is her ideal example. He is naïve to think that the director and producers want to make everyone happy. The industry does not need him to progress beyond below-the-line roles, even as he describes them as “key roles.” He is committed to storytelling, which only shows the extent of his identification with his labor. The political economy of television industries exploit the subjectivity of media workers like Kelly; he does not—and cannot—know the labyrinthine “structural arrangements” he is enmeshed in that “extract value from [his] work,” from his being “alive.” Kelly is a mere worker, whose “working it” is just another day in unforgiving hierarchies and interred (not afar from “interned”) catacombs of Hollywood industries. Mayer’s critique is impossible to ignore and very difficult to argue against. Part of my response in this dissertation is to illuminate by equal measure “work” and what I call “industry” rather than “labor.” “Industry” has the connotation of being industrious, of working well, but I also like it because it situates my interpretation at a higher “level of analysis” (Lotz & Newcomb, 2012; see below) than the everyday life and knowing of my student subjects. Importantly too, this dissertation can only respond to the extent its methodology will allow, as I assert in the next section. However—spoiler alert again—I found at the end of my analysis that I don’t have an easy answer. What I do proffer is an in-depth study of particular student filmmakers making particular films from beginning to end, something virtually no study (save Henderson [1990] and Dornfeld [1998]) has 12 done. And I also proffer analysis at the levels of individual, group, organization, and industry (in fact, at their intersections; more below). In the end, I found reason to uphold both pillars—“work” and “industry”—where I understand “work” as the semi-permeable membrane between research on careers and on knowing, in groups and organizations; and “industry” as the semi-permeable membrane between “work” and research on power, inequality, and agency in production studies of media industries. I discuss my contributions in each “content” chapter 4 (Chapters 2 to 4), where I converse separately with each of the literatures invoked so far: (1) sociology of work, occupations, and careers; (2) organizational communication and knowing in temporary groups such as film crews; and (3) production studies of media industries. Explicitly corralling my ethnographic findings into this confluence is itself a contribution, not merely because it is interdisciplinary, but as I hope to show, the quality of insights that obtains pushes each discipline out of the inertia of its received views. Besides, only three studies that I know of, all of which happen to be ethnographies, conceive of their contribution in this manner. Media sociologists Hesmondhalgh & Baker (2011), who I converse with in Chapter 4, are the only ones overt about their “innovatively eclectic approach.” They state, “We make use of, and hope to make some contribution to, a number of different analytical fields that are rarely in mutual dialogue,” and go on to list their confluence as consisting of media, communication and cultural studies, the sociology of work, and organizational, business and management studies. 5 4 By “content chapter,” I mean a chapter with my empirical findings and presentation of my grounded theory categories. I elaborate more in the methods section that follows this one. 5 For what it’s worth, I had no idea about their project when I wrote the prospectus for this dissertation. I was pleasantly surprised, even excited, to stumble upon them, and am glad that I now have an academic conversant. Their ethnography is on three industries: (reality) television, magazine publishing, and music. 13 Two studies implicitly contribute to this confluence: sociologist and communication researcher Lisa Henderson (1990; 1998), who I converse with in Chapter 2, and sociologist Robert Faulkner’s (1985) landmark study on Hollywood studio musicians, their work and their careers. 6 Work and industry: I found their osmosis. I don’t return to this terminology until the concluding Chapter 5, because I don’t want it to interfere with my grounded theory methodology. However, the pairing does help engender what has proved to be a useful research question. I hark back to my witnessing of activity among budding student filmmakers during the shooting of the motel hurricane scene. They are working, coordinating, laboring. They are enacting knowledge about story while guessing about their future jobs and careers. They do not know if and how they are caught in the capitalism-induced ‘hurricane’ (to extend the metaphor) that is the media industries “churn” (Caldwell, 2008). Therefore, as participant-observer (and interviewer), I entered the field each time with the following question that I found remains alive to these overlapping sets of meanings: Research Question: Film students work together knowing what? I believe the question is robust, layered and open-armed enough to have netted a wide variety of provocations and insights about work and industry during the writing up as well. Since mine is on film, and particularly, student filmmakers, I definitely add to the confluence they identified. 6 Interestingly, the first full-scale ethnography on Hollywood, from anthropologist Hortense Powdermaker (1950), does not focus on knowledge processes. 14 Methodology This study used participant observation and interviews to collect data, and grounded theory to analyze data and produce a theoretical depiction of work and industry in my field site. Briefly, I spent 18 months following two student films, and conducted 19 semi-structured interviews (75-90 minutes on average; audio recorded) with students from three film crews. 7 Appendix 1 lists my interviewees, in addition to the pseudonyms, demographic information, and role positions of the film students and/or crewmembers who were my informants for this study. In what follows, I elaborate on how I sought access, describe the field site and my involvement in it, briefly lay out my understanding of the interpretive method, explain my use of the grounded theory methodology, and describe the analytic framework that organizes the content chapters. Securing Access to Two Student Films at LAFilm 8 When I conceived of this project at the start of the doctoral program, I wanted to gain access to industry sites. In particular, I was hoping that I would be able to seek entry into the ‘production worlds’ (as I called them then) of my favorite TV shows such as Mad Men and Brothers and Sisters (I was inspired after all by Thompson’s [2009] dream access to the crew and producers of The Lord of the Rings [I am a huge fan]). I quickly figured—thanks to the sage advice of my committee, and the Los-Angeles-based fieldwork experience of other film studies scholars (e.g., Caldwell [2009]) and 7 I also conducted interviews with five LAFilm faculty. However, for the sake of simplifying and bounding the scope of the dissertation to the viewpoints and “meanings” (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995) that matter to the students, and to make this an ethnographic study of student filmmaking, I do not include the data from these interviews in this work. However, I pay a lot of attention to faculty interaction with students during participant observation, favoring the students’ rather than the faculty’s point of view of those interactions. 8 I provide a lengthier than expected account of securing access because I have been frustrated by how skimpily scholars tend to treat this key methodological aspect and stumbling block for many an ethnographic researcher. 15 anthropologists (e.g., Ortner [2010])—that I was hopelessly wide-eyed. The industry was secretive, greatly invested in maintaining its boundaries, and insiders (especially producers, who tended to come from the same “knowledge class” as academics) might extend their curiosity and generosity only to interviews. Since I was interested in the group process of filmmaking, even if I were granted access to a set, I would only be able to witness peripheral interactions because, e. g., the “video village,” where the meaty interactions take place on an industry set, is restricted to top-level crewmembers. (Ortner, 2010) I quickly realized Ortner’s frustration during an hour-long visit to the set of NBC’s Outsourced. 9 Around the same time, I was enrolled in John T. Caldwell’s class on Hollywood’s “cultures of production” in UCLA, which helped me change my focus to the margins of the industry (which in Chapter 4 I discuss in relation to Caldwell’s conception of “para-industry”). Having practiced interview transcription for Nancy Lutkehaus’ class in USC’s Anthropology department, I discovered that production faculty members in Los Angeles-based film schools were eager to share their experiences about the industry but also talk about teaching film students. Thus, when I took my next methodology class with Paul Lichterman in USC’s Sociology department, which required we do actual fieldwork, I decided to act on my hunch that I had a distinctly better chance at better quality access if I approached student film productions. The hunch paid off really well. I emailed my research proposal to a faculty member in LAFilm, a film school in the Los Angeles region. He said he would be happy to pass it on to the student directors and producers of MFA thesis films he was supervising that semester, but asked if he could add to the proposal the offer to help out 9 I am grateful to Professor Ellen Seiter of USC’s School of Cinematic Arts for arranging this visit; I was taking her class on television genre at the time. 16 on—not just observe—the crew. I was happy to comply, since this would mean I could be “participant” as well as “observer.” Only one student, Ben, the director of Ingrates, responded. We met, he was open to my research project, and asked if I could take on the role of 2 nd assistant director. I didn’t know what that involved but decided I would learn as I went along. I could not miss the opportunity since I needed a field site in order to continue in Lichterman’s class. So I graciously accepted Ben’s offer. Thus began my involvement with Ingrates, which lasted thirteen months. The structure of the film production program. Some necessary background: LAFilm offers both undergraduate and graduate degree programs in film and television production, animation, cinema studies, and screenwriting. My access was limited to the film and television MFA production program. It attracts students from a wide variety of backgrounds and countries. The school accepts individuals with plentiful prior filmmaking experience, as well as students who have “never picked up a camera before.” In their three years (or six semesters, which is how students compare their progression), students are exposed to six key filmmaking crafts: producing, writing, directing, cinematography, editing and sound. The first year is a general introduction to the practice of all crafts; in an infamous early class, students rotate roles in 3-member crews. The second year involves taking more specialized classes around their developing interests. In the third year, students can repeat certain production classes in a different crew position and/or they must complete an advanced project or “thesis film” in at least one of their chosen disciplines (i.e., one of the above-mentioned crafts). Ingrates was a thesis film for Ben’s chosen disciplines of writer and director (a highly common combination). Guffaw, the second film I followed, was the most sought- 17 after advanced production class in the program. Thesis films are typically the last course units students are enrolled in (for those who choose the “thesis option”), and even though LAFilm faculty are involved in signing off scripts, safety standards in physical production, and so on, they are typically much less involved than in the regular coursework of the first two or three years. Students sometimes extend their three-year stint to work on their thesis films. Appendix 1 shows a breakdown of student seniority in the three films included in this study. It’s fairly common that students who are “post-6 th semester” are signed up for thesis films. In Chapter 4, I discuss more details about the structure of the MFA program and of the production class I followed. Ingrates, a psychological thriller and an MFA thesis film. Ingrates is a psychological thriller involving a very small cast. 10 Like all student films, it is a ‘short’ (as opposed to a ‘feature,’ meaning that it is less than 40 minutes). Its crew of about 30 (during production days) was about mid-size for a thesis project (or so I was told). I followed the film through all three of a movie’s production phases. The first few weeks were pre-production, for which I attended eight meetings, of which three were production meetings (department-wise and scene-wise planning) involving available department “heads” (producers, first assistant director, director, director of photography, production designer, and editor); one was a visit to an ‘industry’ (i.e., outside of LAFilm) casting session; one a review of the “casting tapes;” one an informal meeting between the director and the DP; one a “greenlight” (‘okay to begin filming’) meeting with one of LAFilm’s faculty; and one meeting between Seth, the 1 st AD, and me to go over my duties as 2 nd AD. 10 I do not discuss the plot of the film or furnish further details in the interest of maintaining the anonymity of my subjects but also because they are not relevant to my research undertaking. 18 This was followed by the second, the production phase, which on Ingrates lasted nine nearly consecutive days (a one-day break is required by union rules, which LAFilm honored). Also called the filming or shooting phase, it is the busiest and the “most intense,” and involves the greatest number of crew (since certain positions are limited only to that phase. E.g., non-department heads in the camera, grip and electric departments, the boom operator in the sound department, the digital intermediate technician, the script supervisor, and the 1 st and 2 nd assistant directors – are all typically only involved during filming days; all these roles were represented on Ingrates, if inconsistently). I was only present for seven production days and took detailed notes via audio recorder and/or a notepad for six. 11 The crew then took a holiday break and relevant members returned for the third and final phase, post-production, which, not surprisingly, stretched over ten months. For roughly the first half of this period, I attended four meetings in the edit suite with the director and the editor working on the “picture,” one meeting among the director and producers (“producer’s cut” meeting), two informal screenings (one of which was with the faculty member who had granted me the initial access), and one meeting each when the director met with the composer, the colorist, and the sound mixer. I resumed my role 11 My ethnographic “jottings” (Sanjek, 1990) were via a handy notepad during pre-production and post- production for both the films that I followed. However, during production, since I was playing the role of 2 nd AD, which required me to have my hands as free as possible to communicate on the walkie-talkie, as well as to run around from the ‘center’ to ‘periphery’ of the set (i.e., from the camera all the way to faraway makeup and wardrobe rooms where cast and background actors were waiting), I was unable to carry a notepad around. It was physically not feasible, and would have distracted the crew from their filmmaking jobs each time I conspicuously pulled out the notepad to jot an ethnographic datum of interest. Instead, I used the very constraint of having to move around the set to “jot” my recordings into my audio recorder, which I would later transcribe. (Fun fact: initially, I was paranoid that my audio would accidentally be heard by everyone on the crew who was on the walkie-talkie channel, but I soon realized that that could only happen if I had the walkie ‘on.’) For all my field visits, I typically wrote up my ‘proper’ field notes and initial reflections either the same day, or at most a couple days later. On a couple of occasions, though, because of competing demands of my TA and RA duties, or because of the sheer exhaustion of being on a film set (it is very exhausting to do three consecutive twelve-hour [but with lunch and transport, effectively fourteen-hour] days!), I wrote up my field notes a week or two after the visit. 19 as 2 nd AD for the two days of “pick-up” shots and scenes, which the director and producer arranged after they had an idea from edit room assembly which footage, shots and scenes were not working or missing. The last day of my involvement with this graduate thesis film was during its public screening at LAFilm. In addition to participant observation, I conducted seven semi-structured interviews with some of Ingrates’ heads of department. I interviewed Ben twice (once right after filming ended, and once a year later, after the public screening) since he was the key informant for this field site. Plus, he had a lot more at stake on this project because he was executive producer as well (all the money was his or raised by him). 12 I also interviewed Kelly, the film’s key grip, and the only “below-the-line” (Mayer, 2011; Caldwell, 2008) role among my interviewees. Guffaw, a light-hearted comedy for an advanced production class. Shortly after my involvement with Ingrates was complete, I met with the LAFilm faculty member who had granted me access, and debriefed him (out of courtesy but also because he was interested) on my initial hunches about knowledge processes across departments during filming. I also mentioned to him that I needed to follow another film for comparison in order to achieve generalizability within my data. 13 Somewhat to my surprise, he offered to me in touch with the lead faculty instructor of an advanced 12 Unlike the second film I followed, funding for thesis films is entirely the responsibility of the crew, which really means it falls on the writer-director. LAFilm students who choose the directing thesis track frequently write their own screenplays so that they maintain full creative and fiscal control over their films (even when the films are funded through crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter or Indiegogo). More importantly, though, they see themselves and their future work (careers and knowing) as that of writer- directors. They want to make a movie they can call fully their own, so they write the script, figure out the “moneys,” and assemble the crew from fellow students they have learned to trust. On a thesis film, creative hierarchy (which I discuss at length in Chapter 3) is more streamlined and transparent, because everybody knows whose “baby” the film is. 13 I obviously did not explain to him Strauss and Corbin’s (1998) methodology of “constant comparison,” “theoretical sampling,” and “theoretical saturation.” Jargon-free and parsimonious reasoning is better when interfacing with non-academic insiders who have the power to grant you access to the field. 20 production class for the following semester. This was once again a fortunate turn of events, since a production class that takes place over the course of exactly one semester, which has a set syllabus and plentiful faculty supervision, would be just the right change of pace and make for a good “comparison” to a thesis film, especially since I would be observing students in their second and third years compared to those involved with Ingrates, who were sixth semester or later. The lead faculty instructor agreed to grant me access to the course, which for simplicity’s sake I call “Production Class.” 14 Once the semester started, I introduced myself to the students and faculty on the first day. I had the luxury of choosing between two film crews, those of Guffaw and Tropos; the other crews did not grant my request to attend their initial production meetings, whereas the producers of both these films were greatly interested in my prior 2 nd AD experience, a position they had not yet staffed. Tropos was similar to Ingrates in that both were psychological thrillers. At the time, I believed Guffaw would better meet the methodological requirements of “theoretical sampling” (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) not just because it was a film for an advanced production class, but because it was a light- hearted comedy (my description). It also had a more ethnically diverse crew than did Ingrates, which was personally appealing to me (Tropos fell somewhere in between). Therefore, after observing their first production meeting and seeing them interact in two 14 The only MFA students I did not have a chance to observe or interview were those in their first year. However, I heard enough anecdotes about the contrast between first-year projects versus second-year projects such as Production Class that I could gauge that the jump in experience and skills between those two was roughly similar to that between second- and third-year classroom projects and third-year or higher thesis projects. 21 classroom lectures, I let the Guffaw crew know that I would be happy to join them as 2 nd AD-cum-researcher. 15 16 Unlike Ingrates, Guffaw had a much shorter turnaround period: the final film had to be completed within 4 months from the first day of class. The crew had been banded together the previous semester, so I did not observe the competitive, behind-closed-doors process that secured these crewmembers entry into this much-sought after class. However, I was present at all nine weekly production meetings (three of which overlapped with the pre-production period, and two during post-production) as well as two location scouts; for nine and a half production days in which I reprised my role as 2 nd AD; and like Ingrates, more sporadically during post-production. For reasons not clear to me, the director of Guffaw was not comfortable having me around in the edit suite for the first half of the post-production process, but I was granted access for four sessions in the latter half (I limited my presence to less than thirty minutes each time). For the sake of comparison, I strategically chose which post-production sites I would stake out, so I repeated the session with color correction people, but also attended one foley 15 In contrast to thesis films, Year 1 and Year 2 (and some Year 3) production classes are partly funded by LAFilm and partly by the students (the ratio varies with the class). This is true with regard to Guffaw and Tropos as well, where the entire crew contributed the same amount, over and above what LAFilm had put in. Because of this setup, the crew as a whole tended to be more conscientious and conservative about spending. For instance, 10% of Guffaw’s budget was set aside for contingencies such as losses due to equipment breakage. Duane and Gail, the film’s producers, were thorough, even martinet-like, with regard to ensuring that departments stayed within their budgets. And overall, because crew members had all partly contributed, there may have been a more distributed feeling of ‘ownership’ about the film’s “creative” content. However, as I discuss in Chapter 2, part of the “professional socialization” process for students is to stick to the assigned roles as crewmembers. So even if, per industry jargon, they were all “executive producers,” in the context of the film school environment and the pedagogical culture of Production Class, they imbibed the routine principle to not voice creative or technical concerns that fell outside of the purview of their departments. 16 Also in contrast to Ingrates, per the curricular requirements of Production Class films, the writer was a different person than the director. However, in all films that I followed (Ingrates included), I became involved long after the script was locked down (except for minor changes), so I did not get to observe Ben with just his writer’s hat on (with the exception of post-production, which I discuss in Chapter 3), nor did I get to watch Dade, Guffaw’s director, interact with the writer. 22 (reproduction of everyday sound effects) and one sound mixing session, since I did not have the opportunity to observe those parts of the workflow on Ingrates. Like Ingrates, my final ethnographic field visit for Guffaw was the public screening of Production Class films at the end of the semester. In addition to participant observation, I conducted semi-structured interviews with nine key (representing a healthy majority) Guffaw crewmembers. I also interviewed three of the Tropos crew. See Appendix 1 for details. On both Guffaw and Ingrates, I interviewed crewmembers only after production had ended. This is because I would have gained their trust since they would have seen that I wasn’t simply an academic or a nosy researcher (as many initially did) but also a reliable and hardworking crewmember. Moreover, I would have gotten to know each of them better, and would have more specific questions to ask, especially about events and actions I was not sure how to interpret. Finally, crewmembers are much more relaxed after the crazily hectic production days are behind them and give better interviews. My “participation” as 2 nd assistant director. I reflect on the implications of being 2 nd AD at the end of Chapter 5, where I discuss my positionality as a researcher and what I took away from the field. Briefly for now, I am very grateful about serendipity. I knew going into the first email exchange requesting access, I might have to offer to help out, but I had not planned on the 2 nd AD position. Ben, Ingrates’ director, needed somebody for that position, and I was able to use my experience to ‘sweeten the deal’ to secure access both to Production Class and to Guffaw. Also, just in terms of being able to collect data and observe the greatest number of crewmembers, 2 nd AD was the ideal position. Because I sent out call sheets the night before each filming day, and because 23 crewmembers had to come to me for paperwork, I knew exactly who was playing what role on set each day. Plus, my on-set duties, which ranged from escorting actors to and from the makeup room to standing beside my the camera when my 1 st AD could not, forced me to move around from the periphery to the center. I was also privy to walkie- talkie communication among a majority of crewmembers (except for camera crew, who are on their own channel). Finally, since everyone got to see a lot of me, and I tried to be an exemplary crewmember, people either forgot or seemingly let go of any insecurity they may have had regarding my ‘researching’ what they were saying and doing. Mainly though, the two advantages of “2 nd ADing” were access to a wide range of interactions and utterances among crewmembers, and the ability to build trust especially with the heads of department, who I would later interview. I also suspect that crewmembers talked well about me when they discussed my involvement with the faculty members who had granted me access. “Interpretation,” “Interpretive Validity,” and Interpretive Writing As an ethnographer, I was interested in following, “inscribing” (Geertz, 1973) and interpreting “meanings” that oriented the actions, discourse, and outlooks of my subjects. Following the lead of Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw (1995), I did not “impose exogenous meanings” and categories. Instead I attended to students’ “naturally occurring descriptions”, their “stories”, their “terms, types and typologies”, as well as their “explanations and theories” (pp. 109-126). To borrow from Geertz (1983), I contemplated “what the devil they think they are up to.” (pp. 57-8) This is a crucial 24 methodological point. I ground my writing in evidence my subjects’ provide. If they did not say it or do it, there is nothing for me to interpret. 17 Mostly though, I was inspired by how Geertz (1973) understands interpretation: not just his view of culture as “semiotic,” because even though I was studying film school as a “culture of production,” (Caldwell, 2008, p. 2) I went beyond his appropriation of Weber that “man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun.” That is, I am not sure if participant observation can necessarily reveal who has spun which webs of meaning. I don’t even take—not directly at least—Geertz’s understanding of the “object of ethnography” as “a stratified hierarchy of meaningful structures in terms of which” subjects’ actions and discourse are “produced, perceived, and interpreted.” (1973, p. 7) For although Appendix 2 might look like a “stratified hierarchy” of grounded categories, I don’t see them as meta-structural; i.e., I don’t add the clause “in terms of which.” Rather, what I take from Geertz is his notion of anthropological writing itself being an interpretation. An extended quote elucidates. If anthropological interpretation is constructing a reading of what happens, then to divorce it from what happens…. is to divorce it from its applications and render it vacant. A good interpretation of anything…takes us into the heart of that which it 17 Another way I understand what “interpretation” means is how Lichterman (2002) describes “interpretive validity” (p. 125) as the “ability of a study to convincingly represent meanings of the people under study.” In order to do that, the study has to display “empirical groundedness,” which is to say that the study “supports claims about what people say and do with evidence of what people say and do.” 17 Once again, the meanings that matter to the researcher are not in view here. For instance, in Chapter 3, I describe how I wanted members of a film crew to think that they were actually ‘guarding’ their idea or contribution (say, a flower arrangement as part of the background of a scene) and ensuring that it made its way into the final film. As Emerson et al. would preach, I had to learn to not “impose” my “exogenous” meaning. Persevering, I found instead that crewmembers were more interested in a good product, even if their minute contribution did not make the final edited cut of the film. 25 is an interpretation… Social discourse… [is] conducted in multiple tongues and as much in actions and in words… The ethnographer “inscribes” social discourse: [s]he writes it down… turn[ing] it from a passing event which exists only in its own moment of occurrence, into an account, which… can be reconsulted… Ethnographic description… is interpretive; what it is interpretive of is the flow of social discourse; and interpreting… consists in trying to rescue the “said” of such discourse form its perishing occasions and fix it in perusable terms. (Geertz, 1973, pp. 18-21) It’s easy to see the connection between Geertz’s emphasis on the actual happening of actions and utterances with Emerson et al.’s emphasis on empirical members’ “naturally occurring” discourse. Further, I like Geertz’s idea that what is documented is both action and words, both practice and discourse. I also enjoy the connection between his being alert to “multiple tongues” and Bakhtin’s (1935) notion of “heteroglossia.” Moreover, I take his meaning of “thick description” to be one that results from the ethnographer journeying into and seeing “with” (rather than plain “seeing”) his/her subjects, while simultaneously “inscribing” them in writing in such a way that even his/her subjects can access and “peruse” the description. Here, his distinction between “experience-near’ and “experience-distant” concepts is relevant. The former refers to what subjects “naturally feel and effortlessly use to define what he or his fellows see, feel, think,” whereas the latter refers to what a specialist such an ethnographer uses to explain their ideas (Geertz, 1983, p. 57) The difference is of degree, not of binary. Geertz advises ethnographers to figure out the balance and degree in their field sites, but being alert to some distinction is necessary “so 26 as to not produce an interpretation of the way a people lives which is… imprisoned within their mental horizons, an ethnography of witchcraft by a witch, [or] systematically alert to the distinctive tonalities of their existence, an ethnography of witchcraft written by a geometer.” (ibid) I am greatly influenced by this distinction, and because it gels so well with my understanding of the grounded theory methodology (which I explain next), my “experience-near” concepts would appear a tad more “distant” than some of Geertz’s examples if my subjects were to read this work; however I wager my “experience- distant” concepts, which are the three core categories (“resocialization,” “tacit knowing,” and “tacit anticipation”) emerging from this work, would appear more “near” to my subjects; it’s just that they would not have “naturally” described the core categories as I do. Which brings me to a final takeaway from Geertz: his suggestion that ethnographic writing be “microscopic.” If an interpretation takes us into the “heart of that which it is an interpretation,” then I don’t see how writing cannot be microscopic; Geertz implores ethnographers to move away from “grand realities” and instead attempt “exceedingly extended acquaintance with extremely small matters.” (1973, p. 21) I take much reassurance in this solicitation. I am detail-oriented, and the reason I was attracted to this project is not simply because it was about film and television, but because it would give me the chance to write “microscopically,” i.e., to be alert to what Malinowski (1922) refers to as the “imponderabilia” of actual life… collected through minute, detailed observation.” Malinowski’s plea, made nearly a century ago, isn’t puffiness parading as science. Ganti (2014) has recently argued that media industry scholars and ethnographers also take Malinowski’s concept seriously, and consider conducting “long-term, sustained 27 participant observation” rather than “short-term parachuting.” I concur, and my eighteen months spent on two film crews made me alert to my subjects’ “imponderabilia,” which I “inscribed” into my core categories. Finally, in this regard, I am also inspired by Margaret Mead’s ethnographic writing as described by Lutkehaus (1995) as “oscillating” between lush prose that is novelistic, authorial and artistic on the one hand, to a scientific, systematic, and more detached style on the other. The ethnographer, like the novelist, writes in detail, but unlike the novelist, is “helplessly dependent on what happens.” (p. 190) The balancing act here can be thought of as the ethnographer trying to approach ‘accuracy’ by evocatively expressing insights, while knowing and showing how they come from a particular perspective (“from where I sit,” as Mead calls it). Here we have a useful contrast between Malinowski’s suggestion to be able to grasp the microscopic in situ, and Mead’s method of elucidating it in writing. Grounded Theory I use grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Strauss, 1987; Strauss & Corbin 1998) as my method to produce a version of what Geertz would call a hierarchy of “experience-near” and “experience-distant” concepts, i.e., ordered concatenations of interpretive meanings that orient my subjects’ lives. Glaser & Strauss “proposed grounded theory as a practical method for conducting research that focuses on the interpretive process by analyzing the “actual production of meanings and concepts used by social actors in real settings”.” (Gephart [2004], quoted in Suddaby [2006], p. 633) Evidently, there is harmony between interpretive ethnography and grounded theory (and phenomenology for that matter; see Goulding [2005]). To an extent, both are rooted in the “pragmatism of the early symbolic interactionists, particularly George Herbert 28 Mead… [who] rejected the notion that scientific truth reflects an independent reality… [but] instead… results from both the act of observation and the emerging consensus within a community of observers as they make sense of what they have observed.” (Suddaby, p. ) I take out the requirement of the “emerging consensus.” As an ethnographer vying for a balance between experience-near and experience-distant concepts, I am not interested in, and indeed would be committing an error of validity, if I aimed for a consensus with my subjects. That would be an “ethnography of witchcraft by a witch,” as Geertz evocatively put it. What differentiates grounded theory from interpretation is that grounded theory is, quite explicitly, theory. Strauss & Corbin (1998) say that grounded theory begins with the ethnographer’s field notes (and interview transcripts), and with the process of “open coding” (which might later supplemented by “axial coding” and “selective coding”). 18 Open coding is alive to “phenomena,” which are “central ideas in the data” represented as “concepts,” which in turn are the “building blocks of theory,” which further group into higher “categories.” Phenomena lead to concepts; concepts build categories. Phenomena are the windows of meaning that the researcher discovers, ascribes or recalls in the data. Further, “properties” are “characteristics of a category,” and “dimensions” are the “range along which… properties of a category vary.” Finally, “sub-categories” are “concepts that pertain to a category, giving it further clarification and specification.” (p. 101) This typology of categories, sub-categories, and their properties and dimensions, is the sum total theoretical produce, grounded in interpretation, of my sustained grounded theory 18 It is not the aim of the methodology section to provide definitions beyond what the reader might for the remaining chapters. 29 endeavor, a contribution made by this dissertation. Appendix 2 provides a tabular summary of said theoretical produce. Crucially, they are theory because I showcase how they are related: not just how subcategories and their properties and dimensions are related to higher-level or core categories, their properties and dimensions, but also how the core categories are related to each other. Moreover, in the content chapters—Chapters 2, 3, and 4—I put the categories in conversation with a relevant empirical literature (respectively, workplace socialization, team collaboration, and industrial labor). This is akin to what Strauss (1987) calls “substantive theory.” (p. 242) In the final Chapter 5, I interrelate all categories as dialectically building on each other, which is akin to what Strauss calls “formal theory” (ibid), “developed for a formal or conceptual area of inquiry” (in this case, going to the terminology at the top of the chapter, work/industry professionalization). “Formal theory” can be explained in another way. Ragin (1992) suggests that formal theory answers the question, “What is this a case of?” Taking the lead from Becker, he explains: To begin research with a confident notion of ‘what is a case?’... is counterproductive. Strong preconceptions are likely to hamper conceptual development. Researchers probably will not know what their cases are until the research, including the task of writing up the results, is virtually completed. What it is a case of will coalesce gradually, sometimes catalytically, and the final realization of the case’s nature may be the most important part of the interaction between ideas and evidence... The lesser sure that researchers are of their answers, 30 the better their research may be... Working through the relation of ideas to evidence answers the question “What is this a case of?” (p. 6; emphasis added) Ragin inadvertently makes the case for the theoretical power of grounded theory. Eschewing the idea of mere “case studies,” which may or may not talk to each other, he advises—or at least I argue this is his import—that researchers find a thread connecting their cases and figure out, channeling Geertz, not just “what the devil [subjects] think they are up to,” but what the researcher, interpreting “over their shoulders,” works through and stumbles upon as a case of they are up to. In other words, the researcher “encases” (Lichterman, 2014, p. 5) interpretations with explicitly laid out relations among sub-categories and core categories: the researcher encases interpretations with theory. In Chapter 5, I make clear what I believe I have a “case of”: something akin to “professionalization,” but not how the professional socialization literature considers it. I “encase” my grounded categories through a dialectical approach, and in describing what I mean by “dialectic,” I constrain—persuasively, I hope—how we should understand “professionalization.” To return to the research question that started me off on this ethnographic journey, “Film students work together knowing what?” my tentative response is that they work together knowing—tacitly—that they are collectively undergoing a “dialectic of professionalization,” and thus they need to have worked together. A final point. The idea of what it is I have a case of—which is the core category in each content chapter—is made even more robust in the chapter’s “conversation with literature.” This brings up a common worry about grounded theory: to what extent are the concepts and categories truly novel? Can ethnographers really enter the field without 31 prior knowledge and biases, without their favorite concepts? How do they avoid the trap of proffering categories that are in actuality verifications of prior theory (and thus the research endeavor, the worry goes, produces no novel knowledge)? The response is simple. Grounded theory practitioners do not pretend that they are entering the field with a blank slate (Suddaby, 2006); that is practically impossible. As researchers we are curious beings and might be immersed in a plethora of fields. I recognize, even cherish, the sum total of my prior intellectual influences, shoulders that I stand upon. More to point, I recognize that only by following them through and having them converse with each other was I even able to arrive at my particular field site with my particular research question. In this regard, Suddaby states: The reality of grounded theory research is always one of trying to achieve a practical middle ground between a theory-laden view of the world and an unfettered empiricism. A simple way to seize this middle ground is to pay attention to an extant theory but constantly remind yourself that you are only human and that what observe is a function of both who you are and what you hope to see.” (2006, p. 635; emphasis added) In sum, in this dissertation, grounded theory, due to my being inspired from and initially familiar with a host of literatures and disciplines, paved the way for my actually being able to attend to a myriad actions and utterances in the field. Later, in exhuming my core categories from webs of interpretation, I was able to return in a more informed, and hopefully more enriching, manner, to substantive as well as formal areas of thought. Indeed, this is very much my grounded theory; these are very much my core categories. 32 “Levels of Analysis” and Chapter Breakdown Once I began developing a typology of categories, sub-categories, properties, and dimensions, I came across the challenge of organizing my chapters. I did not know at the time that the “formal theory” thread I would be drawing would be inspired by Hegel’s dialectic. Thus, I had to return to a more basic set of intuitions and hunches. I had to ask, ‘How was I already interpreting my subjects’ discourse and practices?’ I didn’t have to go far to realize that, at the most basic level, I differentiated film students from the work they did in film crews, which in turn were issued by the curriculum of the film school, which further was influenced by the film industry. The following excerpt from my interview with Maurice, the DP of Guffaw, makes these aspects conspicuous. In fact, they correspond to what Lotz & Newcomb (2012) delineate as five “levels of analysis” or “multiple types of influence” that can be recognized in studies of the “production of media entertainment.” Ritesh: “Do you think being in the environment of [film school] is similar to the industry experience for people who don’t go to school?” Maurice: “I’ve been thinking whether they [the film school] are trying to recreate for us an industry-safe environment. Meaning, it’s like the industry, but it’s safe, where you can’t do wrong. Meaning, your job doesn’t ride on it. It’s just really your reputation and your grades.” Ritesh: “Do you think that’s something you’re thinking or people think in this program?” Maurice: “I’m wondering if the people running the program are considering it. Whether they’re doing this as a training ground to break you in… And that really 33 comes, I think, to surface in [a first year course]… I think the whole course is designed to break you.” - Excerpt from interview This excerpt shows the thoughts of an individual student, an aspiring filmmaker [Lotz & Newcomb’s “Level 5,” “individual agent”], who reflects on the experience of working on a class project, an individual film [“Level 4,” an “individual production”], where the class is organized as part of the curriculum of the film school [“Level 3,” particular organization”], which in turn sees itself as operating within or influenced by the American film industry [“Level 2,” “specific industrial context.] Lotz & Newcomb suggest a fifth “Level 1,” “national and international political economy and policy.” I posit that this level is not amenable to ethnographic analysis, or at least that I did not come across data that might be interpreted at that level. Overall, though, I do find their taxonomy appealingly simple. Further, given the proliferation of concepts and categories in my first rounds of coding, I decided that a simple organizing principle would work best for chapters. Most crucially, though, as the above interview excerpt with Maurice shows, I realized that students themselves thought of their experience in terms of these four levels. That was the clinching factor. Further, it is clear that Maurice—in his trying to puzzle through his complex experience—does not think that the levels operate independently of each other (a point curiously not accentuated by Lotz & Newcomb). A quick reflection on my own way of understanding students’ experience (here I browsed the “memos” I had been developing, per Strauss & Corbin’s methodology) revealed that I too almost always interpreted students’ discourse and practice as embedded across levels. Individual students interfaced 34 with groups and organizations; group life was contextualized by organizational structures; and individuals, groups and organizations each showed evidence of influence from and interaction with the larger industry. My presentation of ethnographic evidence had to be buffered by this very alive structure of levels nested within other levels. After all, what gives social life its pulse is that that the individual faces someone or something differently complex than he or she. Therefore, the chapter breakdown for this dissertation is as follows. I do not preview the findings of each chapter (I have already provided hints) because I want the reader to discover the emergence of grounded theory concepts in a manner similar to how they emerged for me during analysis and writing. Chapter 2: Individual students embedding themselves in groups | Core category: “resocialization” Chapter 3: Work in groups | Core category: “tacit knowing” Chapter 4: Groups and/of individuals embedded in organizations and industries | Core category: “tacit anticipation” A quick note: only Chapter 3 is not organized around an interface. This is mainly due to logistical reasons. I found that I had a lot more evidence for work done by film students in film crews, so I devoted an entire chapter to that level, and moved the relatively less voluminous data that fell under the “groups embedded in organizations” interface to Chapter 4. Having laid out my methods, I proceed to the first content chapter, individuals in groups. 35 CHAPTER TWO: THE “RESOCIALIZATION” OF INDIVIDUAL STUDENTS INTO FILM CREWS Opening Shot “This is the first time you’re breaking into departments. Does everyone understand what that means? This is one of the few times you get to interface with other departments, so take advantage of that.” - Production faculty on first day of a graduate-level Production Class in LAFilm In the lobby of the location we were about to scout, Maurice asked me whether I would be looking to follow another production class in the future. I told him I would be looking for an industry set, to which he casually remarked, “Oh, a professional set?” - Field notes, location-cum-tech scout for Guffaw on which Maurice is a cinematographer “If you want me to be your keyboard operator for the day, that’s fine.” - Overheard in the courtyard of LAFilm, an editor venting about the director to a fellow crew member in Production Class Sid: “I think as Dade found himself unable to deal with certain issues, he would kind of informally cede authority over those things by talking to the rest of the crew and saying, “Well, this department is beyond my control at this point. They’re gonna do it this way and I’m just need to make the most of it.” Ritesh: “Do you think that’s a good thing?” Sid: No, I don’t think so. I mean, I think in terms of interpersonal relationships, it was the smart thing for him to do. I think in terms of getting the best movie, perhaps not.” - Excerpt, interview with Sid, an editor on Guffaw, commenting on Dade, the director Cate: “I know Production Class is a lot of time and a lot of effort. I really wanted to pick carefully the crew. I know at this point how badly things can go if you’re on the wrong crew or wrong project.” - Excerpt, interview with Cate, a cinematographer on Guffaw These introductory vignettes portray many of the key themes of this chapter. They are drawn from field notes and interviews with student filmmakers from the crew of Guffaw, one of the two student films I followed during my research at LAFilm. In this chapter, I foreground my interactions with the crew of Guffaw, and use Ingrates largely as a point of comparison. My experience of following an actual Production Class (as 36 opposed to a thesis film), for which a crew was assembled in a particular fashion and for which a film had to be made in just the course of a semester, brought into perspective a key social phenomenon that was obscured while I was following Ingrates. I call this phenomenon “resocialization.” It is the core grounded theory category introduced in this chapter and one of the key contributions of this dissertation. Put differently, I came to see the individuals on Ingrates as better “resocialized” as a crew only after I realized that students on Guffaw were much less so. I began to understand resocialization as the first key moment on the “dialectic of professionalization” that in this dissertation I argue punctuates students’ film school experience. Let me examine the vignettes briefly. There was the slightest doomsday undertone in the production faculty’s asking the assembled students in the early minutes of the first day of the class whether, quite frankly, they knew what they had signed up for: they were going to be put together in crews! Her question caught me by surprise? Doesn’t all filmmaking happen because of a film crew? Moreover, these graduate film students have completed their first year, so don’t they all at least have some prior experience of being in a crew? What does it mean to not “take advantage of” being on a crew? Immediately, it struck me that I was witnessing not filmmaking per se, but student filmmaking. Lending credence to the student filmmaking rather than just filmmaking interpretation was cinematographer Maurice in his remark during the location scout that potentially, this crew was not a “professional” one. More throwaway remarks such as the one communicating resignation, even indignation, of being a keyboard operator for a day suggested that filmmakers or student filmmakers, whoever these individuals are, are often 37 dissatisfied, covertly if not overtly, with their assigned responsibilities; or more provocatively, they actively resist being ‘relegated’ to any responsibility or role other than that of ‘director’. Besides, that responsibility itself was described by Sid, one of the two editors on Guffaw, as something that can quickly devolve into a binary of either good relations or good film but never both, a state of affairs he regarded as undesirable. And with Cate’s remark, based on her prior experience as an editor for a previous iteration of the same Production Class, experience that no other crew member on Guffaw enjoyed, it becomes clear that the ‘matching’ of individuals and crews is a vital phenomenon on which rests, as Sid suggested, some sort of tradeoff or equilibrium between the quality of interpersonal relations among students and the quality of their film. In sum, the vignettes suggest that the individuality of students can be at odds with their being fellow crewmembers. It is this tension that this chapter explores. The chapter proceeds as follows, weaving its way through three of Guffaw’s production meetings. First, I showcase four “factors of individuality” prior to and important for resocialization into film crews. I found that “ambition”, “desire”, “restraint”, and “aesthetic subjectivity” are key discursive factors that individuals have cultivated along their journeys that brought them to graduate film school as well as factors that predict the degree of their resocialization into film crews. This set of concepts, largely grounded in evidence from two of Guffaw’s production meetings, paves the way for miniature portraits of some of these individuals’ journeys to film school and crews in terms of these factors, portraits in which I explicitly connect the factors of individuality to the concept of “directorialness,” and in turn to the social phenomenon of resocialization. At this juncture, I change gears to converse with the literature on 38 socialization and use it to illuminate what is old and what is new and “substantive” about the category “resocialization”. This leads to the chapter’s centerpiece example of a third charged production meeting, wherein I solidify the definition of resocialization, and in turn, flesh out its the conceptual dependencies by connecting it to the notion of “inexperience”, which I demonstrate manifests in part as degrees of “inefficiency” during the practice of filmmaking, as well as qualify the influence of “prior personal and/or professional history” with crewmembers. The takeaway at this juncture can be stated in caricature: No satisfactory resocialization, no satisfactory filmmaking experience, present or future. The last section involves a second conversation with the literature, this time focusing on the tension between the individual as ‘auteur’ and individuals having to socialize into the particular organizational unit that is a film crew. I end the chapter by exploring in what ways Guffaw’s director, Dade’s, individuality and directorialness interfered with adequate resocialization, and how in turn that connected to the “preening” of his “reputation” by others. The “Individuality” of Individual Students: Four Discursive “Factors” “Ambition” Some students in LAFilm are overtly ambitious about future success, whereas some are ambitious in their particular filmmaking roles. Some show ambition with highly conceptual material, whereas others ambitiously work their way through the politics and social circles of the school. A later section explores how individuals’ journeys to the graduate program helped inculcate ambition and other factors of individuality; this section explores how discourse—understood as everyday talk, chatter, proclamations, 39 speeches, gossip, or what have you—especially during production meetings, revealed permutations of individuality in students. Success and ambition. Take for instance how Dade concluded his first production meeting. Let me just repeat. I think we have the best crew of all films. That’s why I chose us. Just because we are doing a comedy does not mean each of us shouldn’t give it our all. I want to blow other films out of the water. I want to go Sundance with [our] film. - Excerpt from field notes Here, Dade associates the genre of comedy with great films, encourages the crew to not make the opposite connection, and states with fervor his ambition to submit the film as a short to the Sundance Film Festival, the most prestigious film festival for independently produced (i.e., not produced by Hollywood studios) feature-length and short films. Earlier in the production meeting, when the crew was running down the departmental needs for each scene during filming, somebody had asked which of two options was easier, to which Dade assertively yet politely interjected, “Get it out of your minds what’s easier or not easier. A better way to do it would be ask ‘feasible or not feasible’. This might be a comedy but we are not selling ourselves short.” That assertion, along with the above mini-speech, communicated the extent of Dade’s vision. The crew was not merely students merely making another short film for a mere production class; their film would and should be worthy to submit to Sundance. Did other students care about the film being submitted to Sundance? Some might have more so than others, but it depended on a few things. Generally, a director or 40 producer feels greatest ownership of a film, so a crewmember, while they stand to benefit by association if the film were to get into Sundance, is not immediately concerned or responsible for how the film turns out. Furthermore, students might be simultaneously working as director or producer on other projects and might be more concerned about getting those films into the “festival circuit.” The point is that Dade was communicating his ambition to the crew, hoping that it would help align them to work better. Difficulty of craft and ambition. Dade was also ambitious with regard to making difficult choices regarding the craft of filmmaking. For one of the transitions between scenes, he wanted to replicate the transition toward the end of the 2012 Denzel Washington film Flight, one that coincided with a key revelation about the lead character’s fate. His ambition did not translate to a lot of the crew, who disagreed about not simply how to achieve the difficult transition given their expertise and budgetary resources, but also whether the scene was necessary for the “story.” By contrast, on Ingrates, the crew was much better aligned in planning and executing two ambitious scenes. While the Ingrates scenes were not of the same level of difficulty as what came to be known as the “Denzel” transition in Guffaw, all Ingrates crewmembers including the director agreed they were relatively ambitious given the needs of the story, the film’s budget, and the crew’s expertise. Ambition can thus not only refer to external features such as status and recognition, but to features internal to the craft of making of a film, such as level of difficulty. Personality and ambition. Of course, ambition is a personality characteristic as well. In all the time I have spent in the film school, I came across many students who were overtly ambitious, or at least talked the talk. In fact, to talk big is normative in the 41 film school environment. Thus it was interesting to hear Kim, Guffaw’s sound designer and mixer, confess to me during our interview that she is “not an assertive person, unfortunately. I want someone to seek me out, unfortunately.” Kim elaborated in our interview on her difficult experience with the Guffaw and other projects because she was not assertive, which in turn suggested that she did not see herself as ambitious. Versatility in skills and ambition. Another property of being ambitious is being versatile with regard to filmmaking skills. Cate described her juggling of various options on various films before she accepted the DP (‘Director of Photography’, which is the same as cinematographer) position on Guffaw. She was considering accepting the offer to work in the sound department for another film for the same Production Class, when she got a call from Duane, one of Guffaw’s producers, about whether she had thought about “DPing”. In our interview, she said, “To be truthful, I had thought about it but I didn’t have ton of experience. I didn’t have enough confidence. I didn’t think anyone would ever allow me to DP because I didn’t have enough experience... DP however is a totally different position.” Cate explained how she understood different positions in terms of their similarity in type of skill. So, even though she did not have enough experience in sound, she did have plentiful editing experience and both sound and editing are “detail- oriented and meticulous.” Cate was ambitious enough to take the risk of trying her hand at cinematography. She was a fifth semester graduate student and wanted to develop a diverse tool kit for after film school. Moreover, her lack of confidence in the job of cinematography was compensated by one of her cinematography professors’ recommending her for the position as well as her impression that she was approached by Guffaw “based on reputation and work ethic because they knew people I worked with 42 before.” Compared to other students I spoke to, Cate was more ambitious, or active, in developing a diverse set of filmmaking skills. Story, storytelling and ambition. Finally, the scope of the story can itself be ambitious. This is a strong point of contrast between Guffaw and Ingrates. While the former’s editor Maya described the film as “such a simple story” that it was hard to execute it wrongly, the latter’s producer Jolene said during our interview that even as the film was in post-production, she had no idea what the film was actually about. “It’s all in Ben’s head,” she smilingly shrugged, alluding to the director’s seemingly solipsistic involvement with the story. Jolene’s stance towards the film also suggests her particular type of ambition. Ortner (2013) found that producers of independent films are often the reason a film gets off the ground and that they ambitiously nurture the film all the way from grasping the seed of the story to getting recognition in festivals. Ben would eventually submit Ingrates to the Sundance festival, but Jolene did not show ambition with regard to being involved with the story idea; rather she channeled her ambition of doing a good job to aspects of the producer’s role that did not overlap with other roles (e.g., budget, crafty [food], locations). In sum, we come to see individual students as differing in ambitions, with regard to (1) success, (2) difficulty of execution, (3) personality, (4) versatility and (5) scope of story and storytelling. With Kim, I’ve shown what it means to not be ambitious enough, and a bit later, I’ll allude to the darker side of ambition: “brashness.” Now, let’s see how ambition differs from a particular understanding of the concept “desire”. 43 “Desire” During another production meeting of Guffaw, one that took place four weeks after Dade’s mini-speech about Sundance, when 40% of the production or filming days had already been completed, Abe, one of the production designers, asked the crew’s permission to leave the meeting early. Abe asks the crew about the email he had sent the previous day to which nobody had replied. He says, “You guys know me and you know how much I love the Beatles. There is an event going on right now. I really want to be able to attend it.” People are quiet for a minute. Gail, one of the producers, said, “I don’t know how to respond to that. If you just ask me, personally, absolutely not.” She says there is a lot of production design work to be discussed for the upcoming weekend. Duane, the other producer, strikes a compromise, saying that he would be okay if Abe gets on the phone later tonight and discusses his part of the job requirements. No one else says anything… Abe takes this opportunity to leave, and on his way out mumbles, not entirely sincerely, “Love you guys.” - Excerpt from field notes Abe could not have picked a more tension-laden moment to ask leave of his crewmembers. With 60% of the production days still ahead of them, many of which required the most intense involvement of the production design [PD] department, Abe’s input was explicitly deemed necessary by Gail and Duane. More on point, the crew had just spent 30 minutes of the meeting—time that is supposed to be spent on carefully 44 planning departmental logistical issues so that everything runs smoothly on set during filming—dramatically hashing out interpersonal issues (discussed below). They had just arrived at a temporary truce and there was the slightest specter of resolution regarding being properly cooperative without having “attitude.” It was then Abe dispelled the unity by asking what some in the crew deemed an improper favor. That dissonance is exactly what I refer to when I claim that individual students have “desires” that are not ‘proper’ or incongruent with the prevalent mood or established working philosophy of their group. When individuals express their wanting to act on the desire, as Abe did about exiting the production meeting in favor of going to watch the Beatles, they tarnish their impression of being a ‘team player’. “Desire,” in the particular way I use it, is not merely a factor of individuality; it is a factor of idiosyncrasy. And filmmaking usually does not proceed smoothly if too many idiosyncrasies are at play, since they can’t usually be resolved against each other. A few months later, in our interview, Abe confessed that he had “checked out” of the group soon after filming had begun, because he realized that he didn’t believe in the script, the director or the choices made by the crew. Also, he surprisingly admitted that he had a hard time being on the crew of a film that he wasn’t directing. So, to use the concept differently, Abe didn’t properly “desire” as a crewmember. His desire only served him as an individual; unlike “ambition”, desire isn’t directed towards the film, the filmmaking or the crew. 19 19 For now, I only provide one example of desire because it was at the moment of Abe’s jarring request that it became clear to me that such a category existed. And it also became clear that few to no individuals on the crew of the other film, Ingrates, had displayed vagrant desires. No surprise then that the Ingrates crew by and large functioned better than Guffaw’s. 45 “Restraint” and “Confidence” (or their negative, “Brashness”) Restraint as moderation of brashness. “Restraint” in working in a group is usually a good thing, and usually being too restrained is less of a vice than being too unrestrained, or what I call being “brash”. In general, it would be fair to say that individual students on Guffaw were less restrained and showed more instances of brashness than did individuals on Ingrates. A discussion on brashness, or as Dade called it, “attitudes,” came up in the same production meeting that Abe left to watch the Beatles. In fact, several crewmembers had discussed the need for restraint privately, but this was the first time the crew discussed it as a group. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the only time a production meeting was derailed to discuss interpersonal relations rather than the direct needs of the film. During the weekend prior to the meeting, the crew was filming inside a small house to shoot the movie’s dinner scene. The quarters were close, with a 25-strong cast and crew crammed into a living room, dining room and kitchen. Around lunchtime of the first day, Juan, one of the production designers, and Duane had a vocal disagreement in the living room, in immediate earshot of the cast. The two already had had prior scuffles. This one originated when Juan made a comment about Duane not doing his job getting lunch on time. Duane, normally restrained if also often slightly on edge, lost his cool and said, “If you want to talk, let’s take it outside. I can throw a hissy fit outside.” When Juan didn’t respond, Duane left the house. Clearly, having such an argument in front of the cast let alone the crew violated standards of professional conduct, in the same way that employees fighting in front of customers are considered unprofessional. Cast, or “talent”, as they are referred by the 46 industry (and film school), are treated as dignitaries on a film set; I got to know this first hand in my duties as the 2 nd assistant director. The cast members make your story come alive, they are behind whom a crew rallies. Students know or pick up this standard of etiquette early on. Thus, unsurprisingly, Juan and Duane’s scuffle was one of several factors that led to the discussion of “attitudes” a few days later in the production meeting. The crewmember under scrutiny was Juan, however, not Duane. Having followed the crew for nearly a month, I was not surprised. In a production class of opinionated, aspiring filmmakers, Juan was definitely one of the most opinionated. On numerous occasions he would laugh during a screening. Even if well-intentioned, his reactions would often come across as unwarranted, critical and impulsive. One of the crewmembers recounted during a later interview that Juan was one of the last crewmembers to be staffed on Guffaw, partly because he talked a big game. When I asked her in our interview how she knew Juan, Cate knowingly smiled, “Who hasn’t heard of Juan?” Dade stated that for the most part he was happy with the crew, although a “crazy individual” snuck in; his referent was obvious. Juan’s partner in PD, Abe, even though he said he got along fine with Juan, said that initially he did not expect to, and stated point blank, “Think about every production meeting if we took Juan out of the equation for a second. Looks totally different, right? He was a wild card.” Abe, however, also pointed out that both Duane and Juan had “short fuses.” The production meeting in question exemplified how some of his fellow crew talked about Juan. Dade once again prefaced the production meeting with a mini-speech of sorts. Seated at the head of the rectangular table, he stated: 47 I want to talk about attitudes. I think of our crew as family and the actors as second cousins. If we have attitude and others see it, then others will also have attitude. If day players visiting the set see us not listening to Tina [the 1 st AD], then they don’t listen to Tina. I said it before, and I’ll say it again. We’ve got the best film crew. But it’s the small things that throw us off. Don’t take it personal. We are not here to beat up on each other. We are here to help each other. I’ll tell you one thing. We all got experience but that shit don’t fly when we get out of here. - Excerpt from field notes Dade then turned explicitly to Juan, and what followed was an intense 25-30 minute heated back-and-forth between Juan and the rest of the crew. Not everyone spoke up, but those who did—including Duane, who got up several times to patiently make his own mini-speeches—tried to make Juan understand that he obviously had the right to express his viewpoint, but he should refrain from doing it in public. Juan vehemently defended himself, saying that “I am an artist of the 21 st century,” implying that others may have caught up to his artistry. Duane stood up and reminded him, “You embarrassed me, you humiliated me.” Juan, pushed to a corner, refused to accept any blame, alleging that if everyone including Duane did their job properly, then he wouldn’t need to opine. Gail reiterated that the best management strategy has proven to take people aside and talk to them about any issues. Still, Juan was having none of it. He and Duane were not the only individuals who was unable to restrain themselves while working, but they, and Juan especially, were an extreme example, driving home the idea that if students have to work well together in a group, each must occupy their proper place within it. 48 Brashness as excessive confidence. The other kind of brashness is a sort of excessive “confidence” in one’s abilities. Now, it is entirely possible that this confidence is justified, but according to LAFilm students, such justification is found only in reputation or outcomes. About half the budding filmmakers I interviewed were very confident in a particular skill. Sid, one of Guffaw’s editors, half-jokingly told others at a shot planning meeting that theirs was going to be the best film of Production Class because he was editing it (others smiled along). Abe spoke of the screening of his short from a first year production class: “I know it sounds like blowing smoke up my own ass but it was like one of the best of the night.” Abe later added that he thought he was a very good writer. Two other students discovered that they had great producer skills after their respective crewmembers abandoned them (in separate projects). One of the student assistants threw in a statistic during our interview: not only did he think he was one of the better directors at the school, he thought that only 20% of the student body was any good and would find success and the remaining 80% would have to follow. This for him was similar to the natural order of things. I do not mean to suggest that confidence in one’s skills is unwarranted. Rather, I got the sense from some students that they leaned heavily into their own perception of their reputation. In none of the examples above, to the extent I saw the students doing work, did the overconfidence directly hamper group effort. In that sense, brashness as lack of restraint is different from overconfidence. However, I can say that most of the examples of overconfidence came from the Guffaw crew. In the Ingrates crew, I did not find clear-cut examples of crewmembers referring to their own skills or success. That crew talked more about their perception of other crewmembers’ reputations and was 49 more interested in getting down to the business of actually making the film. The takeaway about confidence is cautionary. It is possible that when enough people in a crew think they are above average that disagreements or misalignments can form, or the discourse stays at the level of sorting through interpersonal relations rather than planning for filming, which is the purpose of production meetings. The takeaway about restraint, by contrast, is more dogmatic: individuals who exhibit lack of restraint tend to make difficult team players. Subjectivity, particularly Aesthetic Subjectivity Subjectivity has shades of desire and restraint but is its own entity. Juan, for instance, exemplified subjectivity in this manner. The crew completed its location scout for the dinner scene. Kim said, “Sound has no problem.” Abe, who in production meetings had often stressed the Jewish authenticity of aspects of the script, was also satisfied; he said the house was “very Jewish.” Juan, Abe’s partner in production design, quickly chimed in, “It is Jewish, but not LA Jewish,” which caused people to laugh and Juan to add, “That’s important!” Gail, continuing to make an effort to not discount Juan’s opinion, said, “Okay. That’s something we can talk about.” - Excerpt from field notes Here, Juan makes a subjective evaluation of a pre-production decision, and others tend to not take him seriously. Cate laughed when I later brought this up: “Yeah, whatever that means.” When I speak of “subjectivity” as a factor of individuality, I mean “aesthetic subjectivity.” Other factors of individuality are subjective as well. Desire is subjective in 50 the sense that it belongs to a particular subject or individual, and brashness is subjective because a particular individual is unable to exercise restraint or justify their confidence due to a host of other subjective factors. Thus, when I label a separate category as “subjectivity,” I refer to subjectivity about the particular type of domain the work falls under. For instance, subjectivity among medical students (Becker et al., 1961) might refer to the vagaries of the biochemical processes of the human body. Or when a disaster response team (Majchrzak et al.) bands together to respond to a flood, subjectivity therein might refer to the vagaries of knowledge about, say, geographical formations. Similarly, subjectivity as an individuality in filmmaking refers to the vagaries or different understandings of formal aesthetic and narrative principles. Gail and Duane, the two producers on Guffaw, exhibited a dance of irreconcilable subjectivity in the editing stage of Guffaw. For the twenty minutes that I witnessed their interaction, each was debating every slight change the other would want to make to the dinner scene in Guffaw. The editor, Maya, was executing their conflicting instructions with a sense of detached amusement. Gail would say something like, “The scene is not set up right,” to which Duane, nervously pacing about the tiny edit suite, would incisively respond, “That’s not what I’m saying.” Neither wanted to cave in, and in a couple of instances, Duane nearly reached over Maya to do the editing himself. When it came to the introduction of a secondary character, Gail’s general concern was being appropriate rather than jarring, whereas Duane’s concern was about the exact timing of the introduction. Both of them finally gave in. Gail said matter-of-factly, “We don’t see eye- to-eye;” Duane receded, “Yes, I’m tired of debating every little detail.” Gail and Duane were aesthetically subjectively incompatible. 51 Like brashness and desire, aesthetic subjectivity, when improperly channeled through the hierarchy of routines and roles (more on that in Chapter 3), can hamper group process. Juan’s sole voice of dissent on the appropriate Jewishness of a location didn’t prevent the group from agreeing on the location, but it added to the cacophony of subjective opining from Juan that factored into people’s frustration with him leading up to the production meeting about “attitudes.” Gail and Duane reaching a stalemate took away precious time and energy during the multi-step post-production process, and only added to the dozens of ‘cuts’ (edited concatenations) of the dinner scene already created by the director and editors; in other words, their differing subjectivity contributed little to the collaborative authorship of the dinner scene in the picture editing stage, and since both shared the same status, the voice of neither was on the face of it more authoritative. Just as restraint is a moderation of brashness and helps in smooth group functioning, so can subjectivity work well when it is properly motivated by the established workflow and role hierarchy of a group. But that is precisely the point I am making: subjectivity in that scenario is no longer a whim of individuality but rather demanded by the group process. In that case it is no longer called subjectivity. In Chapter 3, I describe a key example of the collaboration between the editor and director of Ingrates, a collaboration that exploited their differing subjective stances in a way that ultimately benefited the film. Review: The Four Factors of Individuality in Relation to Each Other Ambition is an individuality found in five aspects: expectations of external success, expectations about the possibilities internal to the craft, as well as to the story, a characteristic of personality, and expectations about a wanted skill set. Ambition thus has 52 a lot to do with an individual’s expectations. Desire is about the violation of a crew’s expectations regarding proper conduct because of one’s aberrant wants. Brashness is the opposite of restraint with regards to maintaining a particular temperament, decorum, or normative standard of behavior. Brashness can also be excessive confidence about one’s skills or achievements that is either different from others’ perception of those skills or achievements, or hampers crewmembers’ working together. Finally, aesthetic subjectivity refers to an individual’s strong stance on the principle of a craft or the “needs” of a story. All factors of individuality hamper group process—i.e., hamper resocialization—when they are not at their proper levels. Hence, this view of group process suggests that moderation is a virtue. Resocialization is an accomplishment in moderation. “Directorialness” & “Resocialization”: Paths to Film School & Film Crews Factors of Individuality and “Directorialness” Filmmaking is a collective activity. It is often said to be a collaborative activity. In fact, “collaboration” is among the most common words used to describe the group process, informally brought up by students as well as established filmmakers of the industry who visited LAFilm for screenings and panel discussions. However, when asked about how the particular crew of Guffaw worked together, the answers were usually quite negative. Kim, the sound designer, said the group worked “horribly”. Abe thought that Juan and he worked fine as production designers but the crew worked “terribly” as a unit. Maya, one of the editors with aspirations to be a comedy writer and director, said that Guffaw was the “most hilarious crew I’ve ever worked with, such a strange group of misfits.” She added, “I don’t know if people were keeping each other in check.” 53 “Keeping each other in check” (or moderation) may well have been the great ignored mantra of the Guffaw crew, but when crews such as Ingrates are better about keeping each other in check, then the individuals report a more satisfactory group process (and tend to agree that they made a decent, even a good film). If you’re a film student, no matter how wild your “ambitions,” idiosyncratic your “desires,” refined your aesthetic “subjectivity,” or deep-seated your “confidence,” you ultimately have to work together with students possessing different breeds and flavors of individuality. You have to learn how to assemble and/or become part of a crew. Something this seemingly obvious is a key aspect of the collective learning experience of filmmaking at LAFilm. Students, after all, are getting schooled. Flipping the paradigm, it might be said film schools and film crews are also getting ‘schooled’ by individuals. This is not surprising. In academia with auteur theory (Sarris, 2004), and in popular culture, great films are often equated with visionary individuals with distinctive artistic styles. The journeys of these great filmmakers—for instance, George Lucas, Ang Lee, Terrence Malik, Martin Scorsese, and Christopher Nolan—are well known in LAFilm to film students and faculty, mythologized during downtime on set or brought up prior to inspired turns in the edit suite. Abe gave the example of James Cameron, who is known to walk around the set wearing a hat that says “MFIC”, which stands for “mother fucker in charge”. He also gave the example of Steven Spielberg, who is said to be more easy-going but at the end of the day, his crew is still intent on delivering what he wanted. When I asked Abe why these same filmmakers said that filmmaking is collaborative, he said, “Well, it is a collaborative process. Like, you’re 54 not alone when you make any of these. The director is taking input from everybody. But in the end, they [the director] get to decide. They have the veto power.” So on one hand, we have the idea that filmmaking proceeds well only if individuals on a crew are able to keep each other in check, and on the other not exactly equivalent hand is the notion that a certain individual, usually the writer-director, has the ability to veto in order to get what they want from the crew. I call this latter quality one of the key facets of the grounded theory category, “directorialness.” A student brought up one meaning of this term, a meaning clearly held by faculty and students alike, as was evident in classroom discussions, courtyard banter, heated production meetings, and interviews. He said that he “immediately understood” the role of the director the best when one faculty explained it to him as, “All being a director is, is getting what you want.” ‘Getting what you want’ might be compatible with being able to listen to others and “keeping each other in check,” as Abe was suggesting about Spielberg, but it might equally well be orthogonal in the sense of Abe’s idea of James Cameron as a slave driver and autocrat. Neither way of going about being a director (and surely there are several more) implies that one’s factors of individuality are compatible with everyone else’s, where being ‘compatible’ is an important facet of being well “socialized” into a group. Roughly, being “directorial” can be thought of as being ambitious in one’s role as a director but with blinders on. And if a director has their blinders on, then it’s typically the job of the producer or the assistant director to keep them “in check.” Being “directorial” definitely means being ambitious with regard to story or one’s vision of the film, which is how it is understood in the context of film school, and which is in fact how it is enforced 55 by the routine set by the faculty for certain production classes where the director gets “final cut” (or edited version) of the film. Being “directorial” also implies that directors keep their own “desires” in check and focus on the film; I found that the most directorial of students were able to successfully do that, and sometimes took steps to keep at bay any unnecessary distractions. Moreover, being “directorial” is not necessarily correlated with being restrained or brash. I would say that the directors of both films I followed were restrained. However one of them, Dade, according to the vast majority of his fellow crew (and some of the faculty), had a misplaced sense of confidence in his abilities as a director, and yet being “directorial” is not the same as being a good or bad director. It simply means wanting to direct more than anything else: wanting to realize one’s vision and version of a story. Only sometimes is that accompanied by wanting to interact well with a crew. This last-mentioned way brings up the spectrum alluded to by Sid in the introductory vignettes of this chapter: students find that they have to actively choose whether to treat product (a good film) and process (good interpersonal relations) as a binary or as interwoven. I pose the idea about being “directorial” in terms of a director’s veto power partly as a counterargument to the view that individuals must learn and adjust in order to become crewmembers. By the end of this chapter but definitely by the end of the next, I will show that even the most visionary and directorial students realized they had to figure out what it takes to work alongside a crew, the school, and the industry in order to fulfill their vision of a great film. I hope to show that students, despite their diverse storied beginnings and entry points into film school, and their diverse degree of “directorialness” prior to getting on a film crew, had to engage in a “dialectic of professionalization.” 56 In what follows, I first portray the paths of individual students to film schools. By dividing them into two groups, those that are “not directorial or less directorial,” and those that are “more directorial or very directorial,” I don’t mean to foreground the role of the director or to discount the factors of individuality. My goal is threefold: (1) to show how students generally talk about their journeys to film school, (2) to show that the seeds of students’ ability to become crewmembers were sown in their particular mixes of individuality suggested by their journeys to film schools and particular film crews, and (3) to show how their level of “directorialness” as they entered school provided a context for their future levels of “directorialness” in film school projects. This directly leads to the next sub-section, in which I briefly portray their paths to the particular crews that I followed. The goal there is to explicitly show how a student’s individuality and directorialness predict how well they might resocialize into a film crew. All of this will eventually lead to discussing the centerpiece example of a heated Guffaw production meeting and the core grounded category “resocialization.” Portraits of Paths to Film School What are some of the storied beginnings and entry points of students in film school, and what do they tell us about students’ factors of individuality? Students come to LAFilm with a wide range of background experiences. Just in terms of undergraduate majors represented among my informants, we have broadcast journalism, English, design and media arts, theater, fine arts, history, business, and about four had majored in some aspect of film, be it film theory, production design or filmmaking. So even though my informants are humanities-skewed, many of them did not have a formal educational background in film prior to LAFilm. Additionally, faculty told me that, unlike other 57 schools, especially conservatories, LAFilm is known to accept students who have “never touched a camera before.” The “non-directorial” and “less directorial” types. Two student producers, Duane as well as Tanya, the producer on Tropos, did their undergraduate in broadcast journalism. Tanya’s first job after college was in marketing and entertainment, and even though she enjoyed “being creative, coming up with ideas for audiences, brands, and sponsors,” she found that it “wasn’t enough for me as a storyteller, as someone who really wants to touch people in a dynamic way.” So on weekends, she began to work grueling schedules to put together a television pilot based on her experience as a young, 20-something, that was also “cinematic, fun and interesting”. She described the process as the hardest thing she ever had to do, learning as she went along about how to get cameras, lights, and locations, holding casting sessions which were quite “professional and not too different from the ones she’s done at film school,” and roping in as much as she could her friends who were busy with their own work lives. In her words, she “began to be a producer without even knowing it.” She ultimately decided to come to LAFilm for school because “LA is where Hollywood is,” because she wanted to learn how to achieve a “certain quality in filmmaking,” and “fine-tune and polish my taste.” Further, compared to any other student, her goal was explicitly networking-oriented. She knew that “film, like fashion and music, is its own siloed club, and I needed to know the common knowledge people in the club knew.” Tanya came across as ambitious in personality and her expectations of success, but did not appear to possess a particular aesthetic subjectivity. Tanya presented herself always in terms of her future goals and her role as a producer, something that other students did not as keenly do during their interview. 58 Importantly, she was one of the few who admitted that she wasn’t immediately interested in being a director, but rather thought of herself as a writer-producer. We might classify Tanya as “non-directorial.” Duane’s route to school was more circuitous. He had worked in TV production as a videographer and editor for late night news, but found the schedule and routine “exhausting.” He worked with a TV conglomerate as a page (like the character Kenneth from the TV show 30 Rock, he chimed in, to my glee), which made him realize he was not suited to office work. Like Tanya, he pined for something “creative”. He thought of himself as having a “big imagination” and someone who “likes to do fun stuff and sketch stuff,” so he thought film school would be a suitable environment. Duane’s background did not show a particular skein of subjectivity, nor brashness or desire. Compared to Tanya, he did not present himself as ambitious prior to school. This is commonplace. Many students talk about their journey to film school as a conclusion of a past stage in their journeys, as the chance for a new beginning. Duane did not present himself as “directorial” either, save for a few instances like the above-mentioned debate with fellow producer Gail in the edit suite. A third producer, Jolene, on Ingrates, was the only student I spoke to who had “been raised around film”. Her aunt was a producer, her first time on a movie set was when she was five, “so film’s just been my passion.” Ironically to her, after she completed her undergraduate in film and served as a production assistant (typically the lowest position on a film set, but extremely common as an entry point into the apprentice- based system of Hollywood), she found herself a bit lost. Her friend pushed her to graduate school, and LAFilm was the only program she got into. If anything, Jolene 59 seemed to have come to school slightly low in her tank of ambition and confidence, and without a particular sense of aesthetic subjectivity; however, when she started school, she was open but not bent on the idea of directing. Thus, the three students who took on key roles as producers after their first year at LAFilm came to school low on directorialness, without a particular sense of aesthetic subjectivity, but with varying degrees of ambition and confidence. By contrast, the student who presented himself and whom other students understood (and resented) as having the most specific and also the most unapologetic and brash sense of subjectivity was Juan, the production designer on Guffaw. Unfortunately, I did not get a chance to interview him, so I do not know his path and expectations coming into school. However, in terms of aesthetic subjectivity, it turned out that those students who chose the roles of cinematographers in advanced classes and thesis projects after their first year at LAFilm did have a developed sense coming in. Yasha, the cinematographer on Ingrates, was on the path to becoming a doctor before he discovered the design and media arts major at his undergraduate institution, which made him realize his visual bent along with his ability to build stuff. He was ushered into the world of design. After undergraduate, he channeled these skills by spending a few years helping his cousins build a successful crawfish restaurant, literally “board by board”, learning how to perfect a recipe for crawfish, and crafting menus and interiors. Shortly after, he felt ready to do something different, applied and got into LAFilm, where he naturally fell into the DP (cinematography) track because he was “heavily visual; it’s my nature so I just tend to follow it.” Yasha thus came to school with a very particular and fairly cultivated aesthetic subjectivity, but he did not present himself 60 as being “brash” due to his success in the restaurant business. Yasha stated he did want to eventually direct but he was well-ensconced in the job and craft of a cinematographer. Another student who considers himself “visually-oriented” because of his background is Mikhail, who in fact served on a not very visual role on Tropos, that of 1 st assistant director (“AD”). Like Duane, he also worked in television news, but more as a camera man who would shoot, tape and put together live news stories. He quit after eight years because he got bored, especially since “I was like pretty much as high as you can go in the camera photographer business.” Mikhail described his entry into school as accompanied by a particular sense of subjectivity, with hopes to really go “in depth into the psychology, philosophy and aesthetics” of the visual and the “deeper subconscious study of the image.” He did not talk the talk of ambition or brashness, nor did he seem to be overly directorial coming in. Cate, the DP on Guffaw, did not have a visual sensibility as much as a meticulous, detail-oriented persona. She did not have any film experience before LAFilm, was an English major who loved stories, did a screenplay for her undergraduate thesis, and tinkered around during and after college with a camera gifted to her by her father along with Windows Movie Maker’s “super simple” editing software. She just “picked up” the craft assembling “mini-docs” about her travel adventures. After her undergraduate, she didn’t want to teach, so she decided to continue tinkering, which began to feel “really, really right,” at which point she applied to film school. Unlike Tanya, and like Duane and Mikhail, she did not seem to come to film school with a sense of ambition, brashness or directorialness, especially since she had no prior filmmaking experience. If anything, Cate seemed to be partial towards the editing and the cinematography tracks more than 61 others, which made sense because both crafts in her view required meticulous attention to detail. Similar to Cate was Maya, the editor on Guffaw, who majored in English but also film. Of her small hometown she said “there really wasn’t much to do, so you are really left to your own devices,” so her friend and she “would always make up these scripts and skits,” full of jokes and “funny ideas” that they wanted to “put in a movie.” This inclined Maya to come into school wanting to do comedy, and like Cate become more polished in technical skills that would later allow her to direct movies. Maya was possibly more directorial than others, but she seemed to want to prioritize mastering other areas of filmmaking before she took up directing. Another student, Tina, the AD on Guffaw, the only international student I followed (even though LAFilm has plenty of international students), had also majored in filmmaking but in her home country, “the film industry is like the child in kindergarten” and needed more professional, filmmaker-collaborators. So she came to LAFilm with the goal of eventually returning to her home country “to chase my dream about filmmaking.” Like Tanya, Duane, and Cate, Tina seemingly came in with a lesser sense of subjectivity and directorialness. Compared to all of the above, one student’s journey to LAFilm was less defined, even though she began her undergraduate in a well-known conservatory in which she focused on the production design track. Kim, the student who I above discussed described herself as not assertive, came to the MFA program because she had lost her way. Interestingly, she did not seem to come in with a production design subjectivity either; in fact, she described the role as a “glorified PA” (production assistant), like that 62 of a “gofer”, where you have to go fetch things like wardrobe or set dressing material. Kim, unlike her peers, portrayed herself as having little brashness, ambition, or directorialness, nor much of a defined subjectivity as she entered school. The “more directorial” to “very directorial” types. Sid provides the readiest contrast to the students in the previous section. He claims to have absolutely fallen for filmmaking when he watched the great Italian auteur Federico Fellini’s 8 ½. Prior to that, Sid was slowly beginning to understand what made a good movie. He gave the example of Fight Club: “There is this awesome melding of form and content… I finally realized there’s a point to why some might be in a wide shot and some in a closeup.” Watching 8 ½ at a summer camp sealed the deal for his career, and he banished his parents’ hope of sending him on the pre-med track. Sid majored in filmmaking at a famous film program on the East Coast, where he learned a very particular type of filmmaking: the realization of agreed-upon “objective principles,” prized over the more subjective, emotional responses; and where films were treated as works of art. During his undergrad, where he directed plenty of short features, Sid came to the conclusion that “I can see myself basically being miserable and doing whatever is required if I actually get to do this job.” He found initial success with his short films on the festival circuit, and went to work at MTV as an editor. Later, he was advised to come to LAFilm because it would be “a challenging environment that would not feel repetitive,” and he would have to “claw my way back to the top to show everyone that I was worthy to direct.” Clearly, Sid is directorial; this will become more evident in later sections. He is also ambitious in his expectations of making movies that match up to the standards of the great filmmakers he admires. He came in with an interesting mixture of brashness: restrained in his 63 interactions, but with definitely a greater (and to some of his crewmembers, possibly excessive) confidence in his abilities as a director and editor. Finally, Sid clearly bought into a particular type of aesthetic sensibility and type of movies he considered superior to others. Lavos, the student assistant for Production Class, was a Fine Arts major, worked afterward in the Marketing industry where he found prepping for the press tedious, but later, became Vice President with “assistants working for me,” so he felt he had “paid his dues a long time ago.” Lavos did not allude to coming in with a particular subjectivity, but he did enter with ambitions of success in the higher rungs of Hollywood and with a high degree of directorialness. Abe and Melbourne, the director of Tropos, came to similar realizations about their love for filmmaking. Abe had a circuitous set of discoveries as an undergrad, where as a theater major, he realized he might end up becoming a starving artist. So he switched to business and learned all about business theory, but then realized “that you cannot make a business unless you have a specialty,” and for a specialty, you need to find a “passion.” Since high school he had had a passion for music and had won awards for photography, so he asked himself, “what [field] does business, theater, music and pictures, and I was like, “Oh, movies”.” That’s when he took a screenwriting class in which people found his work funny, and “that feeling of people laughing was very addictive… so I just started making movies.” Thus, Abe came to LAFilm with some background in filmmaking and a moderate amount of directorialness. He had some confidence and a high degree of subjectivity. He told me that he dislikes realism in general and that his favorite genre is 64 “surreal comedies” like Amelie and Mary Poppins. From his interview, it did not appear that Abe came in with a high degree or type of ambition. Intriguingly similarly, Melbourne, who was a history major, originally wanted to be history professor and learned a lot of his history through movies, suddenly realized, since he was already into music, theater and photography, that movies were a combination of those things. He came to film school wanting to “learn about history and share what I know through story and the arts with as many people as I can. That’s how it all started.” Like 95% of the people who come in,” he too wanted to be a “writer- director” (clearly, my small, non-representative sample suggests otherwise). So Melbourne displayed a moderate degree of directorialness coming in, and some amount of ambition regarding telling stories with a “social message”, but unlike Abe, did not seem to have a strong aesthetic subjectivity. Don, the editor of Ingrates, said he was interested in film in high school, went to college to study business, and began to make films on the side. He became more committed to it during undergrad, and figured that if this was his passion, he may as well try to pursue it full time. He perceived grad school in LA to be the place where one makes contacts, so loaded up his truck and drove to California. Entering LAFilm, he had a relatively clear sense he wanted to be a writer-director, so he did exhibit directorialness, but it is not clear whether he came in with a cultivated subjectivity. The final example is Ben, the director of Ingrates, who said he grew up in the “Great Disney age” and was “always a cinephile” but it was not until he took a film theory class in college that he really fell in love and switched majors from English to film. He said that “if filmmaking was a language, he learned the vocabulary,” and in his 65 senior year, he realized he wanted to “make films, not just talk about them.” That’s when he applied to LAFilm. Ben, like Don and Melbourne, came in with a high degree of directorialness if not also a clearly defined subjectivity. Review: The relation of individuality and directorialness prior to resocialization. This section has discussed a small sample of LAFilm’s students’ journeys to film school. 20 I have tried to capture what students told me about their individuality and relate it to their sense of directorialness as they enter the program. I found that students who are more directorial are also more ambitious with regards to telling a story, even if they are not ambitious in personality or notions of success. However, it does not appear that students’ directorialness as they enter school is related to their developed aesthetic subjectivity. That is, all students irrespective of their directorialness can have a sense of subjectivity regarding aesthetics. It is also possible, as is the case with Kim or Duane, that a lack of directorialness is associated with a less defined subjectivity. 21 Further, I did not really find a case of students who started off as less directorial and proceeded to become more directorial leaving the program. However, it is clear to me that the six students I classified as ‘more’ to ‘very directorial’ remained so; if anything, their directorialness was further cemented. My discussion of resocialization explains some of this last-mentioned finding, and Chapter 3 provides additional explanations, although I don’t think I have the evidence to provide a full explanation of this statement. 20 I have left for later discussion Dade’s journey to film school and the film crew. 21 Additionally, all the students I classified as more directorial entering into the program were male, but gender (or race for that matter) is not a variable discussed in this dissertation, even though it is important; also, my sample size is too small and unrepresentative. 66 Portraits of Paths to Film Crews: Introducing “Resocialization” Melbourne, the director of Tropos, had already taken the same Production Class the previous semester, where he had worked on a film as the sound designer and mixer, a role he described as the “lowest on the totem pole” because sound considerations are “pushed to the end” of the workflow during production. He knew he wanted to direct a film with a big crew, and other than directing your own thesis, Production Class was the best opportunity to do so. Melbourne credited his prior experience with the structure of Production Class as vital in allowing him to prepare re-apply and be selected as a director (although he acknowledged there are always elements of luck and randomness). Besides, Melbourne said that his prior crew and cast got along really well, unlike the experience of another group; this positive factor further encouraged him to direct. Despite these factors, Melbourne, coming into the Class at the peak of his directorialness, had to make adjustments. During our interview, when Melbourne mentioned a faculty member’s manner of describing the director’s job as “getting what you want,” he reproduced Abe’s spectrum of directors who are “dictatorial” and directors who were “collaborative,” acknowledging there were a “zillion” ways in between. “I’d like to think I’m more collaborative. That’s what they definitely try to teach you in the school and especially that class.” And yet he readily admitted that his editors might have had difficulty with him in the edit suite because, following the same faculty’s advice, he did not leave the edit suite until he got the film he wanted. Further, when it came to cutting out what most faculty and his fellow crew thought was an overly ambitious scene, Melbourne said that he had a very difficult time agreeing (he eventually did). By the time we interviewed, he was a month away from graduating and was able to step back and see his time at LAFilm 67 as a great opportunity to practice a variety of roles (he had also edited a documentary) which would give greater control of the workflow in future projects. Overall then, for Melbourne, a lot of the film school experience was about making a series of small adjustments in different roles on different films, even as his directorialness increased. This series of adjustments I term “resocialization,” and they represent Melbourne’s particular resocialization. Finally, I’ve introduced the category resocialization. In this section, I hope to demonstrate some of the variability in individual students’ resocialization experiences. Common features about resocialization we can agree about at the outset is that it involves adjustment; moreover, adjustment means adjusting to the requirements of a group, or in LAFilm a particular crew and film; and that resocialization is a continuous, dynamic process, within a particular group and to different groups. I’ll mostly focus on the resocialization experiences of certain crewmembers of Guffaw, but before that, I will tease out the resocialization experiences of crewmembers of other films. Mikhail, who worked as the Assistant Director (AD) on Tropos, said that until his second semester at LAFilm, he had no idea what an AD does. So when he was contacted about ADing, he was not sure because all he had heard was “that’s a really terrible job.” But he was encouraged by Melbourne (three semesters his senior) and one of his professors to consider it because it was a “good opportunity to see how a set runs and just a learning experience and also the credit was cool.” Mikhail was still hesitant because given his interest in the visual, he didn’t see the benefit of learning that job. Yet he slowly fit himself into that position, which for him was the experience of resocialization. In other words, it was adjusting his penchant for the visual and his professed identity as a 68 writer and cinematographer to a new role. He thought he was able to do a decent job because he found that the AD was uniquely privy to understanding that “other people are (also) trying to do artistic things.” For Mikhail, resocialization into the Tropos crew implied expanding his understanding of filmmaking as involving plenty of competing interests (not just artistic ones) that as an AD he had to manage. And from his viewpoint, his was a successful resocialization, for “actually I learned a lot and like enjoyed it in the end.” Two crewmembers of Ingrates, Jolene the producer and Yasha the cinematographer, signed up primarily because of their prior relationship with Ben, the writer-director and also the executive producer since he was the sole drummer of the funding for the thesis film. Jolene and Ben had worked on another crew during their time at school, and afterwards, Ben asked her to produce. Jolene agreed, in part because she already had plenty of experience producing thesis films, which are seen as more ambitious than films made for production classes because they are not constrained in terms of budget. On the other hand, Ben considered Yasha to be one of his best friends in the program, and they had co-DPed a couple semesters prior for the same Production Class as Guffaw and Tropos. So they knew each other’s abilities as cinematographers; in particular they both agreed that one liked to place camera and the other liked to light. Agreement about each other’s technical skills and aesthetic subjectivity is an important aspect of getting resocialized to not just a crew but within a dyad or some meaningful subset of the crew. Ben and Yasha, and as we shall see later, Ben and editor Don’s resocialization to each other suggests that a smoothly functioning group is not simply one where each member is resocialized to the group as a whole but also to key individual 69 pairings within the group. Evidently, in the context of film school, that is a very high bar for resocialization. And even then, there are always particular adjustments. Yasha conceded that despite all his confidence, deeply refined subjectivity and experience as a cinematographer, there was a scene in Ingrates that was the “biggest shot of my entire career.” Also, Yasha told me that he was used to more pre-planning (or “pre-production”) before filming began, something that did not occur on this film. So even though Ben and he had worked together in the past and were friends, they had not planned out the shots for each day in the same visual language (Ben had storyboards and story “moments” in mind, but Yasha, like most DPs, was more interested in camera angles). Thus even here, resocialization into the technical craft of cinematography was incomplete and caused problems for the relatively smoother experience of the Ingrates crew. Let’s now examine Guffaw’s crewmembers’ paths to the group. Kim’s was most straightforward. As mentioned, she thinks of herself as not an assertive person, so she cannot make things happen and instead people have to approach her. She explained this further: “It’s like if I fail, I can be like, well, it was your decision to hire me.” Moreover, being more senior than some of her crew, Kim had had experience working with other crews at LAFilm. In particular she described how she had to improvise to become the head producer for a project of the TV pilot class after the original producer failed. This was a situation she was thrown into and said she regained some confidence by learning the ropes along the way and doing a decent job (according to herself as well as according to others). By the time the opportunity for Guffaw came along, Kim felt “good about people feeling good about me,” so she approached Dade and Duane for the role of producer. They told her that they had somebody else in mind for that position but would 70 really love for her to be the sound designer, she agreed. “Because the director called me personally and reached out to me, it meant a lot to me,” she explained. So Kim was one of the few students who joined a key position on a crew not knowing the script, but rather because of this personal connection that she valued, because she already knew Dade and Duane and wanted to work with them, and because she thought she would have a better experience on Guffaw than the TV pilot. Sometimes resocialization occurs because individuals need to boost their factors of individuality; in Kim’s case it was her sense of confidence and her ambition. Moreover, Kim’s resocialization was orthogonal to her directorialness. This is similar to the experience of Yasha and Jolene, both of whom did not display an interest to direct Ingrates. To briefly touch upon Maya and Cate’s experiences en route to Guffaw, I already explained above how Cate chose Guffaw over a competing project because she was eager to learn the ropes of an “entirely different position” than her previous roles as editor. Maya was attracted to Guffaw because of her general interest in comedy, her enjoyment while reading the script, her stance that this was a simple enough story that it would be “hard to mess up.” Besides, she signed up for editing because “there is like a lot to be learned and like story telling and comedy through the editorial process.” Thus, in terms of ambition related to their craft, and in Maya’s case, ambition related to story, both Cate and Maya had clear expectations and reasons as they joined the crew of Guffaw. And in the way I observed and they narrated their experience, both of them had to undergo plenty of difficult and resocialization once work began on Guffaw. Cate’s experience was difficult enough for her that at one point she cut off from the crew and began doing her position simply for the sake of it. She did not completely quit possibly because she did 71 not want to tarnish her impression that others thought she had a “good work ethic.” Cate’s disinvestment from the story, from her crewmembers and potentially even the craft is what I call an example of “desocialization,” the process by which the very factors that lead one to become embedded into the various rhythms, interests, and goals of a group are the ones that are perceived by the individual as irreparably compromised. Maya also had a similarly difficult experience but for various reasons was able to laugh it off. The process of resocialization brings to the fore many “individualities” that people deem valuable in each other. 22 People are interested in being well resocialized. Melbourne, Mikhail and Tanya all reported to have had ultimately beneficial and formative experiences. There is much at stake in proper resocialization into the multiple projects LAFilm students participate in: their perception of their future careers, their social networks and connections based on reputations, and importantly, their understanding and appreciation of how good movies are made. Once again, all this points to the “dialectic of professionalization,” the key concept I build upon throughout this writing. Let’s now turn to the paths of two directorial students to their particular crews. Sid joined the crew of Guffaw in part for the competitive process of selection that led up to it. His motivation is not surprising given that he said he came to LAFilm in order to climb his way back up and to show to himself and others that he “worthy to direct.” However, Sid’s resocialization into the crew was also fraught with dissatisfaction. In our interview he told me that he “would not necessarily choose any of the people” that 22 In a seemingly trivial sense, resocialization is imposed by the mere fact of being in school. After all, there is a curriculum that requires students to work with each other in order to get their degree; if students come from various backgrounds and with various expectations, it is not surprising that they have to adjust to each other. I shall explore the idea of pedagogical arrangements in film school in Chapter 4. 72 worked in Production Class as DPs “not because their stuff is bad and not because they made mistakes. To me, it doesn’t match a certain level that I would be looking for.” In a sense, Sid’s highly developed subjectivity and directorialness, in addition to his misconception that Production Class churned films that matched his “level,” resulted in and added to his “slow growing disappointment over [my] three semesters [that I would have] to continue spending enormous amounts of time and energy on projects that don’t necessarily benefit my career.” Therefore, for students like Sid, having full control of projects, where he would have “full hiring and firing power,” would be the only way, ironically enough, they could fully resocialized into their crew. In that situation, others would have to resocialize to Sid, to his vision for the story and to his aesthetic subjectivity, or in other words, to his directorialness. And yet, Sid’s way of expressing his slow-growing realization provides an initial counterargument to the notion brought up at the start of this section that film schools and film crews are ‘schooled’ by certain visionary individuals. As a final example, Lavos, the student assistant, talked about his experience as a producer for a film in a previous iteration of Production Class. He openly acknowledged his reputation as an “asshole producer.” He attributes this to his being “cutthroat,” and shrugs that unlike some of the younger folk at LAFilm, he has paid his dues and now they need to pay theirs, and yet, he feels the need to continue to “work hard and party hard” in order to network with the Latin American and Latino community of LA. For Lavos, being cutthroat and enterprising, even as a producer, delivered better results than being overtly cooperative. So for him, like Sid above, resocialization into different film projects would mean that others socialized to his personality. Yet it appeared that Lavos exhibited 73 a tough but fair persona that might allow other crewmembers to warm up to him, and unlike Juan, Lavos did not begrudge the hard manual labor or the rigorous hours that filmmaking demanded. In a sense, Lavos was fully resocialized into not merely groups and crews but to what he considered to be a truth about the film industry, that dues are never fully paid, that networking is a fact of life, and that the apprentice system and hierarchy of the LA-based film industry are there for a reason and cannot be readily overcome. In Chapter 4, I explicitly address this type of resocialization as one facet of the phenomenon I call “tacit anticipation,” an advanced stage in the “dialectic of professionalization” begun by students’ paths into film school. Review: An initial understanding of “resocialization.” To sum, in this sub- section, I have brought up instances of different attributes and experiences of “resocialization.” Generally speaking, resocialization is an iterative process of ‘fitting with’. I don’t use ‘fitting into’ on purpose; as I shall point in the literature conversation that follows, I don’t think resocialization ever takes the form of full assimilation. As I use it, it is a process of repeated adjustment, or several small or big—but always partial— adjustments to a group, or to several groups. In the context of film school and the film industry, resocialization is a continuous, dynamic process since individuals are often working on several projects simultaneously, over a delimited period of time. Resocialization is impacted by the factors of individuality. It can mean adjustment to a group’s subjectivity, level of ambition or type of ambition; the ‘group’ itself does not exercise restraint or exhibit desire, individuals do. Or resocialization can mean adjustment to all four factors of individuality of certain individuals in a group or its subsets (e.g., the DP-director-AD triad, the director-editor dyad, and so on). Related to 74 aesthetic subjectivity as well as type of ambition in the context of filmmaking and the multiple projects in film school, resocialization can be with regard to a particular craft or skill set (some thought Cate was too “editorial” and detail-oriented a cinematographer). Sometimes, resocializing can simply mean showing “restraint” (e.g., at the level of the group, Duane’s occasional failure to restrain himself were less problem-causing than Juan’s). In filmmaking, resocializing can take the form of restraint from “directorialness” (e.g., members of the Ingrates crew, Yasha, Don, Jolene, were successful in this regard). Further, depending on one’s confidence starting out, resocializing can mean catching up with the group’s requirements. In another strain, resocializing can simply mean being appropriately social or knowledgeable because one wants to have a good collective experience (Kim; somewhat contrasting case, Sid). Yet another manifestation of resocialization is when desire overwhelms an individual and they fail to resocialize (e.g., Abe’s common parlance pointing to his “checking out” early on). And finally, resocializing can run in the other direction, from group to individual (Sid, Lavos). 23 24 Conversation with the Literature – Part 1 In this section, I begin to put into conversation the empirical findings and grounded theory presented so far with some of the relevant literature. The literature conversation will pave the way for the centerpiece example of the third Guffaw 23 These “properties” and “dimensions” (Strauss & Corbin, 1990) reveal the range of expectations of a group with regard to individualities, and descriptions of people’s experiences; since this dissertation is concerned with interpreting the meanings that matter to a group of people in an organizational and industrial context, they are not prescriptive or normative. The variety does however indicate that resocialization is intrinsically multiple, iterative and simultaneous. 24 One connection remains to be drawn out: that between resocialization and directorialness. For now, I will note that if we think of directorialness as individuals’ ambition to tell a particular story in a way that displays their subjectivity, then resocialization, given that it is bidirectional, can either mean restraint of directorialness if individuals (like Melbourne) have to make small adjustments for the sake of the group (or as we shall see with Dade below, make bigger adjustments); or it could mean that others in a group adjust to one individual’s directorialness (as was the case of Jolene and to an extent Yasha with regard to Ben’s directorialness). During and following the literature conversation, I elucidate further. 75 production meeting. Exploring the fallout from this meeting, both in the field and in theory, will give us a robust working definition of resocialization. There are two registers at which to converse with the literature: group-level process and individual-level process. I’ll begin with the group side of things, i.e., with the socialization literature. I’ll address the individual-side of things after working through the centerpiece example. Definitions of Socialization: Foreseeing a Construct such as Resocialization “Socialization” has many definitions. One of the oldest ones is: “the process by which people selectively acquire the values and attitudes, the interests, skills and knowledge—in short, the culture—current in the groups to which they are, or seek to become, a member.” (Merton et al., 1957, quoted in Harvill, 1981, p. 431). Another goes: “Socialization has generally been seen as a mechanism for bringing new members into existing teams or groups.” (Kozlowski & Bell, 2003, p. 16). Both these definitions—the former of which channels the notion of culture—pertain to socialization in the context of groups. “Organizational socialization,” not always clearly distinguished from, sometimes disingenuously subsuming or often conflated with group-level socialization, has also many definitions. One of the most oft-cited definitions is due to Van Maanen & Schein (1979). It’s worth laying it out in its breadth: At heart, organizational socialization is a jejune phrase used by social scientists to refer to the process by which one is taught and learns "the ropes" of a particular organizational role. In its most general sense, organizational socialization is then the process by which an individual acquires the social knowledge and skills necessary to assume an organizational role… Insofar as the individual is 76 concerned, the results of an organizational socialization process include, for instance, a readiness to select certain events for attention over others, a stylized stance toward one's routine activities, some ideas as to how one's various behavioral responses to recurrent situations are viewed by others, and so forth. In short, socialization entails the learning of a cultural perspective that can be brought to bear on both commonplace and unusual matters going on in the work place. (pp. 3-4) Van Maanen & Schein emphasize culture too, albeit at the level of the organization. They also usefully list interesting cognitive and non-verbal characteristics of socialization such as “attention” and “readiness,” which are ripe for ethnographic observation. In this definition they hint at but don’t explicitly state what other scholars take the term to entail. For instance, Feldman (1981) defines organizational socialization as “the process by which employees are transformed from organization outsiders to participating and effective members.” In this crisp understanding, socialization is viewed with respect to its outcomes, and what mediates successful socialization are three “changes” that occur during the process: “the development of work skills and abilities, the acquisition of a set of appropriate role behaviors, and adjustment to the work group’s norm and values.” (p. 309) Another, more recent definition advocates a clearer binary: “the process by which newcomers make the transition from being organizational outsiders to being insiders.” (Bauer et al., 2007, p. 707) These definitions conceive of socialization in sociological and cultural units such as roles, norms, and values. Also present are psychological terms such as attention, readiness, knowledge, and interests, which are framed in terms of culture. Conceptions of 77 socialization evidently pay attention to the “-ization,” connoting an unfolding process, and in particular, “adjustment,” a word I have already used in describing individual students’ entry into school and crews. In the same line, stronger process terms are offered: “development” and “acquisition.” The latter terms might allude to what Kozlowski and Bell (2001) call a “life cycle perspective,” which examines socialization for the “effectiveness” it can generate for groups and organizations until their eventual “decline” (p. 5). Socialization is thus wedded to outcomes; it is seen as a means to an end. Individuals are reduced to being either outsiders or insiders. This slice of the socialization literature thus shows a bias towards groups and organizations over individuals. However, organizational psychologists Bell and Staw (1989), in contrasting the “popular literature on careers [that] advises individuals to take charge of their situations, to be active agents in shaping their work environments and career opportunities,” decry that the “socialization literature views individuals as passive and malleable,… as lumps of clay,… as mainly receivers of influence.” (p. 232) They argue for a renewed emphasis “on the person in the career/socialization literatures – for the individual to be viewed more as sculptor than sculpture.” (p. 233) In doing so, they attend to the construct of “personality,” a factor of individuality I have found complicates resocialization. They state: When properly measured, it is possible to discern individualization rather than homogenization in the work force. It also means that socialization, role taking, and social influence are at best incomplete forces, not capable of smoothing out all the idiosyncrasies people bring to the organization… Organizational roles are far more ambiguous than scholars usually realize, and in the space created by such 78 ambiguity, individuals are able to maneuver and express their individuality. (p. 239, emphasis added) Thus, from the perspective of Bell and Staw, socialization does not overly genuflect to any notion of group or organizational “culture.” Rather, it is a process always at odds with individuality; “people may not be as open to organizational influence as they are depicted to be.” (p. 234) If we accept their stance for a moment, we have in principle the need for a construct that explains how work might get done in groups, teams, and organizations but does not at the same time let go of idiosyncrasy, agency or individuality. Bell and Staw thus motivate the need for a construct such as “resocialization,” which my fieldwork depicts to be a messy process with no neat assimilation or individual subsumption. However, authors stop short and far from motivating any actual concept. Thus, in conversation with the socialization literature, “resocialization” emerges as a liminal social process, an outcome of push and pull between individuals and groups. In this sense it is exactly the medicine Kozlowski and Bell (2001) ordered. In their exhaustive review of the extant research on work teams, authors find that though the early theory on organizational socialization accentuated the “powerful influence the organizational context exerted on newcomers in an effort to assimilate them,’ and the later research shifted to compensate for “the proactive role newcomers play,” still “missing is the sense of mutual influence as the groups seek to assimilate the newcomer, and the newcomer endeavors to adapt while seeking accommodation by the group.” (p. 18) While I would not use the strong terminology of “assimilate” (because I don’t have the evidence), I advocate “resocialization” to be a social phenomenon of somewhat 79 mutual influence, particularly in the context of individual students’ arrivals at film school-like organizations and crew-like groups. 25 “Newcomer Adjustment” and “Anticipatory Socialization”: A Model in the Literature Having suggested resocialization to be a dynamic process that involves the messy interactions of individuals coming into and working with groups, I want to converse with a model of socialization in the recent literature in order to illuminate a key neglected aspect of (re)socialization. It firmly focuses on the interface of individuals and groups. Offered by Bauer, Bodner, Erdogan, Truxillo, and Tucker (2007), it explicitly interrogates “newcomer adjustment” along with its antecedents and outcomes. I’m not interested in nor is the methodology suited to converse with the prescriptive aspects associated with the emphasis on outcomes and effectiveness in the organizational and the business literatures, so I will simply focus on the construct “newcomer adjustment” and its “antecedents”. I’ll begin with the latter. The antecedents of newcomer adjustment have been termed “anticipatory socialization” in the earlier socialization literature; the term is much less in fashion today 25 One additional insight from this modest parlor conversation is germane. What does it mean to say that “resocialization” or even “socialization” is a social phenomenon? As explained in Chapter 1, my methodology is rooted in the Second Chicago School’s version of symbolic interactionism. To revisit it with regard to the individual/group interface is useful. Barretti (2004) describes two major approaches to the study of “professional socialization” in the fields of social work, medicine, and nursing. One is the “structural functionalist” approach, which views professional students as blank slates that “conform” to “shared outlooks” with faculty and are “inducted” into a “unitary identity” and into roles through “didactic learning”. The other is the “symbolic interactionist” approach, which views students as “conscious agents” who contest and resist faculty authority and “react to educational experiences” in a way that lets them develop “multiple identities” through indirect, “non-linear, interpretive” learning (pp. 258-260). With my idea of resocialization, in turn complicated by students’ varying individualities and directorialness, I am definitely on the symbolic interactionist side of things. Besides, I found contest and resistance rather than linear induction. This will become clearer when I present the centerpiece example of the production meeting (and in Chapter 4 which deals with student-faculty interaction): it is practically impossible to analyze as belonging to the structural functional perspective. 80 and is not used by Bauer et al. in their article, even though they draw from a model by Feldman (1981) for their notion of “newcomer adjustment”. Harvill (1981) theorizes anticipatory socialization as follows: Anticipatory socialization takes place when human beings anticipate what it would be like to be a member of a particular group of which they are not presently a member or to imagine what it would be like to occupy a role that they do not presently occupy. It may be thought of as a self-socialization based on an individual’s correct or incorrect assumptions and information about the group or role involved. (pp. 431-2) Right off the bat, we see the agency this concept places on the individual. The question is, “agency in what context?” Harvill frames anticipatory socialization as a “potentially important aspect of the professional or occupational socialization process,” and I concur. There is something such as anticipatory socialization that occurs when film students are on the brink of film school and the film industry. In Chapter 4, I proffer the category of “tacit anticipation,” which spruces up Harvill’s notion. For now, I retain the kernel of the idea of “self-socialization” in order to understand the notion of resocialization, and in particular, the socialization of the individual to the specific kind of group that is a film crew. Without spoiling upcoming formulations, if we are to adhere to the understanding of resocialization as a process of somewhat mutual influence between the individual and the group, then it is useful to see resocialization as a self-socialization process by individuals who tentatively insert themselves into crews, who try out crews, and who in that setting figure out their ambitions for craft, their preferred skills, their personalities, their stances towards storytelling, their abilities to restrain, and their aesthetic 81 subjectivity. Resocialization from an individualist perspective is the individual repeatedly having to figure out, “What is this group up to?” Stepping back to connect with the first half of this chapter, anticipatory socialization can be seen as a process that is continuous with and leads to the beginning of careers, the journeys to film schools, and the working with film crews. Sure, there are curricula, protocols, and other restrictions imposed by the organization and the industry. But resocialization can be understood in good part as a matter of individual choices interacting with each other, choices regarding various matters that allow individuals to get through the early stages of what Becker and Carper (1956) call the “growth of an occupational personality” or the “development of an identification with an occupation.” Along these lines, Mendoza (2007) too discusses the anticipatory socialization of doctoral students from an implicitly structural-functionalist perspective. Returning to of Bauer et al.’s notion of “newcomer adjustment,” I shall briefly overview their model. Prior to “adjusting,” newcomers to groups seek information about the group in order to reduce uncertainty (Van Maanen & Schein, 1977). Types of information sought include “understanding what is needed to function on the job (role clarity),… information on how well the newcomer is able to function in relation to role requirements (self-efficacy),… and [information that] relates to the quality of relationships with organizational insiders (social acceptance).” Prior to adjusting, newcomers also undertake “organizational socialization tactics” which are “organizational approaches to information dissemination to facilitate adjustment in new roles.” Authors present three types. First are “content tactics” such as asking whether newcomers go through common experiences in a group, or do they accumulate separate, 82 unique experiences. Second are “context tactics” such as asking whether newcomers go through socialization phases sequentially or randomly. Third are “social” tactics, reinforcing socialization as a social process; these involve asking whether or not newcomers are guided by insider role models or not, as well as whether or not they receive feedback that “affirms or disaffirms their identity.” (Bauer et al., p. 709) All these antecedents—information seeking tactics and organizational socialization tactics—influence the construct newcomer adjustment, which has two aspects that are important for our purposes: seeking resolution about the demands of a role and trying to be liked and accepted by one’s peers. (p. 708). Bauer et al. found that newcomers who seek information about a role and how to do it well actually tend to achieve those goals and were also liked by their peers, but interestingly, they found that seeking information about how to have quality relationships was not associated with any actual adjustment. They also found that all three types of organizational socialization tactics were significantly correlated with adjusting in terms of becoming clear about one’s role; however, only the social tactics about being guided by and receiving identity- related feedback from insider role models was correlated with adjusting in terms of actually being liked and accepted by one’s peers. What does this model imply for resocialization as I have so far presented it? It puts the burden of adjustment on the newcomers, because seeking information about having a quality relationship does not mean that newcomers would adjust to their roles or to their peers, and yet if newcomers actually sought guidance from the insiders in a group, they might be well-liked by their group. 83 However, when it comes to individual students becoming crewmembers on film school crews, it is not clear from my fieldwork who is a newcomer and who are the more established ‘group’ members (the director or auteur is a special case that I tackle below). This is particularly true for crews such as Guffaw. Further, Bauer et al.’s research does not speak to the experience of resocialization in film crews for the same role. So if someone has taken on the role of production designer on multiple crews, does that mean that they need to repeatedly adjust to the crew in the same way as a newcomer to the role? Resocialization as I employ it definitely pertains more to students entering the environment and structures of an organization (film school), as well as who are performing certain roles for the first time on a group (film crew). In that sense, if the crew of Guffaw had sought information about their roles and how to do them well, as well as explicitly asked for guidance and feedback, Bauer et al.’s findings suggest that they would be better liked by the rest of the crew and they would actually be good at what they did. Overall, given the great degree of inconsistency—in fact, general negativity—among Guffaw crewmembers, it is likely that they did not seek information in advance about their roles and how to do them well, nor did they display the need to be guided by the rest of the crew. In other words, Bauer et al. would say that the Guffaw crewmembers were not well socialized or adjusted to the group, and by contrast, the Ingrates crew was. They would be right, as we shall see below. What the literature does not interrogate—and this is key—is the kind of group that individual students adjust to. For in the case of Guffaw if not Ingrates, who the “insiders” were is not clear, nor were the newcomers on the crew “new” since they were at least in their second year of film school and often knew of each other. Something else has to 84 explain these crews’ imperfect—and contra the structural functionalist perspective, never fully perfect—resocialization. I suggest that the conundrum is resolved if we see the film crew as a “temporary group,” “temporary organization,” or “project” (Bakker, 2010). There is an entire literature in organizational studies about the special properties and experiences of film crews and other temporary organizational formation. This is the primary literature that I converse with in Chapter 3, so a definition will have to suffice for now: “The temporary organizational form… is a set of organizational actors working together on a complex task over a limited period of time” (ibid, p. 468). The film crew is a temporary organizational form because people with a variety of skills and occupying a variety of positions come to work together on a film; once their project is completed, they find work on another film. In other words, they have to adjust and socialize again; i.e., resocialize. Other groups that are similar to the film crew in this regard are those in the fields of theater, construction, fashion and advertising, and emergency or disaster response (ibid). With a couple of minor exceptions (e.g., Oshri et al. [2007] focus on non- co-located teams), none of the socialization literature focuses on socialization into this distinctive organizational form. In understanding resocialization as a social phenomenon of mutual influence that definitely pertains to this particular organizational form, this chapter addresses a major gap in the socialization literature. Now, it is worthwhile to move on to the centerpiece example I’ve been long promising. Centerpiece Example: An ‘All-in-the-family’ Production Meeting Production meetings are a staple of the filmmaking process. They are designed for crewmembers to come together to discuss the production requirements of upcoming 85 shooting (synonymous with ‘production’ or ‘filming’) days. Typically, the AD goes down the script, reading each scene aloud, and crewmembers chime in with their varied production requirements, questions they have for departments on whose work they depend, questions they have for the director regarding interpretation of the story, budget questions for the producer, and the like. In order to proceed effectively, each department and crew member must come appropriately prepared. Thus, production meetings typically function in the ‘let’s get down to business’ mode; they organize the pre- production phase of filmmaking. Production meetings on Guffaw, in contrast to my experience on Ingrates, were quite the world apart. They were usually greatly contested spaces. I sat in on all production meetings: as 2 nd assistant director, I was treated as a legitimate crew member, although everyone was highly aware that I was taking notes for my research. Three meetings were held prior to the beginning of filming, and four on non-filming days once production began. There were a couple of post-production meetings as well, but I do not focus on them as much, partly because they typically involved only a subset of the crew. In addition to production meetings, shot list meetings were held on both films (I attended two on Guffaw and one on Ingrates), in which the director, the cinematographer(s), and in the case of Guffaw, the editors, laid out the camera shots, angles, equipment, framing and lighting issues for each production day. Additionally, throughout production, crewmembers met separately in subsets as and when their work demanded or as and when they ran into each other in the corridors, edit suites and elevators of the film school. Of the seven meetings, three, all of which took place after filming began, were especially charged and contested. Crewmembers spent the majority of the meeting time 86 discussing what Sid referred to in the introductory vignette as “interpersonal relation” issues, or as what Dade called “set etiquette” issues. People also came close to accusing each other while trying to work through their differences. Relatively little planning work actually got done during those meetings. What distinguished them was Dade’s ‘mini- speeches’ (my term). The first mini-speech occurred at the end of the very first meeting when Dade talked about taking Guffaw to the Sundance Film Festival. That was not a heated meeting; the “best film crew” (of the ones in Production Class), as Dade called them, was still getting to know each other. The second mini-speech I also referred to above, was about “attitudes”; it took place roughly midway into the filming process, and Juan, the opinionated production designer, was the cynosure of that meeting. Dade’s third mini-speech took place in the production meeting that is the centerpiece example of this chapter; it occurred before the last days of filming. I want to lay it out and dissect it for its meaning-laden, contradictory statements; for the fact that certain crewmembers who never spoke up till then did; to show how even though it was heated, it wasn’t merely so and that the crew had “matured” a bit; and finally to show how his mini-speech reveals something insightful about Dade (whose journey to the film school I haven’t yet described) in terms of his factors of individuality, directorialness, and resocialization. During the morning of the production meeting, “dailies” (selected unedited footage of actually filmed scenes) of all films were screened in Production Class. The screening order changed each class and after each screening, the crew of the other films and the faculty chimed in with feedback. I noticed that more than other crews, the crew of Guffaw, and in particular, Juan, would comment on their own dailies. This fact was not lost on Maurice, one of the cinematographers. That particular day, Juan commented on 87 the Guffaw dailies: “It’s not just the flatness of the image but also the flatness of space, and that is partly a DP [cinematography] thing. The movements are being rejected. The extras looked like 90s imagery, and the lighting did not help. But I see this coming together. Our lead actor is stronger now.” Immediately after, Maurice, who was in charge of lighting the scene, raised his hand. When the faculty gestured for him to speak, he changed his mind and said, “No, nothing.” Other students and faculty had mixed feedback on the cinematography. A faculty said, “This is your best week. I like what you are doing with the ins and outs.” Mikhail, the AD on Tropos, said, “The color palette was kind of flat but the transition from medium to medium close up to close up was awesome.” And another faculty said, “Make sure your background actors are telling the story you want to tell. There was less movement (among them).” So Juan was not the only one who had feedback on the cinematography, nor was he the only to think the background actors were not working (interesting enough, I was in charge of the background actors in my role as 2 nd AD). However, Juan was the only Guffaw crew member to comment on the dailies. That does not mean that other crewmembers had nothing to say. Later in the day, I heard Maya the editor, confide in Cate the co- cinematographer that the wide angles on another scene were “not working.” (For that scene, Cate was doing the lighting and Maurice was on camera, so he was the one who captured the wide angles.) Above is the specific context for the production meeting that occurred in the early evening. Dade entered about 30 minutes late and apologized, saying that he was caught up talking to one of the faculty members about the film’s final shooting days. Kim asked him if he was doing all right because she thought that he looked “disappointed and quiet” 88 during the dailies. He replied he was doing fine. Everyone was seated at the long rectangular table (Dade at the head) in the warmly lit room. Then Dade addressed the group with his third mini-speech of the production. His demeanor was slightly subdued and more humble (especially compared to the first and even the second mini-speech), but he spoke clearly, loudly and assertively: All right guys, speaking from my heart, making a comedy is really challenging. It’s not drama… If you don’t get the performances, it doesn’t work. Some performances I slipped on. But we have a lot going [on set]. I don’t want to go into our last filming days thinking we’ll save it for post [post-production]. The reason I chose each of you is because y’all bring something unique to the table. But we have to work together as a group, … trust each other. Prepping is great, but sometimes on set we have to be flexible. [At the same time], I won’t put you in a position that will take you out of your game... As a director and leader of this group, what I am doing is just being honest with myself. And I want us to be honest with each other. - Excerpt from field notes There wasn’t any mention of “best film crew” in this speech; Dade was somewhat jaded by this time, as I would find out in a few months later during our interview. Immediately following up, Gail, one of the producers, said, “Can I add to that? I agree. My goal for you for our final filming days is to focus on actors and performances. As long as we are focused on what we do and not on what anyone else is doing, you can get the performance. What’s most important is performance. A jib shot [referring to a time- consuming camera set up the previous time] is not as important as performance.” Dade 89 seemed to concur. Kim spoke up in a semi-suspicious tone: “Sometimes, I think you two are diplomatic. Why are you saying this?” Duane replied on behalf of Gail and Dade, “It’s an acknowledgment of ways we can work together. It is also about trusting each other.” (This is a point that Gail would reaffirm to Juan the next day.) Dade seemingly concurred with that statement as well. Maurice, who tended to not speak up during production meetings unless he was answering a question about his department, said, “I think Kim’s still confused. What problems are we having that you started the meeting this way?” Dade deflected, “I’m just talking about me. When I saw dailies this morning, I was not happy with performances. I’m really good at performances and I’m proud about that. I feel I was distracted this weekend.” Maurice nodded, seemingly satisfied. Gail once again commended Dade on admitting as much and reiterated that he has to trust his crew; she suggested that he has to find a balance between requesting a tweak and asking for a full rearrangement “since you’ve thought of this ahead of time.” Here, Gail refers to a problem about Dade’s chronic indecisiveness that mostly all the crewmembers—save Dade—latch on to aggressively during our interviews. What’s clear here is the tension between individuals’ interests—i.e., individualities as well as directorialness conceived of as individuality—and the group’s interests, which included getting good quality performances since Guffaw is a comedy. Dade interestingly slides between portraying the job of getting performances—something the entire Guffaw crew agreed was the unique responsibility of the director—as his “ambition” and “subjectivity” (to use my terminology) versus the group’s interest. Throughout the above excerpts, we see that the group members are not fully aligned with each other in terms of Dade’s ambition, confidence, restraint and desire (regarding 90 distractions). And clearly, instead of discussing logistical and departmental issues for the upcoming final shooting days, the group—or at least what had by now emerged as the most invested trio, Dade, Gail and Duane, i.e., the director and producers—had decided it is important to bring up and try to iron out issues of interpersonal dynamics. What I found fascinating is how the interpersonal talk had evolved over the production meetings. Three weeks before, a production meeting (that I have not brought up) was particularly charged with regard to the decision to use a lens adapter on a camera. In that meeting, Dade had sought every crew member’s stance on the issue, and what unfurled as everyone weighing in on a technical-aesthetic matter was actually telling of clear subsets of clashing outlooks. In particular, it had emerged that some thought that Guffaw was a “learning” experience and it wasn’t the worst thing if they improperly used the lens adapter and got blurry (“soft focus”) images; in sharp contrast, others thought about Guffaw as an end product, as a film, as something that would go on their reels, and thus images in soft focus were anathema; and yet others, including Dade, the final decision maker, had deemed that the lens adapter and issues of focus as proper to the DP’s department and he would leave it to them to decide. Essentially that production meeting was discordant individualities masquerading as business. And the production meeting that followed was more or less the group addressing Juan’s “brashness” (although even there it emerged that those who didn’t speak up—for instance, Maya—actually supported Juan). Hence, leading up to this production meeting, it was evident that there were factions among the crew: few had in fact resocialized, adjusted to, or fitted with each other or with the group. And yet, I found that in comparison to the previous meetings, more people spoke up on this one, bringing out 91 their differences in sharper relief, but they also had a more systematic way of talking through those differences. The group as a whole, more so than in any other meeting, was on a similar if not the same page, ready to try to make the upcoming shoot days work for the sake of the film. Juan, particularly, was more somber. I had reason to conclude that people were listening to each other more, or as Maya might say, doing better at keeping themselves and each other in check. Maurice finally spoke up, after having restrained himself in class. Juan had just made a suggestion to Cate about some aspect of DPing; Cate, nonplussed, had not responded. To this Maurice said, turning to Juan, “Speaking of criticisms, why do we air our dirty laundry in class?” One of the producers tried to interject but Maurice quickly asserted, “Let me finish. I feel very strongly about this.” He calmly continued, now squarely addressing Juan: “They brought us together as a team. As a family. And what does family do?” Juan flatly responded, “They differ in opinion,” to which Maurice dissented, “They stand together, support each other.” Juan genuinely seemed not to get Maurice’s point, “But these are my criticisms. I would say what I feel about all the films (being screened). If I didn’t, I would be hypocritical.” At this juncture, people began to get animated and there was a flurry of exchanges. Duane reiterated his takeaway from the previous meeting, about how speaking up in public comes across as “not supportive” and suggested that Juan say his criticisms “at a place where something can be done about it, say, at a shot list meeting.” Here, Kim was quick to interrupt, “Wait a minute, wait a minute. I was at the shot list meeting last week. I thought it was not productive. I don’t know what we discussed.” Dade seemed to disagree, “I don’t know if that’s true.” Juan and Maurice rounded things off by repeating their positions. Juan said there was 92 something called the First Amendment. Maurice stated that he was not asking Juan to hold back and he wasn’t offended by what Juan had said in class about the flatness of the image and the lighting; “It’s just about supporting family.” The rhetoric of “family” was new for the Guffaw crew. “Family,” the way Maurice used it, denotes resocialization, alignment, and restraint, even if temporary. When I independently asked individual students what one word would they use to describe the process of filmmaking, Dade was the only one among Guffaw’s crew to bring up the word “family.” Kim had said “serendipitous”; Maya conceded “collaborative”; Abe, not present during this meeting, used “insanity”, directorial Sid was unsure and used the third person to say “Hopefully they can figure out a way to work with each other”; Duane joked, “bananas”; and Cate revealingly said, “you’re constantly trying to make things right but nothing wants to.” I didn’t get the chance to interview Maurice, Juan, and Gail, and in any case not much can be read into these responses because they might be artifacts of the interview. Still, the answers are clearly different from each other. When juxtaposed with words such as “horribly” and “terribly” used by Abe and Kim to describe how this crew worked together, we have further evidence to document that the crew thought they did not work well together and were not adjusted to each other. By contrast, the responses of the Ingrates crew suggested that they had a better experience and were better adjusted: Don, the editor, said, “exploration”; Jolene, the producer, said, “compromise, sometimes it just has to be done”; and Ben, the director, said “collaboration.” Even the Tropos crewmembers I interviewed, whose film was the most generally liked of all the films made for that semester’s Production Class, skewed on the positive side: Melbourne, the 93 director, said “collaboration”; Tanya, the producer, enthusiastically said, “a labor of love”, and Mikhail, the AD, said, “hard but joyful” (a sentiment echoed by Lavos, the student assistant, who said, “Amazing. It’s a lot of work but it’s fun”). Speaking of rhetoric, I’d like to make an important rhetorical—but not just rhetorical—move. Throughout this chapter I’ve spoken of the “interface” of the individual and the group. I now want to assert the following. My research has led me to posit, despite the contradictory or misaligned utterances and actions of the Guffaw crew, in production meetings or elsewhere, that individuals and groups don’t merely interface with each other. Rather, individuals come to embed themselves in groups. If there is anything such as resocialization, however temporary, it must mean that individuals need to come to ‘fit with’ groups with which they work. Quite simply however wildly incompatible their individualities and directorialness, they do agree to “crew up” because to some extent, they all want the end product of group process—be it a film, an averted disaster (in the case of emergency response crews), or a building (in the case of construction crews)—to work, to be of use, to be something they feel they contributed to. All students, however divergent, agree to this. They want to help to make good movies. In fact, when I asked Mikhail how film students worked crazy hours on multiple projects, those were his exact words. Working Definition of “Resocialization” I am now in a position to offer a more solid definition of resocialization. Socialization, multiple socializations, multiple temporary socializations, or resocialization, however you call it, is a social phenomenon of coming to, having to, and wanting to embed or insert oneself into an often unpredictable mix of aesthetic 94 subjectivities, ambitions, brashness, desires, and directorialness in a crew. It might be incomplete, it might be temporary, but social embedding is the first step to making movies. Making films necessitates being social. Film school—and heated production meetings that occur behinds its closed doors—is the first place some of these individuals come to know resocialization as an implicit social ‘contract’, come to accept it, or if not, come to walk away from the world of filmmaking. Resocialization in film school is thus an iterative, continuous, tentative, incomplete, messy and yet thoroughgoing social process of individual filmmakers repeatedly embedding themselves into temporary crews of heterogeneous individualities and directorialness. Take out “filmmakers” and “directorialness,” and replace “crews” with “groups,” and you have a more general definition, applicable to other temporary organizational forms. In the much wider context of neoliberalism and a global workforce that has a greater percentage of contract laborers in divers industries and a workforce where people change jobs and switch non-temporary (“permanent”) organizations more frequently than before (Conor, 2010; Mayer, 2011; McRobbie, 2002; Ortner, 2013), resocialization still applies because it conceives of socialization as iterative and expectedly tentative. “In/Experience”, “In/Efficiency”, “Prior History”: Further Aspects What else characterizes resocialization? In the aftermath of the centerpiece production meeting, I want to lay out three aspects or “properties” and their “dimensions” (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). Resocialization as a group-level process denotes a range of experiences: from “inexperienced” or “immature” to “experienced” or “mature”. It manifests as a range of efficiency, from “inefficient” to “very efficient”. It might be “not 95 smooth” to “smooth” because of or despite “prior working history” and/or “prior personal history”. I shall discuss these in turn. In/experience and im/maturity as in/adequate resocialization. Crewmembers that are less resocialized to each other and to the crew are deemed by fellow members to be “inexperienced” or “immature,” and vice versa. This is true even if by those same standards they’re all inexperienced. The fact that film students have less experience is almost tautological. It is evident though that as they progress through their years at school, helping each other out and getting resocialized into various projects, they become more experienced. Being more experienced itself has further sub-categories, but happily and expectedly, they map on to the factors of individuality: they become better at telling more complex stories or adjusting to the scope of stories they want to tell, better adept in the technicalities of a craft or a skill set, more tuned into whether an idea is difficult to execute and able to choose whether or not to execute it (all types of ambition), and a better developed aesthetic subjectivity. “More experienced” is almost synonymous with “more mature,” but I associate the latter with other aspects of individuality. So, I found that when film students talk about each other as being “mature,” they mean more restrained and less desirous, more justifiably confident and less prone to brashness. The difference between factors of individuality and experience and maturity is the former are discursive and the latter are displayed and manifested in practice and as knowledge. The registers of discourse, practice, and knowing run parallel to each other throughout the dissertation and intersect at revealing points. The point at which students find others to have become more experienced or mature is the same point at which they would agree that they have been 96 resocialized in some key regard. Experienced and mature students walk the walk of resocialized individuality, or individuality that is meaningful in the context of group process, whereas less experienced and less mature students tend to just talk the talk. The Guffaw crew was less experienced and less mature overall than the Ingrates crew. They readily admitted obvious things they did not know, for which they would need their faculty’s advice. Sometimes, they consoled each other by saying they were “still students.” For instance, during the screening of the dailies in which images were in soft focus (due to the lens adapter issue alluded to above), Cate, whose department was in the line of fire, appeared to take the news pretty hard. Kim comforted her afterwards, “It’s all a learning experience.” Maurice, as co-DP, seemed more at ease and more confident, holding himself to have more experience (others privately disagreed). Whereas Gail the producer also took it in stride, telling me that she thought “it was constructive feedback.” However, that was a bit disingenuous because later that day during the production meeting, the issue of soft focus took over the agenda, and Gail prefaced the meeting by saying, “I’m concerned about being disappointed in (our) making the wrong decision.” Clearly, Guffaw crewmembers were aware about their lack of technical knowledge on the matter and how it might affect various outcomes: the film itself, how the faculty thought of them, and their informal, developing reputation among their peers. Duane, who according to Abe had the problem of a “short fuse,” ironically described Juan’s lack of experience sympathetically: “I think Juan would be brilliant if he could reel it in and better manage his attitude… I feel like Juan more than anybody else on the team, if there’s a creative difference, sometimes the crosses the line into… a dig or an insult.” Duane thinks Juan is immature; Abe thinks they both have short fuses which 97 can lead to moments of immaturity. Kim divulged to me her opinion on Tina’s inexperience as an 1 st AD; unlike Tina, who “can’t make [the DPs] listen,” “when I AD, I run a quiet set.” For Kim, maturity or being experienced as an AD meant being able to run a quiet set. This, in fact, is a truism, widely touted by faculty. In my own observations of the Ingrates crew, and informal hanging out around multiple student productions, I did find that those crews who could work quietly were more efficient, underwent less ‘drama’ in production meetings, and tended to report a more satisfying working experience. Along the same lines, Kim, while explaining why she thought the Guffaw crew worked “horribly,” said, “The thing is, if everyone is experienced, you go into that situation knowing what your shot will be like… Dade was making up shots as he went along.” Abe tended to concur with Dade’s lack of experience and fit: “Dade had no idea of what this movie was. He never had a real grasp of the tone. I definitely think that the things that caused our team to work badly together was that we had a director who didn’t know what he wanted in any other department and… his own.” Abe went further to characterize others’ inexperience. One of the DPs had never done the intermediate cinematography class. A lot of that class is about angles, quality, quantity. They teach you how to go about lighting stuff. So that really screwed us up. We were like a rookie team. If we started another film tomorrow, it would be a lot different. - Excerpt from interview Abe directly refers to something such as resocialization: By the end of their experience, the Guffaw team had a much better idea of each other’s foibles and how to work through 98 them, leading Abe to hypothesize that they would work better together in the future. Of course, when actually asked, most of the crew readily admitted or clearly hinted they would not work again with particular others. There were other more ‘objective’ criteria that denoted the crew’s inexperience as a whole. Tina, the AD, mentioned that one of the faculty had provided her with timelines for various projects he had directed. She mentioned that for him, each camera set up (the time it takes to move the camera and shoot a scene from a particular angle) was about 15 minutes. Whereas for Guffaw, she reported that even a close-up or a tiny adjustment would take 30 to 45 minutes. Crews also resocialize to each other over the course of the production. Which is why both crews I followed reserved their trickiest scenes— generally seen as those where performance mattered the most—for the last days of production, by when the group would have a better working rhythm. This practice is well-institutionalized in film school; even the relatively inexperienced Guffaw crew had planned their shooting days according to this principle. So far, I’ve talked more about experience than maturity. What counts as being mature? Two characteristics emerge: feeling ownership in the outcome of filmmaking, and exhibiting leadership. Ben, the director of Ingrates, displayed constant and continuous ownership of his film. In a sense, this was expected since he was the film’s sole financier. But even when the going got tough and a lot of his crewmembers, including his producers, “moved on” to other projects during that film’s drawn-out post- production period, Ben admitted to the toughness since he had no option but to do all the running around himself. Kim displayed an ownership in the outcome of Guffaw by going beyond the expectations assigned to her role as sound designer, which role Melbourne 99 had called the “lowest on the totem pole.” She said that she went to a shot list meeting late after shooting had commenced “because I wanted to do due diligence… I wanted to know what they were talking about and why they were making the decisions they were making.” This is the same shot list meeting she referenced in the centerpiece example, the one in which she thought nothing useful was accomplished. Another aspect of being mature is exhibiting leadership. In Guffaw’s first production meeting, the one with the mini-speech about Sundance, Dade overheard somebody describing a solution to an anticipated production problem as “easier.” Dade responded in an assertive yet polite manner, “Get it out of your minds what’s easier or not easier. A better way to do it would be to ask, ‘feasible or not feasible’. This might be a comedy but we are not selling ourselves short.” This was a rare moment of leadership from Dade, and I heard many students—including the more “directorial” students—agree that the director is the leader of the crew and has final say on how the film should turn out. As filmmaking progressed, I did not find another such moment of leadership from Dade. Ditto with Ben, the director of Ingrates. His cinematographer and AD took him aside shortly after the Ingrates crew had worked hard to accomplish a particularly tricky 180-degree dolly shot. They told Ben that it does not look good when after each take he expressed his sense of frustration at a minor mishap. They advised him to compliment the crew every now and then the crew for their hard work. Basically, they were advising him to be more of a leader because that display would have been meaningful to the crew at the moment and ultimately good for the film. More informally, Cate said that her previous experience on a crew for Production Class was better because that “director had a better understanding of all the departments. He was a better leader in general.” 100 In/efficiency as in/adequate resocialization. One of the clearest signs of inadequate resocialization is inefficiency. The Guffaw crew showed more signs of inefficiency than the Ingrates crew. Either people forgot to call location managers in advance of a location scout, wasting everybody’s time, or production designers forgot to plan for sufficient props. Another ready indicator of inefficiency was an unquiet set. There were many instances during the production of Guffaw, when Tina was failing as AD to keep the noise level down, that Dade (who as director is not supposed to address the crew directly, and has to only be concerned with the image on the camera frame and working with actors) would have to raise his voice. Maurice twice casually mentioned how much he was enjoying working because the set was quiet. A lot of the direct examples of inefficiency were from the PD department, headed by Juan and Abe. Abe said he had “checked out” early on, so he wasn’t interested in resocializing. Juan once commented in frustration that the PD job was a lot of manual labor. Kim jokingly called a production designer a gofer, or a “glorified” Production Assistant. Another instance of inefficiency came with regard to expectations surrounding roles; I found plenty of instances of efficiency due to properly defined role expectations, a matter I take up in Chapter 3. So Kim, who even though was a sound designer, took the kind of ownership a producer would be vigilant about other crewmembers’ inefficiency regarding their roles. Here’s an excerpt from my field notes: As I head out of the classroom, I see Kim and ask her how it’s going. Kim: “It’s going crappy. They don’t have a flower shop, they don’t have any money in their budget.” Abe walks over. Abe (smiling): “Thanks for throwing me under the bus.” 101 Kim: “I just want to know. Did the faculty tell you to make floor plans?” Abe: “Yes she did. We couldn’t get to the measurements in the time we had to scout.” Kim (shaking her head): “When Juan asked about measurements [on set this past weekend], I was like, who is he asking?” (…) Kim: “Do we even need the flower shop scene?” Abe: “We don’t need it. It’s just 2 lines.” Kim: “Exactly. I went to their shot list meeting last night. We were there until 11.45pm and we got nothing accomplished.” - Excerpt from field notes Kim points out that Dade and others were not clear what exactly they wanted from that scene and that the particular location of a flower shop was not necessary. Furthermore, even if they did rebuild the flower shop on a sound stage, Juan and Abe had not taken the measurements in order to build a floor plan. Inefficiency can thus manifest as a parasite, affecting functioning at the global level of story, trickling down to mundane, necessary tasks such as taking floor plan measurements. That this conversation occurred midway through shooting (shooting days were interspersed with classroom screenings) was an indicator about deeper problems of resocialization: not only were interpersonal relations frustrated but also various departments including the director were still grappling with the needs of the story. By contrast, the Ingrates crew was much more efficient, due to a host of factors which led them to be better socialized. I witnessed only a few instances of inefficiency on the set of Ingrates, but a couple of them were due to misalignment about technical 102 matters such as drawing out shot lists and manifested as the inefficiency of not having a shot list the day of the shoot. Comparing departments, the PD crew on Ingrates was amongst its most efficient. Not once did I hear a single complaint against it. In fact, the director Ben repeatedly voiced his trust in Lara, the production designer. “Trust” is a huge factor predicting a crew’s extent of resocialization. One factor that might help establish trust is prior working history, which I turn to next. Prior history as in/adequate resocialization. It is intuitive to think that prior history of having worked with an individual or that a prior personal relationship with an individual will assist with resocializing with them in the context of a particular film and crew. In fact, many crewmembers on both Guffaw and Ingrates chose to work on those projects precisely because they had prior working or personal relations with somebody else. Jolene agreed to work with Ben because she had produced a project on which he was assistant director. Ben had nobody else but Yasha in mind for the role of cinematographer because they had worked as co-cinematographers on a previous classroom project and because Yasha was his “closest friend” in school. Duane was roped in by Dade last minute to work on Guffaw in part because of their common background growing up in the same city on the East Coast; ditto with Gail, whom Dade had asked long before Guffaw had materialized whether she would produce his film. Maya brought Sid to the table because they were in the same incoming cohort. Thus, people on both crews and on film projects in general choose to work together because they have a history of doing so. Kim summed up the instinct: “Filmmaking is serendipitous. There is so little that can predict control, and that’s why when you get out there, you work with the same people all the time.” 103 And yet I found that people reported a mixed experience after having actually worked together. Working together in the past, or being friends especially, did not always ensure a smooth working experience on a current project. Said Duane of this phenomenon: “Just because you get along with somebody socially doesn’t translate that they’re the best person to work with professionally. It’s like business; there’s accountability.” But it wasn’t the case either that cordial working relations translated into a good film, or that a terrible work experience meant a bad film; film students gave me a few anecdotal examples of each category. So was there a formula? Maya elaborated on Duane’s sentiment on people with whom one has a prior history: I think that you hope for that [good relationship] because when you are an artist and you don’t want to work that nine to five corporate kind of job where no one knows each other, you think being on a film project is this great idea where you’re working with your friends and you’re really accomplishing something like -- some artistic masterpiece and then it would be really great but -- I tried to work with friends before and there can just be like a lot of people goofing around and not getting anything done, so it’s a tough balance. I guess at a certain point you have to stop being a friendly person and just be a professional. - Excerpt from interview Maya’s reflection on why students choose to work together is insightful especially for aspiring filmmakers. Tanya, the producer on Tropos, described her time in New York before film school in similar fashion. She had to rope in friends to help make her film, and while she remembered it to be a very exciting time, she also noted that the help of friends was not reliable because “unlike you, they have regular jobs.” In this light, Kim’s 104 reflection alludes to when students have already bitten the bullet of friends-turned-poor- collaborators, i.e., when they realize who they truly can work together with for the particular animal that is filmmaking. Prior history might not be a good predictor of future working history because individuals, or at least students, don’t realize that working together necessitates resocializing. It means getting used to each other within a hierarchy of positions and responsibilities. It means adjusting to each other’s possibly divergent aesthetic subjectivities. It means coming to know a friend as their own person, with skills, taste, ambitions and confidence you hadn’t noticed earlier. It also means resocializing with a person with regard to a particular story, since stories come in many shapes, forms and genres. On Ingrates, Ben and Yasha apparently worked well. I observed their shot list meeting and they seemed to be having a great time together, often completing each other’s thoughts, and overall enacting the best buddy routine. It was only during our interview that Yasha made me see what I could not during participant observation. He said that he and Ben had a completely different notion of what should compose a shot list. Ben was more interested in capturing a “moment” in a performance, whereas Yasha was more used to capturing camera angles, which is the standard practice. The difference is there can be multiple ‘moments’ in the same camera angle (say a close-up), but the editor still needed various angles of the same moment in order to piece together the scene. Because Yasha and Ben were not resocialized initially in this key regard, it caused a lot of confusion among them and the AD as to what exactly needed to be shot. Thus, prior history is never a full guarantor of resocialization. Those who have been just friends might find the constraints of a film crew to be a shock and a challenge to 105 their friendship; on the flip side, even the most regular collaborators have to purposely seek out the unique aspects of a new project and get aligned in order for work to proceed smoothly. Resocialization as a Movement from “Screwing Up” to “Crewing Up” After examining how difficult the process of resocialization is, marked as it is by immaturity, inefficiency, misread prior histories, to say nothing of incompatible individualities, the question naturally arises, why can’t the film school take measures to make students’ resocialization smoother? Why do even the best student crews face resocialization problems? The questions of film school as organization and the film industry as a wider field or world are more directly tackled in Chapter 4. For now, I just want to provide some students’ reasoning to this question, while noting that their rationale might only apply to the pedagogy and procedures of LAFilm, and thus is not necessarily generalizable. Sid, conjuring the category of inexperience, presented the problem as follows: I began to realize [early on] that there wasn’t enough experience on the other side of the conversation [i.e., most of the crew] for them to realize what I was telling them. They needed to go on set and see it kind of all fall apart… So a lot of times, I was trying to maintain my role because I wasn’t the director on this one. It’s something I always grapple with on projects, like, I always compare it to sort of being a firefighter and just having to watch buildings burn… I remember the first day on set when they were shooting the proposal scene. I was watching the stuff on the monitor. And what I really really wanted to do was to run up there and ask 106 Dade if he could take a walk for 30 minutes because I felt like I can shoot the scene and finish the scene. - Excerpt from interview Once again, Sid’s comments immediately reveal his directorialness, but that’s not what I want to emphasize. Sid helps us see the ‘laissez faire’ mentality of the system in which the students were embroiled for successful or failed resocialization. Sid says, “They just needed to go on set and see it fall apart.” They needed to burn their own buildings and resurrect them from their ashes. Sid suggests that ‘screwing up’ was built into the systemic process of ‘crewing up’. One might wonder whether this was a lone conjecture. However Abe seemed to suggest something similar in his interview: “Production Class does not teach you what another producer-focused class teaches you. [The latter class] goes a lot deeper into budgeting and scheduling in a more educational way. It is not a requirement for Production Class. Production Class is a free-for-all… Whatever I learned, I learned by doing it. By hitting my head against the wall.” So Abe seemed to suggest that learning by trial and a lot of error was a pedagogical value LAFilm encouraged. In other words, resocialization was a latent item on the school’s curriculum. Others with more experience with the specificities of Production Class were more clued in. Melbourne had already taken the class and was more familiar with its common traps. Thus, compared to other directors, he spent more time selecting his crew. He said, “They say that finding your crew is like finding your cast. If they’re not the right people, then it’s going to be big detriment to your film. So we [the producer and I] were very careful in our selection process.” Melbourne, unlike, say, Dade, was aware of the laissez 107 faire, ‘let them fail’ attitude that students realized only too late was a key learning outcome of Production Class. He had already been resocialized into the particular requirements of the class and had accordingly developed an antidote: as careful an upfront selection of the crew as was feasible, or in other words, choosing crewmembers that were already somewhat resocialized or had the individualities to become resocialized to each other, to Melbourne, and to his vision of Tropos. Speaking of a director’s specific creative vision for a film, we are now in a position to have a second, briefer conversation with the literature. During the conversation with the socialization literature, I concluded that a key contribution of my ethnographic findings is to show what it means to socialize into the particular form of the temporary organization: socialization in film projects requires multiple types of resocialization. This led me to provide a working definition of resocialization. Now it’s time to visit the individual side of the individual/group embedding. What does it mean when particular individuals with a strong mix of individualities need to embed themselves and resocialize with crews? And yet, because they have strong creative visions, how does the group resocialize to them? Channeling Bell and Staw (1989), who ‘wins’ the tug of war between “sculptor” and “sculpture”? Or, what happens when a high degree of directorialness confronts the particular organizational form that is a film crew? What, if anything, gives? Conversation with the Literature – Part 2 Howard Becker (1984) famously stated that works of art are “not the products of individual makers, “artists” who possess a rare and special gift. They are, rather, joint products of all the people who cooperate via an art world’s characteristic conventions to 108 bring works like that into existence.” (p. 35) Setting aside the question of whether films are works of art, for now we can infer that Becker, with his emphasis on cooperation and “conventions,” would agree that some sort of socialization is necessary for the “collective activity” that makes movies. So Becker would deemphasize directorialness, which I have found to be the want of an individual to channel their subjectivity, skills as well as storytelling ambitions into a film. Moreover, Becker would directly oppose “auteurism,” “a polemical movement in film criticism in the 1950s and 1960s… that valued cinematic expression as an art form in its own right [and appraised] the director… as the central creative agent in filmmaking.” (Strandvad, 2012, p. 119) I posit that the main difference between auteurism and directorialness is that the former precludes any notion of socialization or resocialization, whereas the latter is more bound up with the challenges of resocialization in light of competing factors of individuality. Strandvad’s (2012) ethnographic study of the making of two Danish films by “debutante filmmakers” is relevant here because it juxtaposes auteurism with my notion of directorialness; it does so by “tak[ing] up the… general claim… that filmmakers are well aware of auteur theory and use this theory in various ways.” (p. 53) Moreover, hers is one of only two studies (the other being Henderson [1990; 1995]; see below) I have across about debutant or student filmmakers, and further about such individuals’ “organizing.” The puzzle Strandvad poses is this: “Debutantes have not produced any films. Thus, the merits of their work cannot be evaluated and they cannot be auteurs. Yet, exactly this paradox forms the question…: if debutantes obviously do not live up to the criteria that define auteurs, then why are they met with expectations that seem to be 109 placed on auteurism?” Her formulation is immediately relevant to a puzzle I have in the field about student directors at LAFilm. In particular, her paradox brings up the contradictions that I found in student director Dade’s discourse and practice during the making of Guffaw. I will lay out the conclusions from her and Henderson’s works in order to better illuminate the situation of Dade. Strandvad found that even though the concept of auteur was “invoked” in both cases as “a rationale for making the films,” the “ideal… was disrupted… when both directors turned out to be unable to meet the auteurist expectations of delivering authorship.” And yet the ideal wasn’t rejected because in the context of Denmark, the film consultant, the agency that provides the main funding for the films (rather than the ‘producers’ attached to the film) played a very active role in its shaping. This was seen as an “expanded film school” situation, where the film consultant’s expertise was valued, advice was followed, and thus the director’s authorial control was undermined, and yet the consultant did not care about getting the creative credit and instead was “primarily interested in the process of developing the skills of the director.” So in the case of debutante filmmakers in the Danish context, directorialness was cultivated by external agencies, resulting in the indirect persistence of the auteur tradition. (pp. 52-53) 26 Strandvad’s study shows how auteurism but not directorialness is valued in some venues in Denmark. She does not emphasize let alone provide evidence of socialization of the directors to their own subjectivity, to the crew or to the story. In other words, nothing at the level of the individual director or other individuals embedded in the crews 26 For a contrasting example of the impact of a non-debutant auteur vision (in the American context) on the production team, and especially the writers that work under the auteur, see Jenkins’ (2014) interview with Roberta Pearson about Gene Roddenberry in her new book with co-author Davies, Star Trek and American television. 110 but only an external entity intervening later in the process mediated the translation of the Danish directors’ aesthetic subjectivity and ambition regarding story into the end product. So I cannot converse directly with Strandvad’s otherwise valuable study on directorial efficacy in a national context because she does not uphold any concept like socialization, let alone resocialization. In my framework, I have defined directorialness in terms of an individual’s subjectivity and ambition for story. The factors of individuality have implications for directorialness at least prior to resocialization into film crews. 27 Directorialness is a certain combination of individualities that hovers around the resocialization process. Directorialness mediates resocialization, especially for a crew that has not worked together in the past. Directorialness is more relevant in the context of what Strandvad calls “debut filmmaking,” or more generally early career filmmaking. Directorialness is a potential, and is particularly relevant in the context of the temporary organizational form that is a film crew, because the varying levels of directorialness among individual students need to be resolved in an orderly fashion (alternatively, “hierarchically,” a concept explicitly discussed in Chapter 3) in order for resocialization and filmmaking to proceed, for work to get done. Strandvad’s notion of invoking the auteur notion in order to “organize the making of films” is an inadequate substitute for the complexities of interaction of the director with the rest of the film crew and what such complexities reveal about directorialness. I’ll discuss briefly Henderson’s (1990; 1995) comprehensive ethnographic study of “directorial intention” and “persona” in a film school on the East Coast. Henderson focuses on the socialization of the student director into a “social identity” that she calls 27 Once resocialization occurs, directorialness is lessened because as Chapter 3 will show, people tend to stick to their roles, follow hierarchical workflow 111 “persona” of a “working artist.” She understands “persona” in terms of the director’s “authority” and “personal vision,” both of which are “emergent” and “distinguishing” of their individuality (1990, pp. viii, 334). However, she channels Van Maanen and Schein’s definition of socialization towards the formation and ratification of just the director’s social identity and its utility for their professional careers rather than towards socialization of variously ‘directorial’ individuals into crews. Drawing on Gross (1974), she examines how certain individuals come to cultivate and exude “cinematic competence,” and learn to market themselves as having certain styles that align with an in-vogue formal cinematic movement (e.g., ‘classical Hollywood’, ‘New Hollywood’). Unsurprisingly, then, the “ideal” type of cultivation according to Henderson (along the same lines as Strandvad) is that of the “auteur,” which she defines as “the film artist who uses narrative and stylistic principles to express a ‘personal vision’, and who writes, directs and edits her or his own films in an otherwise collective production process.” (1990, p. viii) While the difference between auteurism and directorialness that I discussed above with regard to the Strandvad piece applies to Henderson’s work as well, unlike Strandvad, Henderson at least recognizes that even though the “auteurist legacy persists” in the school she was observing, it is “tempered by the situated activities of filmmaking.” Yet she does not describe how differently directorial individuals come to learn to resocialize to the director. Where I put forth resocialization as a tool to rein in incompatible individualities, she resorts to the foundational sociological trope of “division of labor” as “practically and ritually sustain[ing]… the creative authority of the student director… amid the collective and often collaborative process of student film 112 production.” (p. 272) Individual students in her graduate program would gradually come to accept the “normative standard” of serving the director’s vision if the director “continuously demonstrated” that he or she had a vision. Moreover, in case of those students who failed to “respect group rigors,” responsibility would fall on the director and maybe the AD or production manager to “bring [them] into line.” (pp. 304-306) Seen from this angle, “complications on a shoot” became “potentially valuable” displays “for enhancing directorial authority. They show that a director can… succeed at something difficult. By contrast, the uncomplicated, smoothly-run shoot is often regarded as “ordinary,” “easy,” a mark of the director’s lack of ambition and intensity.” (p. 310) It is at this juncture that Henderson and I depart. First, I have to note that Henderson conducted her fieldwork a quarter century before I did, and moreover in a city (New York) whose film industry known to have a different ethos than does Los Angeles (Ortner, 2013), and in a program known to also have a different ethos. 28 Even if I were to temporarily leave aside those differences, on both Ingrates and especially Guffaw, compared to what Henderson found in her work, I found that it was necessary but not always sufficient for the director to display their vision, or at most, displaying vision was limited to particular circumstances or interactions within particular dyads. And in direct contradiction to Henderson, I found that an “uncomplicated” shoot was often regarded as the mark of a good crew, and by extension rather than by default, a good director. In other words, I found that a well-resocialized crew enhanced the directorialness of the director 28 I know anecdotally that Henderson did her fieldwork at New York University’s film program (one of the most prestigious in the world), and I know from a couple of my subjects who did their undergraduate at NYU that even today, it has a quite different focus than LAFilm. Auteurism is valued more there; filmmaking is more indie and even experimental, with a focus on cinematic style, and especially in Henderson’s time, directors’ affiliating with or stepping aside from the distinctive aesthetic movements in cinema studies; and overall, there is less faculty supervision and interference, especially about bureaucratic items like permits and miserliness about equipment. 113 rather than the other way around because a well resocialized crew meant that the directorialness of other individuals was kept at bay. More on point, I did not find evidence of a strong auteur tradition in the way students talked about directors and the work involved in the filmmaking process. I did not find that students and faculty at LAFilm understood a film as simply the work of an auteur. And finally, bringing back an opposition introduced earlier in the chapter, that between a crew “keeping each other in check” and a director “getting what he/she wants,” I found that there was a constant tug, a push and a pull between the two, with at least two possible outcomes. On one hand, resocialized directors might be able to get what they wanted and use their “veto power” in a manner their crew deemed judicious. On the other, directors who did not adequately resocialize would be associated with a film that crewmembers tended to be less satisfied with, and more perniciously, become caught in the net of contradictions often of their own making. To exemplify the latter, I turn to the example of Dade, the director of Guffaw. Back to the Field: Directorial Contradictions & “Individual Reputation-Preening” It is widely held that all filmmaking roads converge on the director. Whatever individuals, groups, organizations or industries make of the auteur tradition, it is the director who is vested with the role and responsibility of drawing the performance out of actors and for realizing the world of the film. In that sense, then, the journeys, production room speeches and conflicts, and theoretical conversations we’ve had in this chapter also converge on the figure of Dade. How a director goes about making a film says something about their individualities, directorialness, and resocialization. Reflected back, the 114 process gives us a portrait of the director. I’ll begin Dade’s portrait with his journey to LAFilm. In high school, Dade won the first prize for a documentary he created and remembered being taken in by “the power of film.” After getting an undergraduate degree in business, he moved to LA because he had family there, and he was ready to work in the industry. For many years, he worked as a script supervisor and a producer at fairly prominent companies. Watching directors in action made him realize he wanted to direct, not produce. He applied to LAFilm because he was not getting any shots at directing in those companies. He was admitted to a prominent conservatory as well but chose LAFilm instead because he “wanted to master and articulate to all departments,” and not be sidled with just one track. Dade thus entered LAFilm with great ambitions of success that involved “mastering” control over departments, and seemingly without a specific aesthetic subjectivity. Dade’s Guffaw crewmembers did not think he was overconfident or brash, and would agree that he did not bear any desires that would distract him from the project. Abe, the Production Designer, conjectured how Dade was given the much-coveted opportunity to direct for Production Class: “Dade just comes across as very responsible. He’s got two kids. He looks good in front of a panel.” A few of the crewmembers, like Kim, Duane, and Gail, had had good prior experience and personal relations with Dade (not necessarily as a director), which is why they chose to work with him again. As already discussed, Dade also considered and presented himself to be a leader. He told the crew to think of themselves as “professionals, not students,” and to not take the easy way out just because Guffaw was a comedy. Yet, he readily admitted when the situation 115 demanded it that he too “was learning,” especially with filmmaking processes like using story boards. Moreover, in the big speech he gave at the production meeting I used as the centerpiece example above, Dade stated, “As a director and leader of this group, what I am doing is just being honest with myself. And I want us to be honest with each other. Don’t be afraid of not knowing something.” He also reiterated he wanted the crew to make a film they were all proud about. It would appear then that Dade had quite a bit to recommend himself as a director; in particular, I found it striking how much Dade, compared to say Ben or Melbourne, equated being a director with being a leader. How did this “persona,” to use Henderson’s terminology, translate in terms of crewmembers’ opinions during the filmmaking process? From all that I heard spoken about him as well as after witnessing his interactions, I assert that Dade’s outlook and self-opinion at the end of Guffaw showed that he had not fully resocialized to the group, to the story, and to certain technical aspects of the filmmaking process. His leadership qualities and ambition for success notwithstanding, Dade not only was not an auteur in the way that Henderson presents some of her student directors to be, he was just merely directorial. Basically, there existed a gap between his motivation and his ability, a gap perceived by multiple crewmembers as glaring and frustrating to the point that they would doubt his motivation as well. What’s more striking—and jarring—is that during our interview at the end of Guffaw, Dade did not realize how much of a contradictory figure he had ended up as. 29 29 All interview evidence presented in this section has to be qualified. It’s possible that Dade was just tired when I sat down to interview him at 7pm, which is why his thoughts were not articulate and when examined came across as contradictory. Also, I do not allude to a couple of personal problems that Dade was dealing with during the months of Guffaw’s production. Yet, given what his crewmembers spoke of Dade in the field and during interviews, I have reason to interpret Dade’s obviously contradictory statements as reflective of his contradictory feelings about the project, the film and the crew, rather than just an artifact of the interview setting. 116 I asked Dade during our interview about his reasons for giving the mini-‘speech’ during what I call the centerpiece production meeting, and whether it was premeditated. Dade: “I mean, I always want to keep the morale up. Being on set to me is like a second home. I really love doing what I am doing and I don’t want to come to work, like, I don’t want to come home to an unhappy family. I want people to be happy with what they’re doing and I want them to do it in a way that doesn’t feel like work… So yes, the speech was planned because I really do feel like they bust their asses. But the reason I gave the speech at that time was because I wanted people to understand that they’re human and we all make mistakes. All you can do is to be proud in the work you’re doing and own it. See, part of me really was like, I could have been like a dick director. Just say, “Just get this. Get this.” Because at the end of the day, you’ve got directors out there that don’t give a fuck. Which you probably should be because the audience don’t give a fuck… All they care about is what lands in that final frame at the end of the day. I was very cognizant of that the entire time. But at the same time, I just wanted to make sure that I was trying to raise these kids up and not really… stunt their growth.” Ritesh: “As a director, how do you balance -- on the one hand keep the morale up and say things like "You're the best crew," and at the same time experience the individual frustration? How does that work out and how do you work through that?” Dade: “Well, I listen to people. I think that's half the battle, just caring what people have to say and really taking it to heart and knowing when you're wrong 117 and not being afraid to say, "You know what? You're right… I’ll try to do this better next time," or just trying to explain to people where you're coming from.” Ritesh: “So how do you decide what to take from people and what not to?” Dade: “It's in your gut. It's in your heart... but to be honest, before you set foot on set your movie is already made.” - Excerpt from interview As is evident, in terms of concepts introduced in this chapter, Dade was struggling to reconcile his factors of individuality and his streak of directorialness with his desire to resocialize with the crewmembers. I would say that he did not see resocialization for its efficacy, though. He saw it as a means to an end rather an end in itself. This is a complex claim, so let me attempt to break it down. I saw many instances of Dade stopping to listen to people. When the issue of lens adapters came up in a production meeting, he went round the room to get everyone’s input, allowing deliberation to proceed for a good 30 minutes. Even though he made the final call to go with the cinematographers’ stance since lens adapters was their department, he ensured everyone’s voice was heard. In other times, he would always give outspoken Juan a listen; clearly, Dade played the role of listener well. However, he did not always voice his concerns about a department directly to them. For instance, even though he was close friends with Gail and always allowed her to speak her mind (and she had strong, clear-cut opinions often opposing Dade’s), he would privately express his dissatisfaction at her doing so. Furthermore, even though he often asserted that everybody was busting their asses, he did not think many departments were doing their due 118 diligence. For instance, when it came to the screening of the editor’s cut of the film, 30 many faculty, other students, and crewmembers like Gail applauded their “bold choice” of entirely excluding two scenes, whereas Dade later told me that excluding them was “laziness” on the editors’ part. Dade might have claimed that his experience on Guffaw would have turned out better if he was more of a “dick director”—what Henderson and Strandvad might call an “auteur”—but that would contradict his desire to come across as a leader who listened and as someone who really considered his time on set to be like a “second home.” Regarding the latter, it seemed true that Dade was in his element when he was on set. For instance, when the crew was location scouting the residence of the main character, Dade fell in love with a house perched high in the Hollywood Hills, saying that it felt like “home.” Yet some thought that Dade was too comfortable on set. Kim observed, “Dade is a really nice guy but when he came on the set, there was too much joking around and I think he did that because he felt that that was the environment he needed to create because he was making a comedy, but that’s not how it works.” Thus according to some of the crew, Dade’s aesthetic subjectivity was not resocialized to what Henderson calls “group rigors” and rhythms. Overall, it appeared that Dade’s self-image as a leader did not translate into the group resocializing to him, or what Henderson would call continuously “demonstrating” he had vision. Sid captured this in his observation I brought up in the start of this chapter: “I think as Dade found himself unable to deal with certain issues, he would kind of informally cede authority over those things by… saying, 30 The editor’s cut is the first full assembly of the film after all shooting has occurred, and in LAFilm, it is put together entirely by the editors for screening in Production Class. Directors are not supposed to have seen or interfered with the creation of the editor’s cut. 119 “Well, this department is beyond my control at this point. They’re gonna do it this way and I’m just need to make the most of it.” The greater contradiction vexing Dade’s Guffaw experience was his understanding about his authorial control over the film versus his crewmembers’ experience of his thoroughgoing indecisiveness and lack of preparation (read: lack of resocialization) with regard to the story, the genre, the aesthetic subjectivity, and especially, the technical aspects of filmmaking. I only have the space to consider a few statements regarding this aspect, which can be considered to be the key problem underlying the largely dissatisfying experience of Guffaw crewmembers. I begin with the last statement in the above excerpt: Dade thought that before the movie was actually produced (“filmed”), it was already made. He referred to the ideal of thorough pre-production, discussion, and anticipation of all problems among all relevant crewmembers prior to filming (in production meetings, for instance) so that the actual filming or shoot would proceed smoothly. Particularly, he meant (and this is a widely accepted principle) that he knew what shots and order of shots he wanted from each scene each day. During our interview, he said: Before I started shooting, in my head I already had the film laid out. I knew exactly which shots I wanted… But I kind of wanted to be flexible. I didn’t want just be a fucking dictator… I wanted people to experience the class. The class is like that too. They want the students to really experience their positions…They want everybody to feel like this is their film, which is a good thing -- sometimes. I was okay with it… I think it got in the way a lot, to be honest, because I felt like - - because everybody in that class, a lot of them, especially on our team, were 120 younger in their positions so it was the first time that they were doing their positions so they wanted to make a film that they wanted to make… For instance, the cinematographers, every shot had to have a two-hour discussion down there… When the people don’t get it, I’m okay with it. But it comes to a point where you just got to put the fucking camera right there… I’m very happy with [the way the film turned out]. I’m proud of the work that we all did. I felt because the way the class is structured it was an unnecessary challenge in some ways -- that I felt like things that we shouldn’t argue with or we should just do what I've told them to do -- the film probably would have turned out a lot better. - Excerpt from interview Even a quick read of the above excerpt shows that Dade contradicts himself frequently: (1) the film is his in the sense he knew what shots he wanted, but the film was also others’; (2) he was okay with explaining shots to cinematographers and to listen to them so that he didn’t come across as a “fucking dictator” but at the same time he wanted the “fucking camera” to be put right there; and (3) he was happy and proud with the way film turned out but it could easily have turned out better. Basically, Dade was not fully the “leader” he actually thought a great filmmaker needed to be, but he did not know that. 31 31 I already showed in the section on “inexperience,” Dade appeared unaware that a majority of crewmembers (and other Production Class students and faculty as well) opined that he did not always know what he was doing. I’ll provide yet another example. When I was observing the editors in the edit suite, they took out time to vent to me. Sid said that most directors he had worked with had a clear vision for each scene and that they didn’t work until the last minute to make changes. His co-editor Maya was sitting alongside, chuckling despite their common frustration, as Sid compared the editing process with Dade to the game of Tetris: of their jointly and desperately trying to make the footage piece together as and when it came along, like “trial and error,” instead of having it “cut like butter”. Maya pointed out that Dade’s indecision on set took an ugly form in the edit room where he would compensate by revisiting each scene multiple times, each from scratch, “kind of like, every tweak to an excruciating degree without a real point of the scene in mind… So we were just cutting for cutting’s sake. I mean, if I were a director, I would want to make sure the editors are doing a good job, but like, if I hired someone to do a job, I don’t want to sit there 24/7. If I’m a director, I’d be like, “Okay, here are my notes, I’m going to leave”. You know, it’s nice to have someone do your work for you.” Revealingly, when I asked Dade how he thought the editors had 121 Resocialization and the “Dialectic of Reputation” In essence, Dade did not resocialize adequately to the crew, to the group process, to the story or the genre, or to how the technical principle of various shots planned in advance translating into the end product. Unlike other directors—and I will discuss the case of Ben in the next chapter, Dade still needed to work through his contradictory stances. If resocialization is a moment in the “dialectic of professionalization,” as I claim it is, then what I have introduced in this section is a moment in the simultaneously unfolding dialectic, the “dialectic of reputation.” Inadequate resocialization often goes along with what I call individual reputation-preening. By “preening,” I not only mean the showing off associated with brashness and ambition, but more emphatically, its molting away by others, like the mossy brick wall behind fancy subway posters. Individuals like Dade’s (and other crewmembers as well) reputations get preened by the people they work with and attempt to resocialize to. It’s clear from Kim, Sid, Abe, and Maya’s responses that they arrived at a reputation for Dade. 32 A reputation for the individual as aspiring filmmaker coalesced socially through the social process of resocialization. From the point of view of his career in LAFilm, Guffaw made Dade out to be a certain kind of director in his peers’ eyes. There was a gap between his self-estimate and others’ esteem. This gap is the preening: cautious brashness on the side of the individual, and molting by his crew. worked together, his response glaringly highlights his indecision and contradictory stances: “The editors, they worked well together but I don’t think they worked that well together but they were a good team. I like them. I’m not going to take anything away from them but I don’t think they worked that well together. But they did a good job.” 32 Duane, by contrast, in our interview at least, did not significantly revise his prior understanding about Dade. He too admitted that Dade could be very indecisive. 122 The good news is that this is not the be-all-end-all for Dade. Reputation, like professionalization, unfolds dialectically in moments. But coming out of LAFilm, and launching himself into the industry, Dade’s mixed resocialization and preened-away (yet not compromised) reputation have implications for his immediate career. Surely, others’ reputations were also preened, but the director has the greatest burden to bear. Resocialization ushers work getting done by crews. Meanwhile, reputations are preened, but also solidified. This takes us to the next chapter, where adequately resocialized crews work “efficiently” alongside the “routines,” “hierarchy,” and “roles” of a film crew to engage in “tacit knowing,” and sometimes, when all that occurs really efficiently, witness the “emergence” of “artistic discourse.” 123 CHAPTER THREE: “TACIT KNOWING” IN FILM CREWS AS “GETTING (THE) WORK DONE” Opening Shot Ben: “I like the empty sky.” Yasha: “It is too empty.” Ben: “But imagine it with the blue sky. It will look so different. I haven’t seen anything like that… It is dream like.” […] Yasha: “Can you make it a little tighter?” Ben: “No. Why do you want to make it tighter?” […] Yasha: “How about now?” Ben: “Yes. It is different. The other way is too film school.” […] Yasha: “If you take out the rock, then you are kissing the tree (to the frame) and that’s bad.” Ben: “Frame up with the line.” Yasha: “Can you live with the rock in the corner?” Ben: “Yeah, I’m not even going to notice it.” Yasha: “It is rock or block.” […] (some adjustment later) Ben: “There you go. You nailed it.” - Excerpt from field notes. Ben, the director of Ingrates, and Yasha, the cinematographer, work together to adjust the frame of the camera on location, shooting the opening scene. “It’s really all about communication and the way that you interact with people. Because there are many departments and people that you work with. It’s so easy for things to fall apart… You have to be able to communicate things clearly, specifically, make sure everybody knows exactly what you want them to do. Make sure they’re aware of deadlines, accountability, what’s at stake… You have to make them feel respected, valued and welcome to give their ideas but at the same time respect their position or function on the project. [At the same time, we have to remember] where we are in this phase of the process. I remember saying to somebody over e-mail that I think that’s a great note but [tell them] unfortunately we are somewhere else in the process. That’s not from a controlling place. That’s because we don’t have time to back track. It’s really managing people.” - Excerpt from interview with Duane, one of the producers of Guffaw Cate: “If the DP [Director of Photography] is smart, they’re going to start the day off with lights. We start the day off thinking that these are all the shots we’d love to get today… if we got all these shots, wouldn’t that be awesome? But you should know in your head, it comes back to editing. What do you really need? And by ‘need’ meaning to make this scene cut together and work. It’s what we really need. You should know that as a DP going in.” Ritesh: “Would Maurice [your co-DP] understand that you have an editing background?” Cate: “I don’t know sometimes if he didn’t understand what I was saying or if he had a feeling that we shouldn’t be thinking about it because we’re not editing it. We were at a shot list meeting one night. We were talking, and I kept saying it cuts better if we have it on this side as opposed to 124 this side. At one point he turned at me and he’s like, “The editor’s not here. Why are you talking about editing right now?” It took me back and I was like, are you serious? - Excerpt from interview with Cate, one of the cinematographers of Guffaw These introductory vignettes portray the key themes of this chapter. Whereas Chapter 2 talked about how individual students come to be embedded in film crews through the multipartite, iterative, and tentative process of “resocialization,” this chapter talks about how film crews work together as groups. More so than others, this chapter foregrounds the group activity of filmmaking, and besides, considers filmmaking in general rather than student filmmaking and crews in particular. 33 If Chapter 2 focused more on the individualistic conditions for the doing of work, i.e., how the “factors of individuality” and “directorialness” intricately and complicatedly weave into resocialization, this chapter focuses on how work actually “gets done,” i.e., the communicative and sociological processes that get movies made. If Chapter 2 focused more on the pre-production phase of filmmaking, providing examples of conflict and relative inexperience that characterized production meeting situations, this chapter focuses more on the production (a.k.a. filming or shooting) and post-production (editing, sound, score, visual effects, and so on) phases of filmmaking. This is not because production is not characterized by conflict or inexperience. Rather, in this dissertation, I proceed through what I found in the field to be a structure of “dialectical moments”. If Chapter 2 argued for “resocialization” as a key “moment” of social organization in filmmaking and film school, this chapter argues for “tacit knowing” at the level of the 33 Wherever possible, I flag when the category or example I am describing pertains more to the case of student crews and student filmmaking rather than filmmaking in general. However, throughout the dissertation, I am pointing out and interpreting meanings held by my informants, who are individual students in LAFilm. 125 group as the next key “moment” of social organization. In the concluding Chapter 5, I bring forth and weave all moments as the “dialectic of professionalization.” Alongside this dialectic, there unfurl two others: one of “reputation” and the other of “artistic discourse.” In Chapter 2, these dialectics were in their infancy: alongside resocialization, I suggested that reputation formation manifested as a moment of “individual reputation-preening,” and artistic discourse did not really manifest, or at most presented itself as “brashness” confronting “aesthetic subjectivity.” In this chapter, I present how tacit knowing in film crews is the basis of “social reputation-making” and “artistic discourse as emergent,” the next moments in said simultaneous dialectics. That is, I present the practice-based and discursive aspects of tacit knowing, social reputation- making and emergent artistic discourse as momentum towards work getting done, i.e., towards the substantial, embodied, agentive, and social authoring of films. Let me re-present above vignettes in order to foreshadow the key themes and the structure of the argument of this chapter. I open with an excerpt from the group activity during the shooting of Ingrates. Ben, the director, and Yasha, the cinematographer, old pals who had worked as co-cinematographers on other film school projects, are framing the opening shot of the film. We are at what Ben called a “pristine” location, and the two go back and forth in deciding how to capture the wide shot that unbeknownst to them will end up on the DVD cover of the film. As second assistant director (2 nd AD) as well as researcher, I am standing by, listening in on their interchange, awaiting any instructions from Seth, the 1 st AD and the head of my department. On the surface, observing the group activity of filmmaking, there are several “modes” in which crewmembers interact, go back and forth, and work together. I begin the chapter by listing and exemplifying 126 what I call the modes of give-and-take during filmmaking. Ben and Yasha’s interchange is an example of a mode I call “formal exchange of ideas.” However, a question immediately arises: what drives the surface action? What’s actually happening? How and why do people give-and-take? What concepts, rules, schemas give order to, i.e., organize, what’s happening? What do people know about acting in and as a crew? Put differently, what underlies the social organization of knowing, in situ, in practice, in the field? Organizing, knowing, and their interplay as work getting done, as the completion of filmmaking actions, is the primary motif of this chapter. I found three grounded categories that underlie and undergird how “work gets done”: roles, routines, and tacit knowing. I call these the gets-it-done factors. Roles are embroiled in attendant hierarchies, and routines in attendant norms and “industrial best practices”; both have subcategories, properties and dimensions (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). The ‘magic ingredient,’ however—‘magic’ in that it’s below the surface, not talked about and yet drives the expectedly craft-based and unexpectedly social group process of filmmaking—is what I call “tacit knowing.” I present “tacit knowing” as governed in great part by roles, hierarchies, and routines. Returning to the vignettes, Duane’s comment can be interpreted as assuming a crew that is working more or less efficiently. In assuming such a crew, Duane lays out his role as a producer, as well as the place of the producer in the hierarchy of command. This chapter provides plentiful examples of role-based hierarchy that explain how filmmaking is achieved. I also provide instances of types of routines, framed under the category “routine of efficiency.” Chapter 2 explained “inefficiency” as concomitant with and signatory of inadequate resocialization; this chapter showcases “routines” of “efficiency” 127 as driving forth resocialized crews into the realm of a variety of tacit knowing, the beginning of artistic discourse, and ultimately, the film. Cate’s interview excerpt exemplifies the upside as well as the downside of tacit knowing. Tacit knowing, I submit, arises in great part out of tacit interdependencies of the filmmaking process. After all, different departments, or people occupying 34 different roles, don’t merely sit or stand in their corner, doing the job of their department. As Duane suggested, they must work together, because very often their work relies on knowing what crewmembers in other departments are going to do. Moreover, as Cate suggests, while cinematographers can go without having to think ahead, they sometimes end up doing just that: they think about how their contributions are worked upon and manipulated down the assembly line of filmmaking; they think in terms of other registers in which the film is conceived; or simply, they think ahead to the final product. Cate, because of her prior experience as an editor, and because of her self-proclaimed “meticulous” nature, tacitly knows cinematography can be organized in terms of editing, and tacitly knows of the interdependency between cinematography and editing. However, because of different languages within different crafts, 35 not all individuals on a crew organize their knowing in action congruently. So when somebody occupying the same role as Cate, her co-DP Maurice, does not (or per Cate, cannot) think of cinematography as a string of edited shots, there arises what I call a micropolitics of 34 I want to briefly note the connection here to the sub-discipline of the sociology of occupations. In the field, students learned to take seriously the occupation, i.e., the embodiment and practice, of various roles or positions on a crew. Becker & Carper (1956) would say that this is the beginning of the development of “identification” with an occupation, and it’s sociological because individuals come to see their roles and work in relation to other roles and positions, and as contributing to the larger group process that subsumes yet relies upon work done in these roles. 35 For instance, my subjects described cinematography as having at least three languages: the language of shot order, the language of shot angle and camera placement, and the language of light. 128 tacit knowing, which is partly explained by the flotsam of inadequate resocialization, and partly by the casualities en route to what I call artistic discourse as emergent. The latter I portray in some detail in the chapter’s centerpiece example (although it’s at the end) of the authoring of Ingrates during its post-production, and in particular, during the interchanges between director Ben and “directorial” editor Don. Finally, after I have presented my empirical categories, I get into interpreting them and suggesting their significance with a conversation with the organizational studies literature as it pertains to the disciplines of communication, philosophy, business, and sociology. Four Modes of “Give-and-Take” 36 Filmmaking has too often been described as “collaboration.” During my visits to LAFilm, I attended several panel discussions and post-screening question-and-answer sessions where people working in the film/TV industry were asked about the process. Nearly everybody at some point threw out the word “collaboration.” This includes not just directors, producers, and writers who hold the power to make creative and economic decisions, but also those “below the line,” (Caldwell, 2008) like visual effects supervisors, production designers, non-showrunner writers, editors, and the like. Furthermore, they sounded enthusiastic when they talked about their collaboration. Having participated in the goings-on during student filmmaking, I realized that even students treated “collaboration” as an umbrella term for a variety of exchanges and interactions in the different phases of filmmaking. However, I knew that the Guffaw crew in particular did not uniformly attach to “collaboration” a positive valence that 36 I owe my acquaintance with this term to Professor Paul Lichterman, who provided valuable feedback to my initial memos and drafts as I was collecting data, at the time for his methods class on participant observation and interviewing. 129 filmmakers at industry panels did (see Chapter 2). What, then, do filmmakers, be they novice students or industry insiders, mean when they say that filmmaking is “collaboration”? The case of student filmmaking is instructive. I found four distinct modes of “give-and-take,” or ways of interacting, that students might refer to when they say “collaboration.” In fact, students did not use the term ‘collaboration’ on its own when talking to themselves about how they work. Nobody said, “Today was a good day of collaboration.” In that respect, saying “collaboration” is a habit of conversation with those who are not filmmakers, a shortcut to refer to their myriad ways of working together. They’d agree that when it comes down to the nuts and bolts of filmmaking, what occurs is give-and-take of ideas, actions, jargon and practices. More on point, all give-and-take is revealing of ways of knowing in practice. Let me explain what I mean by running down the four “modes of give-and-take.” “Informal/Spontaneous Exchange of Ideas” This mode of exchange is more common in pre-production (e.g., in production meetings) or in post-production (e.g., the edit suite) rather than the tightly scheduled, formally reined in, and intense days of production/filming. Further, this mode is more common in dyads or triads of filmmakers rather than the entire crew. In fact, most modes don’t involve the entire crew. An instance of this mode occurred during a meeting between Ben and Yasha when they were at Yasha’s house to figure out how to break down each scene of the script into “shots” or “camera setups” on the day of production. Below is an excerpt of their discussion about the opening scene. 130 Ben (B) said when he adds the soundtrack, he wants an eerie sound for the merry- go-round. Yasha (Y) asks B if he expects the opening shot to be “kinetic”… B shows Y on his cell phone a photo of the lone tree they would use in the scene. Y says, “Crazy! But focusing on the tree [in a certain way] would be too ‘film school perfect’.”… Y suggests that if the location with the lone tree was expensive, the actual merry-go-round part of the scene could be cheated on a beach… They go through more storyboards… Y asks, “What is the feeling that you want in this shot?”… B responds, “Sometimes, the feeling being played out is not the same as what the actor is feeling inside.”… Moments later, Y suggests, “What if she leaves the frame and comes back?” B says he just wants a “clean shot” to get a good performance. Y smiles, “Chances are you won’t get a clean shot the first couple times.”… B frantically gives camera directions to Y as he explains how visualizes the shot: “medium close-up,” “tight framing,” etc. Y suggests that the main character look up. B, looking tired, says, “That’s a good idea.” Ben and Yasha, casually dressed and seated on a couch, are throwing around ideas at each other. The pace of their exchange gradually quickens and by the end when Ben is firing the order of the camera placement, they are facing each other in relative excitement. They often cut each other off, don’t explicitly or immediately respond to what the other says, or bring up a related idea. I found instances of such spontaneous or informal exchange of ideas in production meetings as well. In one of the quieter Guffaw production meetings, when producer Duane made sure that the crew brought up their concerns for each scene, production designer Abe suggested, “As far as wardrobe goes, 131 the fancier the occasion in each scene involving [one of the main characters], the more ridiculous are the hats.” What distinguishes an informal exchange of ideas from other modes is that a decision does not necessarily arise nor is there a deadline to decide. A range of possible production outcomes is visualized. Crewmembers in particular roles suddenly think of a potential problem and bring it up, or like Ben and Yasha, they proceed through the routine of a shot list meeting, feeling each other out. An informal or spontaneous exchange reveals to crewmembers what they know about their role (Yasha comes to know how Ben understands “feelings” with regard to scenes), how they understand a particular routine (Ben comes to know that Yasha conceives of a shot as consisting of multiple takes because a “clean” performance may not be had in his routine of working with the camera), and how they tacitly know the other’s work (Ben comes to know Yasha’s approach towards enhancing an actor’s performance when the latter suggests the main character look up). I have two points to make with this as well as the other three modes. First, Yasha and Ben might have the appearance of “collaboration” but it is more accurate to describe their interaction as a “give-and-take” consisting of an informal or spontaneous exchange of ideas. Modes of give-and-take showcase the everyday doing of work. A passerby or witness, not just a researcher, might describe the mode in the same way. They may not fathom what actually gets the work done: roles, routines, or tacit knowing. But they would likely describe the appearance of collaboration as, in this instance, a spontaneous, informal give-and-take of ideas. 132 Second, I found that crewmembers themselves find such interactions meaningful because that is how they come to know or anticipate fellow members’ understanding of their role, a particular routine, and potential micropolitics. They also come to know each other’s factors of individuality, such as their aesthetic subjectivity and ambition. Using the terminology of Chapter 2, modes of give-and-take are sites of resocialization. Using the terminology introduced earlier in this chapter, modes of give-and-take are displays— if not the catalytic undercurrents—of knowing and organizing. In this regard, one can imagine Yasha coming out of the shot list meeting thinking, “So this is how Ben thinks about planning shots.” In sum, the analytic distinction between “modes of give-and-take” and the “gets- it-done factors” that I foreground in this chapter is that the modes are more descriptive than explanatory. Roles, routines, and tacit knowing explain how work gets done; whereas the modes describe the ways crewmembers interact while in themselves being sites where they come to know how they understand roles and routines. In what follows, I briefly give examples of the other modes, having made my two general points about all modes. “Formal/Deliberate Exchange of Ideas and Actions” An example of a formal or deliberate exchange of ideas is found in the first introductory vignette at the top of this chapter. Ben and Yasha are on location, setting up the camera, incidentally for the same shot for which I gave the example right above of informal/spontaneous exchange of ideas. They are figuring out the composition of the “empty sky,” the rock and the tree in a manner that does not look “too film school”. 37 37 I discuss the significance of the statement about “too film school” in the next chapter. In fact, I see it as a core grounded category and dialectical “moment” emerging from that chapter. 133 What makes this interaction “formal” and “deliberate” is that there is an impending deadline. They are in production, and a certain number of shots have to be captured. Plus, they only have that location for a few hours. So they volley ideas with the explicit purpose to decide camera frame. They have no option but to deliberate, to understand the other’s point of view (quite literally), to compromise, whereas in the shot list meeting, they could let discussion informally unfold. 38 I found many other instances of a formal exchange of ideas. On another production day, Ben was helping the grip/electric (G/E) department lay the dolly track. They were shooting in an exterior location where the surface was uneven, and as the key grip later explained, the angle of the camera move was unusual. Once again due to the time limit by which camera had to be ready, Ben spoke aloud, “Do we have any creative solutions to lay the track?” Crewmembers nearby, including myself, heard this unusual call, and in this instance, the formal, deliberate exchange consisted of actions as we collectively figured out how to lay the track evenly. Formal exchanges also occur between the director and the 1 st AD when they encounter the unexpected realities of a location or other contingencies on the day of a shoot, and have to reconfigure the planned shots of the day. This situation was commonplace on both Ingrates and Guffaw. As the camera crew was setting up for a new shot, Dade would often pull aside Tina, the 1 st AD, or vice versa, and depending on the 38 In our interview, Ben recalled that what they were doing on location was “experimentation,” which “requires a certain openness.” According to him, not experimenting “is like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole… A great filmmaker takes a step back, looks at what he has and goes, “What feels right? This isn’t working; why not?” You have to be in the moment. You have to be present.” From the way Ben recalled it, their mode of working together appeared informal. However, I was right there, standing behind Ben and Yasha, in my role as 2 nd AD. I was walkied into my head of department, Seth, the 1 st AD, and he was constantly asking me how much time Ben and Yasha needed before “picture” could start “rolling.” So there definitely was a certain formality to the interchange. 134 progress of the day or the kind of performance the actors had given, they would deliberate on how to combine shots or take out listed shots. “Negotiation” Just as it can be said that all action during filmmaking takes the form or “mode” of solving a problem, similarly it can be said that all modes are types of “negotiation.” Quite literally, “negotiation” is a connotation of “give-and-take.” Negotiation comes in at least two types. One is informal bargaining, which occurs the most frequently during the time constraints of filming, between those crewmembers whose roles are in principle in conflict with each other. The standard example is the constant informal bargaining or haggling between the 1 st AD and the DP. As Seth warned me (as also a member of the “AD department”), “It’s my job to get things done on time and it’s Yasha’s job to make sure everything looks good,” adding that “Yasha will lie [about how much time he needs].” In fact, Yasha informally confirmed to me that having worked with Seth on prior projects, he knew how Seth functioned, and would often start off asking for more time than he actually needed. 39 40 The second type of negotiation takes the overt form of a compromise and is too intricate and complex to be labeled as “bargaining.” Jolene used the term “compromise” to describe the process of filmmaking: “sometimes you just have to do it.” An indication of how endemic compromise is to the process of filmmaking is seen when Merle, one of the co-producers of Ingrates, cheekily commented to Ben during one of the early 39 And indeed, Yasha started off on the first day of production requesting several hours of setup before he would be ready for the first shot; I remember that the reaction on Seth’s face as being priceless. 40 I use the word “informal” in a different sense than I used for the mode of exchange of ideas. In fact, in the sense used above, the bargaining is extremely formal in that it is bargaining about the time limit. Rather, what I mean by “informal” here is that it has the appearance of casualness. 135 production meetings that Ben would “make [the professional casting director whom they had hired] earn his $1000.” Given the constraints of budget and time, and with student films, often crewmembers’ volunteered time and labor, there is an ever-present sense that the most has to be gotten out of available crew. In this context, compromises that can have major consequences for the final film are being constantly struck. Melbourne, the director of Tropos, recounted to me how he had to be sat down by his producers and told that his vision for the final scene, of multiple cop cars and a shootout, was too ambitious for the budget as well as for students’ level of expertise, and thus risked not paying attention to actors’ performances. Melbourne finally relented, even though he continued to maintain that he had no way of actually knowing that the performance quality would have suffered if they had stuck to the cop shootout. “Synergy” Mikhail, the 1 st AD on Tropos, described a mode of filmmaking that he called “synergy,” saying that the word was “overused in the business” but it always lived up to the actual phenomenon. “It’s like three people come together and their 100% equals 400%. So like all the opinions and input melt together and make something better than if it would have just been one director’s vision.” It seems to me when industry folk and even film school faculty and students talk about filmmaking as a “collaborative art” or “collaborative medium,” this is what they must mean. And while I have already described several other modes of give-and-take, “synergy” is the one that is the most positive in valence and the one that potentially involves the entire crew. I opened Chapter 1 with the evocative example of synergy on Ingrates: how enthusiastic the crew felt after the 136 creation of the hurricane on the exterior of a motel. I’ll discuss synergy in more detail in the next section, when I talk about roles and hierarchy as a key “gets-it-done” factor. “Gets-it-Done” Factor #1: Roles and Hierarchy In the previous section, I exemplified how film crews work in at least four modes of give-and-take. I now proceed to what I call the “gets-it-done factors” driving the modes of synergy, negotiation, and formal and informal exchange of ideas. How and why do crewmembers give and take? What makes films? At the level of the group/crew, roles and hierarchy, routines, and tacit knowing along with its micropolitics, explain to a great extent how movies come together. The group process of filmmaking across all three of its phases is structured by crewmember roles within a hierarchy of dependencies and reporting-to. Following the hierarchy is one of the most conspicuous aspects of filmmaking (and the film industry as well, with the well-entrenched notions of what students call “paying your dues” and “climbing the ladder”), not only for crewmembers but the film/TV-watching public as well. The director and the producers are at the top; there are various departments under their purview, some of which are more hierarchically relevant than others during a particular phase; and departments have a tree chart-like organization. Communication, knowing and socialization flow through the branches of hierarchy, and individual enactment of technical, artistic, social, political or narrative-based knowing occurs in nodes known as roles (note, I use “role” and “position” interchangeably). I found two categories within this gets-it-done factor: individual crewmembers “actively resorted to hierarchy in order to structure activities”; and given they are student crews and emerging filmmakers, they occasionally “blurred expectations associated with 137 their own or others’ hierarchical positions” because work had to get done. I take these up in turn. Actively Resorting to Hierarchy as Structuring Activity Even though I had worked in the role of 2 nd AD during the filming of Ingrates and was fully aware of how hierarchical control and workflow occurred, the thoroughness with which roles-based hierarchy was practiced did not dawn on me until my first field visit of the post-production phase. Director Ben, editor Don, post-production supervisor Merle, co-producer Richie and I convened at Merle’s apartment for the first collective viewing of the first full “rough cut” of the film. In all other ways—the fraternity-like atmosphere, the lack of punctuality, and the fact that Merle and Richie were the sole undergraduate crewmembers on Ingrates—the get-together felt informal. So I was surprised when Ben, after the screening of the cut, instead of launching directly into his reactions and notes, turned to Merle and said, “I’ll let you take the reins.” 41 In another sense, it was predictable that Ben would do that since Merle occupied the role of “post- production supervisor.” Yet it did not appear necessary because the feedback could have been exchanged without resorting to hierarchical flow. It soon became evident—and by the end of this section, this claim will become more obvious—that it is “professional” to demonstrate knowledge and respect for the hierarchy. Student crewmembers practice their knowledge of industrial practices during making of films, even as doing so has the separate virtue of getting work done. In other words, actively resorting to hierarchy in order to structure activity gets work done in what students perceive as the ‘right’ way. 41 In fact, a bit later, Don interrupted what was mostly a two-way conversation between Ben and him to ask Merle if he could ask more questions. 138 Interviews confirmed students’ respect for roles and hierarchy. Referring to well- laid procedures for talking to the director during filming, Mikhail, the 1 st AD on Tropos, said, “I agree that film sets should be very hierarchical... If everyone gives their opinion to the director, it’s like a mishmash of ideas, nothing really comes through, even if you have a good idea.” Ben confirmed Mikhail’s concerns about the director being overburdened during production, saying, “There’s too many elements in filmmaking for there to be no hierarchy… Hierarchy does assist creativity. Because I don’t have to worry about what light they are going to use, I can just focus on the fact that I want it to be bright on this side of the frame.” Maya put it more bluntly: “I don’t think a film set should be a democracy.” And in Production Class (the crews of Guffaw and Tropos), the faculty prefaced an early lecture on set procedure by saying, “I like to think of today as the most important day of your LAFilm career.” Clearly, the importance of hierarchy was given enough lip service that for it not to be enacted in practice would have been perplexing. In what follows, I show what “actively” and “resorting to” looks like in the field, and what it reveals about knowing and organizing at the group-level of filmmaking. Sometimes actively resorting to hierarchy means thinking explicitly in terms of roles. That is, to actually interpret your fellow crewmembers’ behavior in terms of their roles, position in the hierarchy, and responsibility at any point during production, rather than as individuals with unpredictable “factors of individuality” (Chapter 2). It’s not that you deny they have individuality but that in the thick of production, when shots have to be completed, performances drawn out, and a “million things” come together, crew members find it is more efficacious to not think of their fellow crew as friends, colleagues, etc., but as someone who knows something relevant and useful about a task 139 and has the power to execute it given their position in the hierarchy. Every minute of production is redolent with such knowing as organizing. For instance, when the Ingrates crew was on location and had only five hours to get all the shots, Seth, the 1 st AD walkied me to get Jolene, the producer. We had made quick progress in the first few camera set ups but at some point around high noon, things began slowing down. Seth wanted Jolene to let Ben know that as a production, they could not go over time because doing so would force them to serve lunch (per labor union rules), for which they did not have the budget. Having ADed for several student projects, Seth knew enough about hierarchy and roles, and about the tendency for student directors to get overzealous. So he actively sought out Jolene, the one person with the authority to communicate the constraint to Ben. Another instance of “actively resorting” to a role occurred during the first, chaotic day of production on Guffaw. Nearly everyone agreed on hindsight that the day was a checklist of things that typically go wrong on student productions. At one point, Sid, the editor, seated in a crowded “video village” (where the video monitor relays what the camera crew, a bit further away, is capturing), noticed something awry in the frame. He had already made several trips the couple dozen feet between video village and “set” (where the camera and actors are) to let Dade know of his objections. So at that point, to ensure that Dade listened to his note, he asked aloud, “Where’s Gail? She knows how to get things done.” This is another instance of a crewmember resorting to the producer’s authority, albeit of a different type than in the example above, to get their point across. He knew that some producers (e.g., Gail, not Jolene) were more vocal and more able to 140 get across their viewpoint about a story note, and more than other crew members, producers could occasionally offer input on how things look in frame. 42 People also express their concern or frustration when people in a particular role do not do (allegedly, since everything is up for a minor negotiation) the responsibility or task associated with their role. Two instances on Ingrates—both of which involved my role—exemplify this claim. Once, near the start of a shoot day, Seth expressed frustration to me when I told Ben that our actor had emailed me to let me know that he needed to take a call later in the day and hoped we could work around that. Seth chided me in front of Jolene, seated nearby: “What did I tell you about telling the director these kinds of things?” Seth’s point was that the director’s sole job on set is to think about “performance” and “frame,” and it was the AD and producers’ jobs to “protect” the director. By going to Ben rather than Seth with this information, I had interfered with the director’s prerogative. Similarly, on location to shoot the hurricane on the exterior of the motel, the crew was busy preparing the first hour for what was going to be a long night. It is the job of the AD department to decide who gets the limited number of walkie-talkies; Seth had guesstimated which department needed how many. The key grip asked me to wrangle one walkie originally assigned by Seth for the digital intermediate technician; he needed one to communicate with the only “body” he had below him, the best boy grip. I said I would but after twenty minutes, he came up to me visibly annoyed and said 42 However, it’s not just producers who are go-tos for getting work done. Once during an Ingrates production meeting, Yael, the art director (who reports to the production designer, who in turn reports to the director and/or the producer), asked me if I would get name tags for the entire crew. Her reasoning was that on the first couple of days of filming, when many crewmembers are strangers, it helps quickly personalize interactions if people addressed each other by their name rather than by their role. Such a task is typically the producer’s, since they oversee the budget, but it made sense for Yael to approach me since as 2 nd AD, since I was in charge of sending out the call sheet prior to each day of production and I was the one who would get everyone to sign forms, so I would know who is whom and could write out the name tags. 141 surprisingly forcefully, “I needed that [walkie].” I did not have time to ask Seth, who had busied himself with Ben and Yasha over camera setups. So I just went and wrangled one of the three walkies I’d given to the “industry people” in charge of the rain and wind machines. Later in the day, the key grip seemed grateful, even friendly. Knowing that I was also a researcher in addition to a crewmember, he volunteered a lot of information about the technical jargon used by the camera crew. 43 Furthermore, proper accrediting and naming of roles is also considered to be very important by crewmembers. The 2 nd assistant camera (2 nd AC) on Guffaw told me as she was filling out her paperwork that for that day, unlike previous days, her assigned role was 2 nd AC and not the more general and lower role of “G/E” (“Grip/Electric”). Grip/Electrics are like production assistants (lowest level) for the camera crew, fulfilling any camera or electric-related task. However, for that particular day, the director of photography (DP) had told her that she would be “slating” and changing the lenses (two main tasks of the 2 nd AC), so she could not understand why I, as the 2 nd AD in charge of call sheets, had listed her as G/E rather than 2 nd AC. She wanted to make sure that when the credits rolled in the actual, she’d received credit as both G/E and 2 nd AC. Another example of the importance of proper titles is when Ben introduced Yael to the crew for the first time during a production meeting. As we went around the table, he accidentally called her a “set dresser” but corrected himself a few moments later by saying, “Sorry, I never know the right words. Yael is our art director.” The set dresser reports to the art director, who in turn reports to the production designer. 43 E.g., he told me “taking a 10-1” means a crewmember is going to take a piss, whereas “10-2” is to take a shit. 142 Hierarchy and ‘creativity’. Besides, there is the larger question of which set of roles or positions in the film actually “creates” the film. I first heard about this question, or approach to interpreting hierarchy, from Ignacio, one of the G/Es working on Ingrates. Because it was provocative, I followed up with other crewmembers during our interviews. It all began when Ignacio, who was in charge of the gadget that produced lightning strikes, “resorted” to me to get him some water and chips. I was a bit taken aback, since it was uncommon on student sets at least for anyone other than “talent” (the cast members) to ask anyone else, even the production assistants (PAs), to fetch them anything. By “routine,” during “downtime,” crewmembers saunter on their own over to the “craftie table,” where beverages, snacks, fruit and the like are laid out. I knew that he did not mistake me for a PA because as 2 nd AD, I had distributed the paperwork to him earlier that day. However, I quickly complied with his request, figuring that he was probably given instructions by the key grip or the DP himself to not leave his post, and he might be hungry and thirsty. The next day, as I was walking nearby, he asked me if I could get him triple-A batteries, a request normally made of producers if the camera crew lacked its own supplies. Ignacio explained to me that he thought that production has batteries, not the crew. Intrigued by this “member-produced meaning” (Fretz et al., 2005), I asked him to explain. He eagerly replied, “The crew is involved in the making of the film and the producers are involved in the process of making the film… There is no film without the crew.” Basically, Ignacio thought that camera, grip and electric, production design, and sound, along with the director, “created” the film, whereas the producers and ADs supported these creators. Another G/E joined us and agreed with Ignacio’s take. In this 143 light, Ignacio’s requests to me made sense: even though he occupied the lowest position in the camera crew, his role was among a bunch of roles and departments that were more important since they actually physically created the film, whereas the producers and ADs assisted the creators. In other words, there were two hierarchies, and one was ‘higher’ than the other. So from where he sat, he could indeed ask me, or even the head producer Jolene, for water; after all, even his relatively minuscule actions of striking lightning were directly creating the film’s footage. Tellingly, none of the heads of department exactly agreed with Ignacio: They somewhat held on to his distinction, but attached different roles to it. Yasha, the DP, said: This is a touchy issue, right? Because if you were to say to a producer, they would love to consider themselves a filmmaker, as a creation of it… What I would consider the distinction – how much creative input do you have in this process, and how much logistical input do you have in the process, and I think that’s the bigger difference and the bigger separation. And there are people who fall in between. A producer would fall half way. Depending on your gaffer, key grip, depending on how they much care about the film, how much they’re working creatively in order to solve issues that you experience in the film, then they’re part of the creative process… [The gaffer and the key grip can definitely be creative.] As they go down, people care less because it’s more of a job, more like, ‘I have to get this done.’ Creativity gets lost in the hierarchy of a set. - Excerpt from interview (emphasis added) 44 44 On a related note, I want to point out the ordinariness of Yasha saying, “I have to get it done.” If for Yasha, filmmaking actions and decisions can be labeled on a continuum between logistical and creative, and if even the most logistical decisions are described as having an unmistakable momentum of “getting it done” (my usage), then I have a member-produced reason to proffer the larger grounded category of “gets- 144 So, Yasha’s appropriation of Ignacio’s’ distinction nullifies the latter: Yasha thinks that work on a set can be labeled on a continuum between “creative” and “logistical”, with some tasks being clearly more one than the other, and where there is a gray area, it depends to some extent on a “factor of individuality.” For instance, Kelly, the key grip on Ingrates, told me that he always reads the script before he begins working on a project, so he knows what to expect each day of the shoot; as I discussed in Chapter 1, Kelly was also of the opinion that “every decision is a creative decision.” Kelly would fit Yasha’s criterion of someone holding a position in the gray area between creativity and logistics, someone who, because they cared about the film, could definitely provide creative input that Yasha, as DP, would listen to. However, Yasha went on to compare the “chain of command” on a film set to the military’s, and how because there is “no time to explain” to the lowest soldiers (the G/E, such as Ignacio) why “the general [the DP or the director] chose to send a thousand soldiers in one direction.” Hence, chances are that Yasha would not, to Ignacio’s disappointment, categorize a G/E’s contributions to be generally creative. Ben, as director, unsurprisingly also did not buy into Ignacio’s reasoning. I think there is a distinction. I would describe it a little differently. I think there are people who create, and there are people who work for the people who create. People that create are the director, the writer, the cinematographer, the PD and the editor. And the people who work for them are the grips, the gaffers… And I feel it gets more technical, less creative the further down the chain you go. There are producers… who find a script, work on the script with the writer, find a director it-done factors.” The group process of filmmaking is, in every instance, geared towards the making of movies. Crewmembers are about filmmaking. 145 for the script, find the DP – they are making the big decisions that will decide how this film will look… Ingrates’ producers’ creativity and influence came in pre- and post- but not during production. [Regarding grips and gaffers], ideally key grips are functioning under the director’s creative umbrella. They won’t use orange gels if the look established for the film has been blue. A cinematographer is in charge of the integrity of the director’s vision. Everyone is responsible for the integrity for the vision of the person above them. - Excerpt from interview Like Yasha, Ben nullified Ignacio’s distinction. In a sense it is not surprising for people higher up to think they actually have more creativity, where creativity is seen to be a desirable aspect of filmmaking. Ben agreed with Yasha that producers can be creative, but he was even more forceful in his describing how independently creative a G/E or even a key grip can be (i.e., they cannot, they are upholding the vision of someone above them) and how rigid the hierarchy is. In a sense, he mirrors Maya’s notion that a film set should not be a democracy, but he was more diplomatic in suggesting it. What do producers make of Ignacio’s distinction? Jolene found it “useful.” She agreed with Ignacio that directors and grips physically create the film, whereas the producer may or may not physically create the film. “Everybody has the opportunity to influence the filmmaking process in creative ways,” especially in production meetings, claimed Jolene, but “not everyone takes the opportunity. If a grip has a good idea, it deserves to be heard. There is a right time and space to bring up ideas, but sometimes people don’t want to.” Duane, producer on Guffaw, also agreed that there was a right time and place to give notes (otherwise notes should not be given). Unlike Jolene—who with 146 the exception of an initial viewing of Ingrates casting tapes I never saw provide a “creative” (read: performance- or story-related input), and who at the time of the interview (when post-production was well underway) still wasn’t sure what the film was about (“It’s all in Ben’s head,” she smiled)—Duane insisted, “I definitely want to be involved in the content because if I wasn’t, I would feel just like a pair of hands, like a secretary.” Here, Duane worries that if producers don’t provide creative input, they would end up merely doing what Yasha would call a “logistical” role (or Ben “technical”). I saw Duane fight against his own desire to grab hold of the mouse in the edit suite and physically change what was on screen. However, he ended his stance in the interview by being more removed: “The producer might not have final say. I think you have to monitor yourself… You have to remind yourself where you are in the process.” Hierarchy and ‘filmmaker’. While I was observing students work together in a role-based hierarchy, I wondered whether they thought some roles could be better ascribed the term “filmmaker” than others. Granted, I did not find that students talked about themselves as “filmmakers” as much as they talked about their identification with a particular craft or whether their work in that department could be described as “creative.” So, when I asked students which roles or positions would they say correspond to “filmmaker” (wherein I introduced the term in the interview), I found a somewhat baffling range of answers that can be roughly divided into two sets: ‘Everybody is a filmmaker’ (including production assistants) or ‘Just the director and writer are filmmakers.’ Here are some actual responses from the first group. Duane said everybody but the craft services person could be considered “filmmaker.” Lavos claimed that even the 147 lowest in the hierarchy, the production assistant (PA), is a filmmaker because “without them, you can’t make a film. They are contributing creatively but that’s what I love about filmmaking; it’s collaborative.” Seth opined, “It’s the best word to use today. People can’t always be directing but they do other things.” He noted that as 2 nd AD, I was most definitely a filmmaker, which made me grin widely during our interview. Jolene agreed that everybody is: “Even electrics need to know why certain things work the way they do.” Kelly, the key grip who doubled as dolly grip, definitely thought of everyone as a filmmaker, except, interestingly similar to grip/electric Ignacio, the producer, because the producer’s general concern is “money.” In the other group, people qualified or disagreed that everybody is a filmmaker. Cate said that as a sometimes-editor, she considered herself part of the “filmmaking process,” but only those roles such as producer and director, who are with the process “from beginning to end,” are a filmmaker; the rest of the roles are “specializations.” Maya also thought that an editor is not a filmmaker, and that the term only applies to the director; this is not surprising given that she thought it was no problem that Dade got final cut on Guffaw, even though she didn’t think it was a great film. Don also agreed that the editor is not a filmmaker. He thought of the “writer-director,” which he considered himself to be, to be a “filmmaker” because they are “kind of an author, one person for the entire process [who] drives the vision. He said that Ben hired him for his opinion, but clearly from what I saw in their artistic discourse, Don contributed much more substantially to Ingrates. Thus, three student editors thought that the editor is not a filmmaker. Yasha wasn’t sure, for instance if the production designer would consider 148 themselves a filmmaker, or a cinematographer, but he considered himself one “particularly because my goal is to be a director.” Those who I interviewed on Tropos differed from each other. Tanya said, “Everybody is,” including the dolly grip. “You can make a film without a dolly grip,” but she wasn’t sure if it would a successful film. So Tanya, Duane and Jolene, all producers, thought that most everybody counted as a filmmaker. Mikhail thought that the only person who counts as a filmmaker is “someone who thinks about story,” so the grip, who is simply there to move equipment, is not a filmmaker. I guess he had not met Kelly, who insisted that as a key grip, he thought about the requirements of the story and the director’s engagement with the cast in order to decide minutiae such as how fast to move the dolly. Finally, Melbourne thought that the dolly grip was not a filmmaker for the same reasons as Mikhail, but added that it was a “gray area” because “the dolly grip might push in two seconds later than the person told them and it turns out to be great. And if they made a conscious decision, in that sense, they are being a filmmaker.” The patterns that emerge are interesting. Producers tend to think that everybody counts as a filmmaker, which is consistent with the finding in the previous section that producers that all roles have the potential for creativity. I would venture that individuals who work in “below-the-line” roles would also think they are filmmakers; I only have Kelly as a data point. However, other heads of department, such as editors and cinematographers (e.g., Yasha), tend to think that creative work occurs only in some roles and only some roles count as “filmmaker.” In sum, the previous two sections have shown that depending on one’s position in the chain of command, as well as the phase of filmmaking, individuals in different roles 149 describe and categorize differently who has what kind of influence at what point in the process, who counts as ‘filmmaker,’ and what that means for their understanding of the value of their contribution. In other words, working in a role-based hierarchy is political, or as I will show in the section on tacit knowing, “micropolitical.” Blurring of Hierarchy and Mixing of Roles as Structuring Activity Although for a good proportion of the time they spend together, students respect and “resort” to hierarchy for enactment of roles, they also show many instances of blurring role-based, hierarchical distinctions. Below, I discuss some key instances and types of blurring. Blurring can be seen as endemic to student filmmaking, or so opined one of Ingrates’ 1 st ACs (first assistant camera). He said that “union shows” (usually, shows from big studios) he had been on are very different from “this kind of show,” which is more “indie” (referring to independently-produced films/TV). In the former, there is a very clear demarcation of roles. He provided the instance of the task of moving sandbags: on a union show, he would “never touch” a sandbag because he wanted to “appear professional” and “it’s not my job.” This is unlike a student project where anyone nearest a sandbag, even the director, moves it because often sandbags are needed urgently. Regarding creative suggestions, he said there is “no scope” on a professional set; “no speaking unless you are spoken to” was the norm. The only time you speak to the DP about an idea is when something needs to be done that’s not decided, and in order to do it, you simply suggest something. 45 45 What the AC said mirrored my relatively brief one-time observation of the set of NBC’s Outsourced. On that set, a dolly grip crouched and sat in his corner for the entire hour while the 2 nd AD was wrangling background actors; the set was not quiet, but I did not observe too much interaction among people occupying lower roles. It was the director and especially the ADs whose voices were heard the most. I 150 The notion of blurring of roles is in a sense built in from get go in LAFilm. The earliest classes students take require “rotation of roles” in crews of three: on each film, one student directs, one is on camera, and one does sound, while all help out in production design; then they rotate roles and also edit each other’s films. This early experience and practice in blurring of roles might be a habit that students have difficulty letting go of. It’s only in the more senior projects such as thesis films that certain roles even open up for fulfillment. For instance, the script supervisor position (or “scripty” or “supe”), as well as the 2 nd AD position, let alone a 2 nd -2 nd AD, are not frequently occupied but always in demand. On both Ingrates and Guffaw, I was 2 nd AD but if I wasn’t there, it wasn’t clear if they would have found someone for that role; and on both projects, crewmembers noted that the project suffered for not having a regular scripty (different students would come and go depending on their availability; on some days, there was no scripty). Moreover, crews are usually no larger than 25 in mid-school projects and no larger than 40 in thesis projects. Crew size and member regularity depends a lot on funding: if students can raise sufficient funds for their thesis project, they may be able to pay for certain positions. For instance, Ben paid for an external, or more meaningfully, a “professional” or “industry,” casting director (referred to above in the section on “negotiation”), color correctionist, visual effects supervisor, sound mixer, and musician; he was persuaded last minute to even pay for a reliable, external 1 st AD (Seth). Whereas don’t have additional evidence from “professional sets” to contextualize what the 1 st AC said, nor any to comment on the implications for one’s position in the hierarchy of what it means to not speak up and provide input. And given the previous section’s argument that students of all stripes often agree that roles need to be adhered to, it is somewhat surprising that roles and positions often get blurred in the thick of filmmaking. 151 the crew of Guffaw could afford no external individual, 46 and instead relied on the pool of their LAFilm friends not enrolled in Production Class. It’s a common part of school life to learn about departments and one’s skills by practicing different roles on different projects. Another common instance of role blurring is everyone chipping in to help out in the “wrap” at the end of shooting day. I saw Dade sweeping up a room they had been shooting in all day; Sid helped Duane wrangle the wires (even though it was not their job); and after I had finished collecting all the headsets and walkies, I too helped out the camera crew. This collective helping out, especially at the end of the day, is a “routine” on student film sets; I discuss routines as the next key “gets-it-done” factor. Blurring of roles brings with it an occasional leveling of hierarchy. On both student projects that I observed, crew of all levels, including PAs, had occasional and sometimes plentiful access to the video monitor in “video village.” When I visited the set of NBC’s Outsourced, I saw they had two video villages, one for the DP and one much larger one for the director, but they were both blocked off, and only some people were allowed entry. The video ‘village’ on most student sets consisted of at most 1-2 monitors, and on some of the more chaotic or disorganized days of production, many individuals would crowd around the monitors. Typically, only department heads are expected to stand by to give notes to the director. The image on the monitor is usually the closest to the image on the final film, so the makeup and wardrobe folk, as well as the art director, have legitimate reasons to be closely watching it. If PAs or other set visitors have regular access to it, it is typically a sign of work getting done in not the right way. Not only are 46 It should be noted that makeup, wardrobe and costume people are frequently hired from outside the film school pool on student projects since LAFilm students do not aspire to those roles. 152 there anyway “too many cooks” on LAFilm sets, as one student writer put it, but then there are many sous-sous chefs as well. Just as every now and then, crewmembers actively resort to the hierarchy to get work done, they also expect other crew members to be flexible with their roles. A clear example of this occurred between Seth and Jolene. Seth, more so than other individuals I came across on student sets, liked for people to stick to their roles; this is partly explained by his not being a student of LAFilm but an individual who traded the opportunity to attend a famous conservatory to produce and direct his own short, and realized that he was getting all the experience he needed being paid to AD on LAFilm projects. Above, I described how Seth had asked me get Jolene to tell Ben that they did not have the budget to go into a second lunch. On another day, however, Seth again walkied me to get Jolene because Operations was creating a fuss over somebody’s unauthorized car parked in front of the “elephant door.” It took me a while to find Jolene, who was handling another production-related crisis in LAFilm’s production office. She walked back with me and when she realized the relatively minor nature of the problem, expressed her frustration that this is something Seth could have taken care of on his own: “Sometimes, I wish Seth would have my back.” In our interview, Jolene reflected on these examples, “I am kind of against people sticking to their roles when there is less time because it doesn’t help run it any faster. People [sometimes] need to step it up, wear two hats, even if it’s not your department, and ask, “Hey, is there something I can do?” Also, my motto is, don’t be an idiot and try to problem solve before going to your boss. You’ve come to get me for a band aid yet again, when it’s right there!” So, Jolene pointed to lack of resocialization between an AD 153 and a producer’s individuality when it came to misaligned expectations about sticking to roles. Jolene was clearly in favor of the more utilitarian route, whereas Seth stuck to deontology. 47 Sometimes, production moves at a much faster, even hectic speed in order to complete the shots the film needs. It’s common to see a full-scale blurring of roles and hierarchy when there is limited time to get a shot, or if a particular day has a high number of camera setups and production has the location for just that day. Blurring of roles and hierarchy is thus the “gets-it-done” factor that drives synergistic modes of give-and-take, like the one I describe in below excerpt from the last 30 minutes of the last day of shooting on Ingrates. At this point, the house lights are on. Either no lighting is required, or there is not any time to set up lights. The Operations faculty member comes to set to remind us he had wanted a “hard out” by 11.30pm and it was already midnight. Seth successfully negotiated with him, saying he had no idea they would lose most of their PAs and set dressers earlier in the day. One problem was that there was not enough blood, since an earlier scene used up most of it, so Makeup had to dilute the blood she did have, which was enough for just one take. Meanwhile, to create an incline, Lara, Ben and I ripped some carpet and shoved a couple of rectangular stools under it. Yasha complained the tape on the carpet was conspicuous, but 47 It’s important to remember that blurring of hierarchy and overlap of roles can be a sign of inadequate resocialization. As suggested above, Seth and Jolene were not resocialized to each other. However, it’s not resocialization with regard to any of the factor of individualities that I highlighted in Chapter 2. Seth and Jolene’s problem is better characterized as lack of alignment in expectations about roles, which, as I suggested above, maps on to the tension between “student” and “professional” or “industry” filmmaking. On the set of Outsourced, it is Seth’s disposition that would prevail; however, Jolene, given that she had successfully produced several student films, was also justified in thinking that blurring works. Filmmakers of all stripes want to get films made, and what they consider the right way of getting it done depends on their position in a grander, “industrial” hierarchy, a notion I dig into in the next chapter. 154 Ben tried to brush that off. A PA pointed out that there should be debris on the carpet since the motel room had just been hit by a hurricane; I tell her, “Good point, but we are running out of time.” We now have 10 minutes left. Ben said willfully, “ Let’s bring positive energy and get this done.” Makeup responds, “I like that”. Yasha and 1 st AC positioned the camera super close to the actor’s face. Lara tied the barrette to a wire, and they do a rehearsal of blood flowing from the bottle, pushing the barrette with it. Seth insisted that they have time for just one take. Take one complete, and the trajectory of flow was not perfect. Makeup went to get her ‘secret’ stash of blood. After two more takes, with the Operations faculty member hovering like a hawk, Makeup poured very diluted blood onto an already red carpet, and the trajectory achieved seemed more right. Ben raised his hands, smiled at Yasha and said, “Either we got it, or it’s really corny.” Seth shouted, “That’s a wrap on Ingrates!” Everyone applauded. - Excerpt from field notes The lived experience of getting the final scene of Ingrates accomplished was both tension-filled and exhilarating. We were past the union norm of a 12-hour day that LAFilm upheld. Everyone was either wrapping up the equipment for the “hard out” or helping to get the last scene. All the tightness and claustrophobia of being in that location for three consecutive days had evaporated, as the crew went into fifth gear to complete the shot. What I remember most distinctively was the sense of freedom and lightness concomitant with the melting of roles and hierarchy. The director, the production designer and the 2 nd AD were fixing the carpet together. The PA was pointing out story- related holes, such as lack of debris. The 1 st AD was doing the producer’s role of 155 appeasing the faculty. The work of getting the final scene would not have gotten done without the “gets-it-done factor” of blurring of roles. Nor would the give-and-take have felt synergistic. It may not have been the “400%” payoff that Mikhail had described (especially since Ben and the editor Don came up with an entirely new ending during the long post-production period; I discuss this below), but it had the bubbling, positive valence of synergy. “Gets-it-Done” Factor #2: Routines The second major “gets-it-done” factor is as everyday, ordinary and, well, routine as roles and hierarchy. Quite simply, following established “routines” gets the work done; i.e., following procedure makes the movies. Routines, as with roles, as they showed up in the field, are multi-faceted enough that that it is not useful providing a definition. However, I’ll make three conceptual points so that we can understand their nature. First, routines are contrasted with roles in that roles are positions or bunches of responsibilities, whereas routines are actions, schemas, templates, procedures, or habits. Both involve crewmembers working together, but only the former is necessarily affiliated with individual crewmembers. Further, a crew can create a routine about enacting roles (like Jolene wanted it to be more routine that enactment of roles be blurred), and enacting roles can be, in common parlance, ‘routine’ (like moving sandbags is ‘routine’ work for a grip). Similar to actively resorting to and blurring roles, routines organize knowing as activity, or alternatively, routines are knowledge schemes of how to organize. However, roles are associated with hierarchy, whereas routines are not. Roles are mixed up with different manifestations of power, agency, and creativity, whereas being creative, political, or hierarchical can be ‘routine’. 156 Second, routines, which I use synonymously with “procedure,” are associated with “efficiency,” “experience,” “maturity,” and like a well-oiled machine, with being well “crewed up”. Using the names of categories in Chapter 2, I consider the proper enactment of routines as a sign of “adequate” “resocialization”. It does not mean anything more to say that a crew does not follow routines than it is inadequately resocialized. Given the theme of this chapter is work getting done, my discussion of roles and routines—and following that, “tacit knowing” and “artistic discourse”—gathers the knowing and organizing I observed towards their natural disposition to get work done, movies made, and “reputations” socially cemented. Finally, the distinction between “modes of give-and-take” and “routines” is more challenging to elaborate. An example of conflation is in the following: Negotiation (a mode of give-and-take) is a routine practiced by those who occupy the role of the producer. Or, producers routinely negotiate. A way out is to claim that modes need not be routinized. That is, modes can be one-off manifestations. Moreover, I argued above that modes are appearances of exchange, but they do not speak to its ‘how’ and ‘why’. The undercurrent of efficiency and “best practice” that I associate with routines gives certain modes their raison d’etre, their tendency to manifest during certain and not other parts of the process, by certain and not other roles. Briefly, routines drive modes, routines can become modes, and routines are supersets of modes. Routines as Forms of “Efficiency” Much of the routines and routine behavior I observed during filmmaking can be grouped under the category of “efficiency.” For instance, when Dade blurred roles in saying all Guffaw crewmembers should be looking for locations, he was motivated by the 157 routine of efficiency, and particularly the routine common in student films about finding a cheaper and/or more story-worthy location. Routines can also be about running a tight ship, either on set or in production meetings. An instance of an efficiently-run production meeting is how Duane handled them. From the very first meeting, Duane insisted that the AD read the script scene-by-scene, followed by departments chiming in with their needs after each scene. He had a preferred order of department rundowns: cinematography, production design, sound, assistant director, and editing. Duane often interjected proceedings to remind everyone of the basics: “It’s better to ask general questions only after each person has gone through their departments”; or “Don’t give an answer for the sake of giving an answer. It’s better to say, ‘I’m not sure.’” Duane was following the routine of pre-production by going down the hierarchy of departments’ influence during production. In going down the script scene-by-scene, he wanted to preempt problems during film. This is an example of a best practice of how to run a production meeting, one Duane may have picked up from past experience or from his producer faculty mentor. That Guffaw production meetings often deviated from this norm due to dramas of inadequate resocialization does not take away from the routine—a set of habitual actions—Duane was trying to instill. Producers and ADs also make it a routine to ensure punctuality. In fact, the norm of being punctual per one’s “call time” to set, of ADs writing down the times of the first shot and break to and from lunch, and of the 1 st AD constantly haggling with the DP to get camera setups done on time, all demonstrate the time pressure of the production phase of filmmaking. While pre- and post-production can unfold more leisurely, actual production is usually a race against time limits. As 2 nd AD, I was assigned the task of 158 reminding Seth of his job of making sure the crew starts lunch on time (as a union rule, lunch is called exactly 6 hours after “general call time”); if production needed a few minutes extra, we were required to informally ask aloud if, say, five minutes of “grace” could be granted. The 1 st AD Tina, when she was constantly not given heed by Cate and Maurice about setting up on time, began noting the time they took, averaged the data, and presented them as rebuttal at a production meeting. The lack of punctuality of crewmembers, especially those higher up in their departments, is noted by producers; once Jolene had a chat with Lara, the production designer, when Yael, her art director, arrived on set six hours after her call time, after not returning three voice messages I had left her (Seth had told me, “Nobody likes getting a call from the 2 nd AD). Punctuality is a routine of efficiency of especial value on a film set, and those who don’t observe it stand the possibility of being fired, even if, like Yael, they are friends of people on the production. Demonstrativeness of responsibilities associated with a role is a routine of efficiency as well. I vividly remember handling the slates for the very first time, and the attention I drew in not slating properly. It was my fourth day on the set of Ingrates, and Seth needed me to fill in for the 2 nd AC, the position normally vested with slating. I had seen enough slating in behind-the-scenes footage of moviemaking that I was excited to take on what I thought was a straightforward yet glamorous task. Little did I know. After the second take, the digital intermediate and the stunt coordinator—two non-overlapping roles—came up to me and demonstrated how I should hold slates, how I should make sure they “clang” loudly but not too loudly if I was right near the actor’s face, how I should say “Marker” only after the clang sound, and how quickly I should withdraw the 159 slate from the frame. When I joked that I was new to this, neither of them seemed amused. On the next take, when I didn’t seem to get hold of the routine, Yasha, the DP, interrupted proceedings (we were already running out of time) to go over the steps. A bit later, I overheard Yael, the art director, whisper to Seth that if I didn’t know how to slate, I shouldn’t do it; Seth responded that he wanted me to learn the job, an indication that after all we were all students here. As we were driving home, Seth explained to how the seemingly simple task of slating affected many other departments: sound, editing, and the performance itself. However, what I took away from the incident was the importance of proper, efficient practice of a symbolic routine of filmmaking, a routine that many in the crew were well-versed in. 48 The notion that routines are displays of interdependency among departments is at the heart of “tacit knowing,” the core grounded category of this chapter that I introduce in the next section. Even though there are many others, a final routine worth mentioning is that of maintaining a quiet set. The less resocialized Guffaw crew had a more difficult job ensuring this. Dade had to remind the crew twice during production meetings that when he or Tina said, “hold the work,” everyone should stop doing what they were doing. Kim and Cate both confided in me that Tina was trying her best yet failing to keep people quiet. When the second half of a shooting day had gotten quieter and camera setups had fallen into a rhythm, Maurice grinned to his crew and said, “I love it when it’s quiet… I can go all day.” And I noticed that some moments of quiet were sometimes the ones 48 I was surprised that stunt coordinator, an external for-the-day hire, took the time to explain to me that I slated correctly. Later on, Seth explained to me that slating too close to an actor’s face might distract them and put them at risk at incorrectly executing a performance. In this case, the merry-go-round was right next to the actor, and were he distracted, he stood the chance of getting injured. Even though the stunt coordinator was nearby, it was his job to protect the actor from any unnecessary risk and preempt the stunt coordinator’s protection. 160 when everyone felt that the performances actors could provide were “epic” or “amazing”: I remember a quiet moment of three actresses singing while lighting candles that cast a beautiful hush on the set, as well as the excitement of the quiet yet urgent whispering into walkies by members of all departments as they coordinated actions for the “crazy” 180- degree dolly turn I discussed above. The routine of “running a good set” meant in part running a quiet set (the AD’s responsibility), and I witnessed that sometimes the beauty and joy of filmmaking happened in its quieter moments. Of course, beauty and joy can also occur in moments of unplanned intensity, like the “synergy” of the last scene of Ingrates that I described above as an example of “blurring of roles.” However, it was unquestioned that the routine of running a quiet set would result in satisfactory filmmaking. Having gone over roles and routines as two key “get-it-done” factors, I move on to explaining the varieties, characteristics, and significance of tacit knowing. If resocialization was the core category of Chapter 2, tacit knowing is the core category of this chapter. After going through the examples, I undertake a “conversation” with the organizational studies literature, in which I not only explain how “tacit knowing” is related to “roles,” “hierarchy” and “routines,” but also backward to “resocialization” and forward to “artistic discourse as emergent.” I provide a somewhat detailed example of this last-mentioned category after the literature conversation. “Gets-it-Done” Factor #3: Tacit Knowing One of the starting premises of this chapter is that filmmaking as a group activity is driven by knowing and organizing intertwined in practice. 49 Additionally, filmmaking 49 While I am fully aware that the methodology of this dissertation is grounded theory, I explained in Chapter 1 that grounded theory does not mean absence of influence of prior theory. No social science is 161 is a set of “practices” in that practices are what regularly occur in the everyday work of crewmembers, and is ‘practice’ for individual students learning the ropes, getting resocialized, and getting prepared for the ways of the industry. “Knowing,” “organizing” and “enactment” in “practice” are not mere words. They are the “sediments” of the phenomenology of filmmaking: inescapable, ordinary, “taken for granted” (Schutz, 1967). They are what is on display; they are the catalytic undercurrents. There might be more going on than what meets the eye, but at least this much is conspicuous. They are what I found, experienced and enacted as participant observer. The simple is deep. The simple is also everyday. The everyday is simple. What is everyday about filmmaking is that it is a social activity. In Chapter 2, I argued that “making films necessitates being social;” therein, I showcased the connections between resocialization and being social as a crewmember. In this chapter, I focus on knowing and organizing, which entail two further relations: crewmembers know and organize with regard to their own roles and routines, and they know and organize with regard to others’ roles and routines. Because this is a dissertation in the field of communication, drawing on influences from sociology and production studies, I focus on the latter relation. I obviously don’t deny that work gets done because a cinematographer knows what lenses to use or a production designer organizes a room’s color palette to evoke an emotion; in fact, much if not most of filmmaking is because of cognition for one’s craft, i.e., the roles and routines of crew members as they pertain to themselves or their departments. What I found interesting is how much work gets done because of the simple, everyday, taken for free of such influences (Suddaby, 2006). As an ethnographer interested in how filmmaking gets done at the level of the group, the prior influence of practice theory helped shape what I became sensitive to. I discuss practice theory in the conversation with the literature (below). 162 granted, or in other words, tacit forms of knowing and organizing in interaction with other departments. 50 In sum, I argue that tacit knowing (synonymous with tacit organizing) is the underappreciated, undeniable, and omnipresent glue, or more accurately, a set of social dispositions to interaction, that gets work done. Films get made in good part because crewmembers are tacitly coming to know or anticipating each other’s’ actions. In what follows, I show that tacit knowing can be understood as a category encompassing roles, hierarchy, and routines, and more. The “more” consists of the following properties of the this core category: (1) tacit dependencies that are the skeletal framework, i.e., the inherent dependencies, of filmmaking; (2) micropolitics, that inevitably surfaces due to (a) hierarchical conflicts, as well as (b) tensions about “guarding” one’s own contribution; and (3) the emergence of artistic discourse. Regarding the latter, tacit knowing is not simply a resocialization with regard to “aesthetic subjectivity” (Chapter 2). Tacit knowing is a separate “moment” in the “dialectic of professionalization” in film school, a dialectic that begins with “resocialization”. Resocialization usually paves the way for tacit knowing, which when practiced with some type of consistency in some subset of the crew, can lead to what I call artistic discourse. And when artistic discourse emerges, that’s when the social authorship of the particular medium/art form that is film also emerges. Individuals in 50 I don’t mean to suggest that one cannot tacitly know the principles and rules of one’s own department; in fact a lot of knowledge about one’s own department is tacitly enacted in practice. E.g., cinematographers don’t say aloud or can’t always explain why they want to change focus during a particular moment in a performance, or an editor may not know exactly why she decided to go with a series of closeups. When I refer to “tacit knowing,” I refer to knowing in interaction with another department or acting according to knowledge about somebody else’s quite separate set of responsibilities and skills. However, even then, tacit knowing requires knowing about one’s craft. 163 LAFilm are not members of a construction crew or a firefighting crew 51 ; they are members of a film crew, and artistic discourse is that property of tacit knowing that renders it unique to filmmaking. Introduction to Tacit Knowing In a Guffaw shot list meeting, Tina, the 1 st AD (and unofficial time keeper on and off set), goes about her business as director Dade, cinematographers Cate and Maurice, and editor Sid, rehearse the blocking of a scene with Sid’s iPhone. She looks up, takes notes, and doggedly interrupts the group to ask them for a backup plan, what the frame will eventually look like, and the lens they plan to use. She receives tentative answers and notes them down. We could say, Tina comes to know the degree of finality with which this key triad of DP-Director-Editor are planning production days. Or we could equally well say, Tina actively anticipates the work, cognition, and craft of departments that affect her own. She does this without necessarily consciously planning it. She might reflect on it later, but she engages in tacit knowing habitually. Similarly, in the Ingrates shot list meeting discussed in the section on “informal exchange of ideas,” Yasha, the DP, comments to an enthusiastic Ben, “Chances are you won’t get a clean performance the first couple times.” In doing so, Yasha comes to know Ben’s proclivity for a “clean performance.” But he also knows how he himself functions, the mixture of technical constraints any day on a camera crew, and the difference in his approach to the artistry of cinematography (he is more “lighting-oriented”) and Ben’s (more “about camera placement”). Yasha anticipates a potential micropolitical difference, one that could escalate into conflict because Ben might work with his actors to get a clean 51 In the conversation with the literature (below), I discuss film crews, construction crews, and software as examples of temporary organizations. 164 shot the first couple of takes whereas Yasha knows he fidgets with lighting upfront. Thus, in his early interactions with Ben, Yasha tacitly knows of a potential problem and tries to communicate it. Such examples of tacit knowing occur all the time during filmmaking, from the very start when a script is about to be written (‘What can I write that can be made for $10,000?’), all the way to the final sound mix (‘Will the music composer think his contribution is erased if I increase the volume on sound effects?’). To this end, Seth commented that the “subtext of filmmaking is being aware of others’ jobs… There are an infinite number of such dependencies.” Tacit knowing is especially vivid during or in expectation of production-related problems. Crewmembers are constantly asking themselves, “What do I need to know about your [department’s] work in order for me to do my [department’s] work?” For Duane, as a producer, he needed to know a little bit about “everybody’s” work. Sometimes, though, tacit knowing is within the same department. For instance, the gaffer asked DP Maurice whether for a particular shot, would the actors be sitting or standing. Maurice gave him his note, and turned around smiling to Dade and me, “I love this guy. He always asks the right questions.” I’ll now provide a detailed example to showcase the properties and dimensions of the grounded category “tacit knowing.” An Example breaking down Tacit Knowing During an Ingrates production meeting, each department head was taking turns in giving an update, as per the routine of going about such meetings. While Lara, the production designer, was giving hers, the question came up about how “fuzzy” or grainy the TV should be. 165 Lara [production designer]: “The TV is fuzzy.” Ben [director]: “Don [the editor] should definitely look at that.” Lara: “Tell him not to make it too grainy.” - Excerpt from field notes This exchange happened in the span of less than a minute; the crew quickly moved on to the next exchange. It was ordinary. A casual observer might label it as a reminder from one department to the other. Or they might note that the usually quiet Lara perked up just a tad for a few seconds, leaned in, almost physically pointing as she requested a communication back to Don. If a production meeting is a series of heartbeats in which a spike represents a crew member asserting something that reveals their knowing, then Lara’s quick stab was such a spike. That’s the metaphor. Let’s break down the conversation in terms of the grounded categories. There is the appearance or “mode” of “give-and-take”. Lara ‘gives’/suggests a point about the quality of the graininess of a crucial prop. Ben ‘takes’ it, asserting that he will ‘give’ or pass it along to Don. Lara ‘takes’ it back and reminds Ben something about it, before ‘giving’ it back. The “mode of give-and-take” is an “informal exchange of ideas” about what a small part of the final movie—the quality or extent of the fuzziness of the TV—will look like. 52 More importantly, though, this everyday, simple, give-and- 52 It might be objected that the mode of give-and-take is not informal bargaining, but actually “negotiation.” Lara negotiates with regard to the quality of the TV fuzz. I do not know enough about the craft of filmmaking, production design or editing, to confidently mark out this give-and-take as negotiation. I had to resort to other crewmembers’ interpretations of the exchange, and below, I discuss Seth’s. Once again this shows the relative redundancy of the grounded category of “modes of give-and-take.” As such, the substantive theory of this chapter, about the practice of knowing and organizing in filmmaking, does not need the category. But I already said above that the “modes” are useful in that they are descriptive, not explanatory. They whet us to understand what’s getting the work done, in this case, what’s driving Lara to assert that Don not make the TV too grainy. This gets us to the “gets-it-done factors” of role, hierarchy, and routines, and importantly, to tacit knowing. What Lara appears to be doing here need not be described as 166 take is, upon deeper probe, Lara ensuring that something gets done right. At the very least, Lara is ensuring or asking that something get done. 53 I introduced two “gets-it-done factors” above: roles-within-a-hierarchy, and routines. Lara’s “role” or position is ‘production designer’. It comes with the responsibility of preparing the look of the film in order to, in the words of Abe, Guffaw’s production designer, “realize the director’s vision of the world [of the story].” However, on Ingrates, Lara had more freedom and leeway. Unlike Dade, I never heard Ben weigh in on production design ideas; in fact, on a couple of occasions he said, “I trust Lara,” implying he was leaving the details of the set design entirely to her. Thus, the typical “hierarchical” relation between production designer and director was less pronounced on Ingrates. Yet it was Lara’s responsibility to ensure the ‘correct’ amount of graininess on the TV, and she knew that Ben trusted her; both factors propelled her to get this exchange ‘out there’. Further, the routine of efficiently running a production meeting, either by going down each scene or going down each department, propelled Lara to go down her list of concerns. The production meeting was “the time and the place” to bring up concerns. So, roles, hierarchy and routine partly explain how something about the film is getting done. But there’s more, and this take us back to the essence of what occurs in the “negotiation” because what she is really doing is “tacit knowing,” or anticipating her fellow crew member’s action. 53 A more clear-cut example of tacit knowing that directly gets the work done occurred when the visual effects director was present on the set of Ingrates. For a particular scene, he had asked the camera crew to use an “nd” (neutral density) filter. He explained that from his point of view, he wants to increase the information than would normally get on the recorded image but not have it look what it would on the final frame. This called for tacit knowing of his own work down the line, based on his interaction with the camera and electric crews and his visual confirmation on the video monitor. Once they start rolling camera, he, director Ben, and the gaffer coordinated to figure out how much lightning should stay on so he could remove or add to it later on the clean frame. This called for tacit knowing of others’ roles and expectations. In the end, an entire shot was taken with the visual effects director calling the shots. Tacit knowing is clearly a “gets-it-done” factor. Similarly, Lara’s anticipating Don’s potential manipulation ultimately gets the work of a suitably grainy TV done. 167 group activity of filmmaking: knowing as organizing, or organizing as knowing. To see this, I go to how Seth, the 1 st AD, who was present at the production meeting, broke down the exchange. Seth: “She didn’t want it to look too fuzzy because the television already produced fuzz, automatically. So she knew that; other people wouldn’t have known that. So she’s like, “Don’t make it fuzzy, because it already makes it fuzzy, so post-production guy [Don] who’s doing it, I’m letting you know that it’s not going to look good on my stuff… you have to make it this way for my thing to work.”” Ritesh: “Agreed, but isn’t there also a tiny element of, if you make it too fuzzy, it doesn’t work well for you as an editor either, right?” Seth: “No, because, in that communication she was describing to him that what you want to produce out of this, that you’re trying to use your craft to make your art, my craft has already done that for you, so don’t do it because it would make it bad for both of us.” 54 - Excerpt from interview In essence, Seth is describing here how Lara organized (acted upon) her knowing about her work, as well as, importantly, her knowing Don the editor’s work. The Lara-Ben exchange definitely caught me by surprise, and it was one of the first instances in the field where I told myself, “Crew seem to know a lot about each other’s work.” What’s getting the work done here are the following: 54 Please note that Seth’s use of “art” and “craft” are artifacts of the interview. Earlier, I had asked him to explain filmmaking as art versus craft, based on what I had heard people describe the process. He said, “Art would be what you produce; craft would be what you use to produce it.” Briefly, “art” corresponds to Ben and Yasha’s use of “creative,” and “craft,” corresponds to Ben’s use of “technical.” 168 1. Knowing/organizing as enactment of what is tacit: Lara is acting on her unspoken, unarticulated, or in other words, tacit belief about the responsibilities of another role. She does so by making explicit her tacit beliefs about how much fuzz is already there on the TV, how much fuzz she thinks the editor thinks is there, and how much total fuzz there should be. 2. Cognition for one’s craft: She is thinking about her own work: Does the TV already produce fuzz, how does a production designer create fuzz, and how much fuzz does she create? 3. Tacit/Inherent dependencies: She is thinking about which other roles in the hierarchy of filmmaking might “work on” the same piece of filmic text, and she knows it’s the editor. There is inherent dependency between roles when they work on the same “text”—or digital bytes, or film reel—of the film. 4. Micropolitics as hierarchical conflict: Given that the crew is in the pre-production phase of the movie, it’s not clear which role, production designer or editor, has “trump” in this situation. Given Ben’s own lack of commitment here, both roles potentially have equal say. In actuality, they both need to work together so that they and the director are satisfied. 5. Micropolitics as the appearance of guarding of one’s role: For the needs of this particular film, Don would be working on the footage of shots of the actor from the first day of filming and providing back inserts for the TV to be shot at a later day of filming in which the actor responds to himself on the TV. As Seth explained, Lara had already prepped the TV to be a certain amount of fuzzy. Don may not have known that but knew (potentially from a conversation with Ben) that the story needed 169 the inserts to be a certain amount of fuzzy. Without Don and Lara’s communication, it’s possible that the TV with the inserts would have ended up looking too fuzzy. This outcome is exactly what Lara foresaw, and in doing so, she was not just guarding her role, but anticipated that Don would also want to guard his role. Seth’s interpretation is valid; after all, as AD, he too tacitly knows how departments function. If they did not work together to produce the right quality of fuzziness, it would look bad on them both. Still, in the final analysis, Lara was ensuring that others in the crew knew that she had tacitly thought about this. So in this sense was publicly guarding her role. 6. (Emergence of) Artistic discourse: There is also the sense that in making known this attribute, Lara invited discussion on the artistic aspect—read here as story-based or performance-based—of the TV’s fuzziness. Tacit knowing is the basis upon which different crew members can talk about a story, a character, an emotion, a plot element, or a technical detail. They get to know and/or channel their knowing of others’ knowing towards producing a good film. For this much is evident: crewmembers tacitly want to help make a good movie. Working Definition of ‘Tacit Knowing’ Finally, we arrive at a working definition of “tacit knowing”. It is the complex of all of the above aspects: knowing as enactment of what is tacit; knowing about or cognition of one’s craft; (knowing about) tacit dependencies across departments that already exist as the skeleton of filmmaking; knowing about and acting due to the micropolitics arising out of potential hierarchical conflict; knowing to safeguard one’s role; and knowing that tacit knowing can lead to artistic discourse. Tacit knowing is manifest in each element, and all of the above elements play into the general 170 phenomenon of tacit knowing. During interaction / in practice, some of this tacit knowledge or beliefs becomes explicit, whereas the rest remains tacit. Tacit knowing encompasses roles, hierarchy and routines, reveals inherent dependencies and potential micropolitics, and ushers in artistic talk or discourse. Tacit knowing is like a potential, distributed across and within crew members, 55 a potential that connects their craft, their micropolitical proclivities, and crucially, the film itself. It is a potential that is selectively activated or made explicit at different parts of the filmmaking process by roles, hierarchy and routines. Tacit knowing when made explicit in interaction gets the work done. I shall refine this definition in the section on conversation with the literature. For now, I provide more examples of each of these properties and introduce some variation and dimensions. Cognition for One’s Craft As mentioned above, the work of filmmaking can be broken into the knowing pertaining to one’s own craft/department and the knowing pertaining to other’s craft/department. Even though I focus on the latter, it’s worth highlighting how cognition or knowing with regard to one’s craft depends differentially upon other crafts. On one end of the spectrum are actions that seem entirely pertinent to a particular department’s role or routine. For instance, Kelly, the key grip on Ingrates, explained how much he enjoyed packing and organizing equipment on trucks, and how he would sometimes be hired just for that purpose. Yasha would categorize this as a “logistical” activity but it is nonetheless pertinent to the craft of the key grip and not other 55 This is not unlike Hutchins’ (1995) notion of “distributed cognition.” Hutchins writes, “With systems of distributed cognition we can step inside the cognitive system, and while some underlying processes (inside people’s heads) remain obscured, a great deal of internal organization and operation of the system is observable… All divisions of labor, whether the labor is physical or cognitive in nature, require distributed cognition in order to coordinate the activities of the participants.” (pp. 129, 176) 171 departments. Another instance: Kim’s clapping her hands during a location scout is an action driven by a sound person’s responsibility to test a location’s acoustics; Kim quite literally is thinking on behalf of her craft. On the other end of the spectrum are actions that involve an appreciable amount of knowing of other departments’ roles and routines. Kelly named footwork and fitting into small spaces as skills he valued. Knowing how to be surefooted and agile seems to be pertinent to just a key grip’s craft, but upon closer inspection, their enactment shares dependency with other departments. Kelly described how for a 180-degree dolly move (the one earlier described as requiring “crazy coordination”), he had to fit in a tiny space and ensure his movement not cast shadows. However, because he had read the script in advance, worked with Yasha on previous projects, and observed Ben direct the actor, he tacitly knew “the kind of aesthetic they’re going for.” So when the time came to go for the shot, Kelly’s footwork, small build and agility, aspects of embodied cognition for his craft, were driven by his anticipation of above-mentioned factors. All these types of tacit knowing in concert got the work done, i.e., got Kelly to push the dolly at a particular speed and with particular movement. His cognition (and skills) for his craft intersected with his tacit knowing of other departments and the movie as a whole. As he put it, “I think the difference between a technical decision [corresponding to “cognition for one’s craft] and a creative decision [corresponding to “tacit knowing”] might have to be with how you feel your actions are affecting the story,” which in turn implies thinking tacitly along with how other departments tacitly know how their actions affect the story. 172 Tacit / Inherent Dependencies Earlier, I introduced the “modes of give-and-take” because I was skeptical that when filmmakers said that film was a collaborative medium and art form, they meant a singular thing. However, when we examine the nuts and bolts of filmmaking, it can be said to be inherently collaborative in that its skeletal structure necessitates, quite strictly, interdependency and moving together. And when you have interdependency, you have tacit knowing. Knowing is tacit for a number of reasons: (1) filmmaking sometimes proceeds at too fast a pace for people to articulate or express their knowledge; (2) knowing tacitly becomes a routine in and of itself, and this is especially true of experienced crews (Ingrates) or crews on later days of production (i.e., better resocialized crews); and (3) a single role, such as a director, has to think simultaneously in terms of multiple aesthetics (e.g., lighting, emotion, performance, makeup, camera angle, , and camera movement, all with regard to, say, a character’s face), and because of the sheer amount of processing, cannot do so explicitly. Some examples of dependencies in filmmaking that cannot escape dependency between departments include: (1) sound, camera, and editing, and (2) photography and production design. Regarding the former, editors rely on sound files in order to sync them up with image, and they further rely on the separation between the 2 nd AC saying “Marker” and bringing down the slate, so they know from where to begin syncing. Without such cues, editors cannot proceed with their work. Regarding the latter, Yasha explained that camera cannot literally point at anything if there is no production design in place. An empty room without perspective, or with just white reflecting walls, will produce nothing of use for the frame. Production design ideally would be informed about 173 or tacitly seek the kind of camera movements planned so that they could design their space accordingly, but often production designers can begin work without tacitly coming to know about camera department. Tacit dependencies can also be understood in terms of a hierarchy of departments calling the shots, an idea I briefly alluded to above. Kim hypothesized, “If there is a situation where we lost a location and everything had to be done on the fly, I think camera would take precedence. It depends on if they were working on available light; then we [sound] would do whatever we could to accommodate that.” Cate also explained how the tacit dependency between camera and production design is flipped when some production design is in place: “Between the two of them, I think that the DP is winning that fight. For instance, when you have pictures to hang on the wall…you better wait till camera gets ‘frame up’ before you frame those pictures because it’s not like you home the picture there and now they frame up to the picture. It’s the opposite. We’re going to find our frame. Now you better move those pictures down.” This example is not “micropolitics” because it depends not on role-based hierarchy but department- and story-based hierarchy. After all, filmmaking technically is the craft of concatenating images for a screen. A final note: there are degrees of inherence of dependency. In the example about the tacit knowing between Lara and Don, I described the inherent dependency between their roles. Clearly, that “inherent” is not as fundamental as the “inherent” dependency between camera and production design. Yet, given how I described the Lara-Don “complex” of tacit knowing, it certainly seemed somewhat of an inherent dependency in that the two departments were working on the same part of the filmic text: the quality of 174 fuzziness on the TV. There are plenty of such not necessarily inherent dependencies. For instance, on Guffaw, Cate may not have worried about lighting the actor’s face with a red filter because they tacitly knew that down the workflow pipeline, the desired effect could be achieved in color correction. I am distinguishing here between necessary (inherent) and less than necessary (less inherent) tacit dependencies. It’s not that the workflow stops if Cate lacked the time to add a red filter and there was no budget for color correction. An example of an even less necessary dependency is that between sound and wardrobe. Kim might tacitly need to know whether the sound of an actor’s dress interferes with other sounds she is trying to capture, but it’s far from necessary. Her tacitly knowing would make a better film, surely, but it is not necessary to the same degree as the other two levels of necessity are. In sum, as with “cognition for one’s craft,” the category “tacit dependency” also shows variation in strictness, and as we proceed down the continuum of less strict, we move towards the more straightforward examples of “tacit knowing” understood as departments thinking ahead to other departments’ work in order to make a better film. Because “strictly” speaking, without any cognition for one’s craft or any attention to the most inherent dependencies, we have no film. Micropolitics as Hierarchical Role-based Conflict Sometimes, when crewmembers tacitly come to know, seek to know, or act to do something that impinges upon another role’s responsibilities, priorities, and knowing, there is conflict. That conflict is of two types: (1) it goes against the grain of established hierarchy, and (2) it goes with the grain of established hierarchy. Micropolitics is the appearance and implications of conflict in interaction among roles. I use the term “micro” 175 because the conflict manifests in small, everyday interactions; I use the term “political” because, quite simply, there is a conflict and it’s sorted out in a way that is not always win-win (but is often framed as a win for the “story” or the “movie”), and even in cases when established hierarchy does not decide who ‘wins’, there is manifestation of power dynamics, which, I argue, is a separate phenomenon than aspects of the filmmaking process concerned with aesthetics, story, and craft. So I am arguing that for crewmembers, tacit knowing is not essentially political but sometimes can be. Also, to reiterate, I don’t conceive of “micropolitics” as departments having trump in a situation: as exemplified above, some situations call for camera taking precedence over production design or vice versa, based on differentially inherent dependencies due to much more clearly aesthetic- or craft-based criteria. Micropolitics is role-based conflict. I’ll now give examples of the two types of conflict. A few hours before shooting wrapped on Ingrates, the following interaction occurred. During the door crashing scene, Ben wants Yasha to follow the lead actor’s pace, to let him “create the pace”. Yasha repeatedly tells him, at the end of each unsatisfactory (per Ben) take, that he is not sure if he understands. Finally, after a third or fourth take, Yasha comes out towards the video monitor and repeats that he does not follow. Ben turns to me and the gaffer who happen to be sitting by and asks, “Am I not saying it right?”. Gaffer attempts to explain. Yasha tells Ben, “I know what you want but I think I think that’s not what you want.” Ben, half amused, turns to me and says, “Are you taking notes on this? This is great for your project.” - Excerpt from field notes 176 Clearly, there is tacit knowing occurring here. Yasha is thinking about the dependency between his craft and knowing and that of Ben’s. Yasha is thinking about what Ben thinks about the story. He has certain beliefs about Ben’s approach based on their past interactions. So I was surprised to come across such an overt communication about misunderstanding and misdirection. Even though DPs are hired for their expertise, Yasha was seemingly going against the hierarchy with his particular choice and vivid enactment of words. He was also running against the clock. 56 An example of micropolitics that goes with the grain of hierarchy occurred when, at a location scout for a particular scene, Dade very cautiously communicated to Gail, the producer, that he had had a “change of heart” regarding the opening scene. Typically directors don’t have to worry about such changes because it is their job to work with the crew to produce the best film possible. However, Dade was aware that some amount of pre-production and budget (under Gail’s purview) had already been expended towards the scene. He also knew enough about his personal and professional relationship with Gail that he expected Gail, rather than co-producer Duane, would want to hear out a justification. Dade did not flat out say, “Hey, we’re changing the scene.” I had witnessed him be more casual about scene changes with other crewmembers, but with Gail, Dade was strategic. They sat down while the rest of the crew checked out the location. He spoke in a soft voice. After Gail said that she liked the change because it gave the 56 Another example is when Duane, the producer, came to the holding room to walk over Juan to the Guffaw set because a prop had to be moved. Juan remained seated and curtly responded, “The art director moves stuff. The production designer designs it.” Sensing the micropolitical, against-the-grain conflict he had voiced, he quickly added, “But we all work together.” Duane left without a word. There is tacit knowing in the most ordinary sense here: Duane knows which department to fetch, which goes with his mantra as a producer of knowing a bit about everybody’s job. But there’s also conflict here, especially in Juan’s telling off the producer. Moreover, given Duane and Juan’s history of conflict, the crew would definitely consider this interaction micropolitical. 177 characters “backstory” and “breathing room” to the overall story, Dade snuck in, “Want to hear the ending?” Gail responded, “It’s changed?” During our interview, Dade’s ambivalence (Chapter 2) resurfaced: he thought that from the entire crew, the producers’ voices were the most influential, but then he also added that he didn’t always take their notes. Gail on many occasions had voiced her strong opinion about story and technical changes that Dade listened to but told me he did not mostly take. However, unlike Chapter 2, I argue Dade’s sitting Gail down is an instance of tacit knowing but not inadequate resocialization. Dade was comparatively better resocialized with Gail. They did not see eye-to-eye always, but in this instance, it was a director talking to his producer (roles rather than individuals) about his change of heart regarding a scene. He was cautious because he respected Gail as a fellow producer and a friend, even though he also held the view that everyone in the crew gave notes because they wanted to be directors. In this light, Lara’s note for Don can be clearly seen as one department talking to another (not one wannabe director to another). The line between tacit knowing and resocialization is tricky but not blurry. Here, the situation is much more clearly the case of a micropolitics that occurs between roles and with the grain of hierarchy (Gail would be hard-pressed to deny Dade his idea unless it would cause real havoc to production or budget). Tacit Knowing as Knowing what is Good for the Movie/Story (Not Micropolitics as Guarding of One’s Role and Contribution) This is actually a negative category in that it appears as a type of micropolitics that’s driving work getting done, and indeed, crewmembers do take the posture of “guarding [their] role and contribution”. But I found that it’s appearances and postures, 178 not what actually occurs, not for the most part at least. So I admit it is strange I include this not-a-category category in the complex of tacit knowing. There is, however, place for a reinterpreted version. First, though, I can’t deny the category was one of my biggest hunches going into the field. I desperately wanted to see individuals on a crew want their “creative idea” to get through, and that individuals get into this line of work in order to be “creative.” On both counts, I was naïve. As I showed in the section on “hierarchy and creativity,” crewmembers think there is scope for creativity in all roles, but it depends on what they pair creative with (“technical”, “logistical”, “help create”), and on whose understanding of hierarchy is at play (Ben and Yasha, as director and DP, had different understandings than the key grip or the G/E guy). Further, different meanings could be interpreted as a symptom of student filmmaking, rather than filmmaking per se. But even on industry sets, students claim that crewmembers posture to guard their roles only to the extent that work gets done for the sake of the film. Maya put it more directly: a film is ultimately “the director’s property.” In Chapter 2, I had discussed the perception that everybody in LAFilm wants to be a “director.” However, on an adequately “resocialized” crew, what we have is differently “directorial” individuals working together according to a roles set in an agreed-upon hierarchy and workflow. And work associated with a department’s “craft” is typically bifurcated as technical / logistical or creative. Students most often associate “creativity” with “story, “story” with “emotion,” and “emotion” with actors’ performances (more on this link in Chapter 4). And nearly everyone agreed that tacit knowing of how to draw “performance” in order to reveal “story” is in the hands of a 179 director. Thus, it is fair to say that students believe that their tacit knowing in crews is geared towards making stories. 57 That does not mean that other crewmembers don’t have their own spin on the story, or don’t want the story to turn out a certain way. Even on resocialized student crews, students wanted to occasionally take control of the story. Duane described an early meeting with Dade, Gail, and Guffaw’s writer. The session, it went in a totally different direction than I saw the story going. I felt like she [Gail] put the focus on a character that was not the character who I thought the story was about. I’m like ‘No, it’s [the male lead’s] story.’ In the moment I was not happy with that because I felt like we were going down the wrong road. I expressed that but then after a while I… just shut down and listened because I’m not about beating a dead horse… When it was all said and done it didn’t even get into the story. The story is more like it was in the draft that we originally workshopped. It does not make Gail right or wrong, but sometimes... you have to shop around first to say, “Okay this is the right decision…” That’s how you exercise your story… I don’t mind creative differences. - Excerpt from interview Duane’s describing his “shutting down” can be seen at minimum as him sticking to his role. However, he also said that Dade brought the producers into the meeting with the writer because he “respected [their] opinion.” While ultimately Dade as a director wanted his own version of the story to get through, he, like many directors, sought their fellow crew’s opinions on story. Others’ tacit knowing about stories in general, about this story 57 But that’s not all it is geared towards. Tacit knowing is also enmeshed in the dialectic of reputation. “Artistic discourse” is the category that connects tacit knowing as group-level work geared towards making stories with the dialectic of reputation. 180 in particular, and about this story in the regard of a particular department, help directors “exercise” the story. I accept Duane’s “member-produced description” as a robust way of understanding the power of the versatility of tacit knowing. Directors can, if they choose to and if it’s their style, make a good movie if they seek out crew’s tacit knowing— rather, tacit understanding—at the right “time and place”. Directors can invite crewmembers to step out of just their roles and tap into their tacit understanding of films and stories. Tacit knowing can be the fount of artistic discourse about the story among diverse crew members. However, I persisted in my line of questioning. Can crew members “guard” their role in such a way that they can tacitly “own” their contribution and assure it “gets through” into the final story. Most crewmembers, including Sid, the most directorial among my non-director subjects, who constantly discounted Dade’s vision, assured me that was not the ultimate goal in a project. Yasha even claimed, “It’s actually nice because you’re not.” This excerpt from my interview with Sid provides evidence for this and other claims I have made so far in this chapter. Sid: “I think it’s good to be aware of what the sound guy’s gonna do. In a lot of cases you can leave footage in for certain sound transitions that you wouldn’t have otherwise… I guess it’s hard to entirely divorce picture and sound editing. In some cases, you may want the dialogue for the next scene to begin over the end of scene that’s currently playing… In order to do that, you do actually have to have a bit of experience as sound editor as well to be able to kind of anticipate what they would be able to do with that. So, I think an editor who has no sound experience would maybe not know they could make that cut.” 181 Ritesh: “I’m glad you use the word “anticipate.” Is that to guard your own work and your own contribution or is it for some other purpose?” Sid: “I always like to think that when I’m working on a movie, it’s for the movie… I think it reflects best on the contributors involved if the finished product is good. So if I felt very strongly that it was crucial to the film’s success in some way, and then I would try to insist on it or try to constrict [the sound guy’s] ability to mess it up… But, if I felt like it was more like I want to show off that I can do these three cool edits but it’s gonna make the movie suck – then I would not do it because I would think, no one’s gonna walk out and be like, “The movie sucked but the editing was great.” A lot of movies that I’ve worked on, you really do work with DPs or editors or the sound people that are really motivated by the specific challenges of that project and they will get better at their craft in trying to help you realize that vision and it really is rewarding and then beneficial for everyone. In most cases there are disagreements but ideally, you’re working with people that are sort of professional and mature enough that they’ll understand the disagreements are not personal. Everyone are trying to contribute to the better film.” - Excerpt from interview Sid unwittingly elaborates on what I have put forth as the “complex” of tacit knowing, usefully showcasing its properties unfold during the post-production process. Knowing where to stop “putting footage” is an enactment of his tacit knowledge about his work and tools, i.e., the craft of editing. Sometimes, but not necessarily, knowing where to stop involves tacitly knowing about another department’s craft. An appreciable amount of 182 filmmaking occurs because departments can anticipate or foresee others’ crafts. Sometimes they necessarily need to, as with the category “inherent dependency.” But Sid says that picture editing and sound editing don’t share such an inherent dependency. So even if the editor (who works on picture) wants to box the sound editor into a particular choice, he does so only if he feels it helps to the overall film. The micropolitics here is not to take down another department but to serve the film, and indirectly, the director’s vision, in which case it’s not really micropolitics. Given that both Duane and especially Sid genuinely seem to favor the film and not guarding their contributions, and given how in so many other instances, Sid had discounted Dade’s in favor of his own “directorialness,” I am forced to accept that crewmembers generally and genuinely believe that tacit knowing, in all its properties, ultimately serves the film. A (resocialized) crew displays and enacts a variety of tacit knowing to make a good film. Conversation with the Literature Having systematically built up to my core category of tacit knowing, I’d like to engage in a conversation with the organizational studies literature to see how my grounded theory connects to and moves beyond research done therein. In doing so, I’ll refine my understanding of tacit knowing. In the concluding section, I’ll connect tacit knowing with artistic discourse and social reputation-making as interrelated moments on the dialectic of professionalization. Practice, (Tacit) Knowing… and Getting Work Done Bechky (2011) argues organizational theorists tend to overemphasize structure and underemphasize social interaction. Their theories tend not to acknowledge that 183 “people do not respond directly to social structures but rather to the situations they face and their interpretations of them,” situations which are in turn “closely bound up with their work and their occupations,” which if accounted for “will help tether theories of organizations to the practice, interaction, and interpretation of the people within them.” (pp. 1157-8) According to Bechky, one approach to studying work and occupations is “negotiated order theory” (Day & Day, 1977; Fine, 1984). Day and Day (1977) describe the theory’s underpinnings in two notions: “Society is interaction” [symbolic interactionism], and “work” as emphasizing neither the individual nor the institution but a constant “web of interaction between the two.” (p. 127). An attention to workplace interaction, for instance in Strauss’ (1963) study of the psychiatric hospital, reveals that in face of internal conflicts, most personnel do not know the rules or how to apply them. This is partly because the rules are not always “extensive or explicit… Thus, given the inadequacy of formal rules and structures to govern activities…, an informal structure emerges in which involved parties develop tacit agreements and unofficial arrangements that enable them to carry out their work… Power is thus portrayed as being situational and contingent in nature.” (pp. 129-131) I bring up negotiated order theory as a supplementary viewpoint to what is generally known as practice theory. While I could say that my grounded categories come from considering film crews and filmmaking as negotiated order, and while I think that Day and Day’s understanding of power corresponds closely to my notion of “micropolitics,” I believe it is more accurate to say that my methodology is influenced by the study of filmmaking as practice. There is certainly overlap between the two, but my 184 methodology does not require and in fact would be undermined if I’d started out with Bechky’s call to view film crews as organizations or as negotiated orders. It is truer to say that I adopt a phenomenological stance in my ethnographic observation in that I regard interaction and dependency among people doing work and occupying roles as “mundane,” as a part of their “taken-for-granted” “world of daily life” (Gurwitsch, 1970). I don’t take phenomenology as my mainframe though because I don’t consider it my task to uncover my subjects’ “structures of consciousness,” nor my mandate to take a “first person point of view”. Yet phenomenology is useful to the extent that it orients me to uncover the meanings embedded in my subjects’ everyday enactment of filmmaking as practice. Essentially, I am interested in the “social” phenomenology of filmmaking (Schutz, 1967): i.e., how crewmembers come to know the practice of filmmaking in group interaction. That film crews can be considered a type of organization is secondary. That crewmembers go about getting work done by resorting to an informal layer of negotiated understanding is an empirical question. I agree with Feldman and Orlikowski (2011) that more “central (to a practice lens) is the notion that social life is an ongoing production and thus emerges through people’s recurrent actions.” (p. 1240) Recurrent actions are more central and basic than recurrent negotiations. Contra Bechky, my primary view is not of situations “within organizations”, but situations, interaction and practice per se, in the everyday. Further, if I am observing what practices are geared towards, I must be observing enactments of knowing. After all, group practice is not random, but a result of some sort of organizing or knowing. Therefore, a good part of this dissertation, and at least the grounded theory emerging from this chapter, is influenced by the lens of “knowing in practice,” where both knowing and practice are 185 treated as basic. I am not conversing directly with phenomenology or organizational theory as much as I am with the “middle-range” literature of practice theory. Corradi and Gherardi (2010) suggest that the recent emergence of a plethora of “labels” tied to practice-based research can be divided into two camps. One is “practice as an empirical object,” where scholars study practitioners and their processes. Second, and more fundamental to this work, is “practice as a way of seeing” and “therefore an epistemology.” (p. 268) As an ethnographer with training in philosophy, I am drawn to this camp; my grounded theory comes from this soil. In Chapter 1, I suggested that the overarching question this dissertation tackles is, “Film students work together knowing what?” Where did this question come from? It came from the realization I had in the field—in the practice of participant observer—that, at least at the level of the group (this chapter), what I was seeing was recurrent actions by crewmembers in the context of roles, routines, and hierarchy: actions geared towards enactments of knowing, including tacit knowing, that make a film, and hopefully a good film. Students work together coming to know. 58 Before they work together, they need to get resocialized (Chapter 2). And then they work together to know their tacit knowing in the practice of filmmaking (this chapter). Orlikowski (2002) presents a powerful account of “knowing in practice.” Appropriating Anthony Giddens’ (1984) concept of “knowledgeability” as “inherent within the ability to “go on” within the routines of social life,” she suggests that to “go on” entails an “enactment” of knowledge in practice, and in turn that knowledgeability is not a disposition but rather a “knowing,” an action, a “capability of operating effectively in the temporal…, political, and cultural boundaries routinely encountered in everyday 58 Indeed, that is how I intend the sentence to read. 186 activity.” 59 (p. 249) In other words, knowing is an “ongoing social accomplishment, constituted and reconstituted in everyday practice” (ibid), and that “at any given time, [knowing is] what practice has made of it.” (p. 252) Other organizational theorists agree: Brown and Duguid (2001) say evocatively that “knowledge runs on the rails laid by practice” (p. 204); and Cook and Brown (1999) emphasize that knowing and knowledge are in a “generative dance,” a constant interplay, that knowing is a “part of action” rather than “used in action,” and that “knowing is to interact and honor the world using knowledge as a tool” (p. 389, emphasis in original). Orlikowski and others clearly privilege knowing as an action rather than knowledge as something possessed or channeled. Practice as a way of seeing is a way of knowing, in action, in interaction, in situations. In terms of my student crews, their ethnographic portraits and the grounded categories presented in this chapter, I find it tremendously exciting to empirically affirm this slice of the organizational literature. In response to Bechky’s idea that people interpret situations, it makes sense to consider Lara’s exchange about the fuzziness of the TV as her interpretation of the particularity of the production meeting situation. She knew what to do and what needed to get done despite there being numerous constraints on her role. First, the constraint of the production meeting routine can seem intense, just because there is a polyphony of interests waiting to be voiced; the tacit dependencies among various departments are laid bare in production meetings. Second, although a production designer sits pretty high in the hierarchy relevant for a production meeting setting, Lara’s 59 It’s worth noting that Orlikowski ties knowing to routines and as emerging from routines. This is consistent with my grounded theoretical framework in this chapter. Tacit knowing encompasses routines, and routines can be seen as ushering in tacit knowing. However, it is also possible (although I don’t have empirical data to substantiate this) that tacit knowing results in new routines. 187 was the role to bear the blame in the throes of production if the TV wasn’t properly fuzzy. A third constraint is Lara’s awareness that Ben, the director, had often vocalized his trust in her, and not interfered as much as some directors do, thereby raising the stakes of her “enactment.” Thus what I have termed as Lara’s “tacit knowing” can be rephrased through Giddens as the expression of her knowledgeability: Lara knows how to “go on within the routines” of filmmaking. My interpretation of her interpretation is that Lara has agency. What about others with respect to Lara (since practice involves all practitioners)? If her message is passed on to the editor, then the editor comes to know Lara in a certain way. Her perking up in the production meeting in order to make her interjection is itself a communication of the specificity of her knowledgeability; others might interpret this as skill and reliability. Seth’s deconstruction of the conflicting interests (his own tacit understanding of the situation) allows us to see the actions as a sort of negotiated order. There was no fixed rule by which to bring up or frame the editor’s potential action. Lara sort of played along. ‘Her knowing was in her action’ is a more accurate assessment of the efficacy of what went on than the idea that she ‘had’ knowledge of the editor’s potential behavior. What is meaningful, what is public, what gets the work done is Lara’s enactment in practice, her knowing, or as I have argued, her tacit knowing. People see that Lara knows. 60 60 A similar analysis can be made with regard to Duane’s “shutting up” and “shutting down” when he realized in the meeting with Gail, Dade and the writer that he had already enacted his “knowing” by insisting that according to him, the story was about the male rather than the female lead. His shutting is a performance of his knowledgeability: he knew there was no inherent dependency or causality between his note as a producer in a very early meeting and what would actually happen later in the process. He knew of the micropolitics of being invited to a meeting where his input would be heard but not necessarily taken. The work getting done here was humble, and Duane knew, Dade’s: ‘Get the input of those whose voices, roles and individualities you trust, because getting that input now might help you direct better.’ Duane’s not acting out on his resistance to the story’s reimagining reflects his tacit knowing, his knowing in practice. 188 This brings me to the second half of Orlikowski’s framing of practice theory, “knowing as an ongoing social accomplishment.” Once again, I am enthralled by the power of these simple words, because that simplicity is what I found; “the everyday is simple,” I wrote earlier. Lara’s choice can be seen as one in a series of enacted choices or “knowing” regarding the accomplishment of a film that has a particular aesthetic and is about an unexpected character (the TV). The perspective of knowing in practice unleashes the relevance of these micro-level enactments as being geared towards the making of a film, or at least a slice of making the film. What I found surprising is that though these ongoing social actions accomplish a film, crewmembers seem not to be surprised that a film is “accomplished.” They seem more caught up in the ongoing onslaught of social filmmaking actions. Yet, I believe that the literature shortchanges the notion that practice is inherently geared towards accomplishing something. I’ll return to this notion once I bring up some of the literature on tacit knowledge, and particularly, tacit knowledge in the particular organization that a film crew is, i.e., a “temporary” or “project-based organization.” Tacit Knowing and its connection to Explicit Enactment Tacit knowledge, according to Polanyi (1966), undergirds all knowledge. When we recognize faces, goes his standard example, we can’t specify all the features of a face that led us to do so. Or as Orlikowski puts it, it is important to see that explicit knowledge (the opposite term), say about the rules of chess, does not determine or subsume tacit knowledge about its practice; rather, “remove the ‘knowing how’ [tacit] of playing chess…, and we no longer have anything recognizable as the chess-playing practice.” It’s not “knowledge,” a fixed, stable entity. It is knowing, an action, in this case, an action bounded by the meeting’s context. Duane’s withdrawal accelerated the work of that meeting getting done. 189 (2002, p. 251) Polanyi puts it pithily: Tacit knowledge lies in our ability to “know more than we can tell,” i.e., in our ability to “attend from something in order to attend to something else.” (1966, p. 4, 13) To apply, Lara attended from the fuzziness of the TV as it pertained to the editing department in order to attend to the fuzziness of the TV as it pertained to the production design department. To do that, she had to first attend from the contribution of her role and imagine how it might be transformed in the general workflow. Even more basic, she had to know quite a bit about the TV’s fuzziness: why did she want the TV to be fuzzy, how would she create the fuzz, and so on. Lara thus had to have tacit knowledge about her own craft, about its interdependencies in the workflow, and then its particular interaction with editing. Lara definitely knew more than she ended up ‘telling’ in the production meeting. Earlier, I said that Lara had agency. I emend that statement: Lara has agency because she has tacit knowledge / tacit knowing. Nonaka and van Krogh (2009) differentiate themselves from Polanyi in that they don’t think that some knowledge is always missing and unspecifiable. Rather, agents are able to “oscillate” between the two types of knowledge which lie on a “continuum.” Via “utterances” and “intensifying interactions,” agents slowly but surely make their tacit knowledge explicit. (pp. 635, 646) Although other scholars have questioned this distinction (Munoz, Mosey, & Binks, 2013), I do not comment on it here because I believe there is place for both interpretations, especially in an ethnographic study where mind reading is not the modus operandi. Whereas Nonaka and van Krogh imagine “intensifying interactions” as moving tacit knowledge along the continuum towards explicit knowledge, Polanyi believes that “practical immersion” over time, or what he 190 calls “indwelling,” results in agents connecting to new knowledge. He has two elegant ways of describing indwelling: “When exercising a skill, we literally dwell in the innumerable acts which contribute to its purpose”; and “it is not by looking at things, but by dwelling in them, that we understand their joint meaning.” (ibid, pp. 3-4) A final theoretical concept I’d like to add to the mix here is Berends, Garud, Debackere, and Weggeman (2011) idea of “thinking along.” Claiming that some organizational theorists’ emphasis on knowledge transfer and transformation is “difficult” because it demands too much from people with incompatibly varying investments and training, they submit “thinking along” as a highly overlooked yet commonly found alternative. They define it as “an interactive process that allows a person to tap into another person’s knowledge without having to get involved in each other’s ways of knowing,” thereby facilitating an “outsider’s understanding” stimulated by trust, “meta knowledge about others,” “active engagement,” and “not necessarily striving for consensus.” (pp. 74-79). Along with tacit knowing, thinking along is a valuable concept in considering how work gets done in groups. I find that in understanding how work gets done in film crews, above notions— knowledge conversion via “intensifying interactions,” the more studious process of “thinking along,” and Polanyi’s imagery of “joint meaning” and “innumerable acts which contribute to a purpose”—are quite illuminating. They allow us to theorize group activity at its most efficient, at its most “synergistic.” I hark back to the example opening Chapter 1, when the Ingrates crew worked together to create the hurricane on motel exterior scene. Crewmembers as well as the practical effects professionals in charge of the rain and wind machines, had “meta knowledge” about filmmaking roles and routines. The 191 practical effects folk, in their coming to set with questions for Yasha after each take, showed that in order to time and quantify the wind and rain, they “thought along” with Yasha’s frame. Moreover, with each successive take, feedback from Ben, and urgent whisperings into the walkies, crewmembers were making explicit a variety of tacit knowing about their craft and about the story; thus, as Polanyi said, the creation of the hurricane represented the joint production of meaning, the shot itself. A more meager example of intensifying interactions towards joint meaning is found during the Ingrates crew’ production of the barrette scene; I would argue that in addition to crew exhaustion and lack of “immersion” and experience, the crew wasn’t thinking along in concert to the needs of the story, which in turn pointed to the problem that Ben had not made explicit, even to himself, his expectations of that scene for the story (It’s not too surprising, then, that the scene did not make it into the final film). Overall, the literature on the channeling of tacit knowing towards explicit articulation offers concepts that illuminate group accomplishment, and I am glad to report that my categories are consistent with these concepts. One contribution I make to this slice of scholarship is in my understanding of tacit knowing as dependent on and emerging from knowing about roles, routines, and hierarchy. As much as Polanyi’s and Nonaka and van Krogh’s theories celebrate agency (I argue they do, because conversion to explicit knowledge accomplishes goals), roles, routines and hierarchy offer productive constraints that provide the infrastructure for tacit knowing, thinking along and practical immersion. Work gets done because of knowledgeable agentive interaction with(in) structure. However, it’s not all straightforward. Polanyi seems to suggest that practical immersion takes time, so not just student crews who are still practicing skills, but film 192 crews in general, because they take the form of a “temporary organization,” may not be as successful in getting work done by making tacit knowledge explicit. This seems like a fruitful juncture to introduce film crews as “temporary organizations.” Tacit Knowing and/in Temporary Organizations A film crew is an example of what the literature calls a “temporary organization.” Temporary organizations are “regarded as a suitable organization form to carry out complex, novel, and knowledge-intensive tasks.” (Hanisch & Wald, 2014, p. 197) Similar to the various labels of practice theory that Corradi and Gherardi discuss, “temporary organizations” has many synonyms: “projects,” “project-based organizations,” “temporary groups” and “projectized organizations” (ibid). In this chapter, I am not interested in the “permanent organizations” that issue projects. For instance, “project- based organizations can be entire firms (as in construction, consultancy, and professional services) or multi-firm consortiums or networks.” (Sydow, Lindkvist, & DeFillippi, 2004, p. 1476). Or they can be the Hollywood studios (DeFillipi & Arthur, 1998), or film schools with production classes (Redvall, 2012). I return to how projects are “embedded” in the next chapter. To converse with the grounded theory I have already presented, I’m interested in what project-based organizations share, i.e., their “shared knowledge of groupwork practices” (Ratcheva & Simpson, 2011), and more importantly, the “temporary organizational form itself, which can be defined as a set of organizational actors working together on a complex task over a limited period of time” (Bakker, 2010, p. 468). Another way to put this is that film, more than software or construction, is a “pure” project-based enterprise because groups of filmmakers are “more or less disbanded” after 193 production is completed (DeFillippi & Arthur, 1998, p. 128). Bakker’s meta-review reveals that research on temporary organizations has addressed three broad themes: time (e.g., “what is the effect of time limits on processes… and performance?”); team (e.g., how do temporary groups resolve issues of trust?); and task (e.g., “what are the effects of… having a limited task?”) (pp. 473-5). I’ll take up these themes in turn. Earlier, I discussed “time” as an important determinant of what “modes of give- and-take” will manifest during group work: An “informal exchange of ideas” is not as time-dependent as a “formal exchange of ideas.” As I proceeded to discuss the “gets-it- done factors,” I claimed that roles, hierarchy, and routines are important aspects that Bakker would agree are consistent with her understanding of “team.” I also claimed that roles, hierarchy, and routines don’t explain everything about how work gets done. I now realize in conversing with the literature that I have not adequately theorized why tacit knowing should occur at all, despite roles, routines, and hierarchy. That is, I have not conceptualized how crewmembers trust each other. Simple “knowledgeability” as the ability to “go on” is too individualist; there must be other catalysts. In fact, Meyerson, Weick, & Kramer (1996) describe one such catalyst; they call it “swift trust.” Conceiving of temporary groups as the “organizational equivalent of a one-night stand,” Meyerson et al. argue that unlike traditional conceptions of trust which require “familiarity” and “reciprocal disclosure,” swift trust is “a unique form of collective perception and relating that is capable of managing issues of vulnerability, uncertainty, risk and expectation.” (p. 167) Connecting it to the temporary group form, they recognize that members must continuously “interrelate.” Aided by their “ex-ante” tendency to treat each other as “roles rather than as individuals,” and because of members 194 having to make do with “whatever information is available” due to constraints, what results is the advantageous outcome of “the presumption of trust often act[ing] like a self- fulfilling prophecy, creating the trusting behavior that was presumed to be there.” (pp. 172-178) So while Meyerson et al. would agree with me that roles are important shortcuts in getting work done, they fully explain the efficacy of roles and routines by theorizing trust. At the same time, I don’t think that swift trust needs to work among crewmembers that have already worked with each other in the past. Film crews are an odd mixture of strangers and long-time collaborators. My experience with student crews is that as students progress through school, they work with people they have already worked with before or those whose reputations have become more solid during their time in school. In any case, I had disclaimed upfront that simply by examining the categories of routines, roles, hierarchy and tacit knowing as I have depicted them does not explain everything about how work gets done; swift trust is an illuminating ingredient to add to the mix. Returning to Bakker’s overview, one intersection that has not been emphasized as much is the intersection of “team” and “task”. Bakker’s has deceptively simple questions for researchers: “What are the effects of having a limited task?” and “How do teams achieve those tasks most effectively?” I submit that my “complex” of tacit knowing is a useful initial response. On film crews, we have to understand the structures as well as the “knowing.” There are crafts with different degrees of inherent dependencies. Crewmembers begin from their role in a craft and undertake cognition for their task. In doing so, they inevitably bump into other crafts. They are also familiar with repositories of routines and they sometimes work through micropolitics because of work that needs to get done. All these are aspects of tacit knowing. What I have tried to theorize is how the 195 meta-domain of practice theory influences the domain of the temporary group. I have suggested that tacit knowing gets the work done because practice is geared towards its own fulfillment. Crewmembers’ actions are oriented towards the film. In resocialized temporary organizations that are crews, tacit knowing creates momentum for a better film. The everyday nature of practice and its everyday property of being geared towards something finds consummation via the temporary organizational form of a film crew. Work gets done because tacit knowing is the complex of a variety of tacit cognitions and actions set in the temporary organizational form. Call that form a routine, a role, or something that consists of routines and roles (Bechky, 2006), it doesn’t really matter. I found, and I submit, that tacit knowing is a potential, an engine, revved up by the properties of the temporary organizational form. We can theorize that tacit knowing becomes explicit when the social phenomenology of filmmaking as practice finds its partner 61 in the concrete structures, recurring enactments and other formal properties of the film crew as temporary organization. The “momentum” generated by such “finding” is, quite simply, agency/agentive. Few if any researchers have represented or connected literatures and ideas in this way, With respect to the dialectic of professionalization, I submit tacit knowing as a moment in the practice of filmmaking when resocialized crews, aflutter on the wings of agency, work together to make movies. 61 The idea of two separate entities partnering, and said partnering being the same thing as a “manifestation”, I gain from C. B. Martin’s (2008) metaphysical view of reality consisting of properties, and properties being both “dispositions” (e.g., glass has the disposition or the power to break) and “qualities” (the same property of glass that is a disposition also is qualitative in that glass has a particular internal structure or that glass has the quality of being fragile). I do not claim that filmmaking or the temporary structures are dispositions or qualities. A theory about metaphysics doesn’t so easily map onto a social theory about media practice. All I’m doing is acknowledging the source of the formal idea of two separate objects or processes partnering to manifest another property/practice/process. 196 Back to the Field: The Furthering “Momentum” of “Artistic Discourse as Emergent” and “Social Reputation-Making” “Aflutter on the wings of agency”: indeed, that is how I would describe crewmembers express their excitement when they realize that not only are they resocialized to each other, but also to the film and the story as well. Such moments, at their most effective, are ushered in by a variety of tacit knowing. The practice of filmmaking takes on the beginnings of a new dialectical moment when crewmembers realize that their social reputations can be jointly enhanced. The telltale sign of this moment is the emergence of artistic discourse. Two dialectics intersect with the dialectic of professionalization on which tacit knowing is a moment (see Appendix 2). The first is the “dialectic of artistic discourse.” When tacit knowing is followed by artistic discourse (this section), the particular moment is “artistic discourse as emergent,” which is contingent, unexpected, not guaranteed. In the next chapter, I present the same outcome, artistic discourse, as the result not of tacit knowing in crews but of another set of constraints, “embeddedness” at the level of organization. I call that moment “artistic discourse as authoring.” I’ll describe how even this moment is contingent, not guaranteed. Finally, in the next chapter, I present the pinnacle moment on this dialectic, that of “artistic discourse as self-reflexive,” which is even less guaranteed but no less surprising. The general point with this dialectic is that work that “gets done” need not be “good” in terms of story, character, emotion, or other ways LAFilm students conceive of “artistic” (which I use as a substitute for “good”). That is, tacit knowing can perfectly well make a movie even if it’s not a good movie. 197 To explain this further, I find illuminating Becker’s (1984) distinction between “art” and “craft.” He says, “That an object is useful, that it required virtuoso skill to make—neither of these precludes it from being thought of as beautiful… By accepting beauty as a criterion, participants in craft activities take on a concern characteristic of the folk definition of art.” (pp. 274-5). Roughly, tacit knowing corresponds to Becker’s use of “craft” as useful and skillful activity, whereas artistic discourse, as it emerges from tacit knowing, corresponds to his use of “art” as beautiful over and above craft requirements. In LAFilm, “beautiful” or “good” is associated with story and emotion (Chapter 4). On LAFilm crews, tacit knowing, when it movies into the realm of serving story, characters, performance, emotion, and/or the story world, has itself moved into knowing as artistic discourse. The second dialectic is the “dialectic of reputation.” In the previous chapter, I presented how reputation gets seeded when the brashness and ambition of individual students consolidate into socially-preened/molted reputations. I called this moment “individual reputation-preening.” In this chapter, I argue that when tacit knowing ventures into the emergence of artistic discourse, it is the same moment when crewmembers jointly make—i.e., socially make—their individual reputations (and separately, their reputation as collaborators). I say “socially make” because a variety of tacit knowing largely explains the emergence of artistic discourse. Having laid out the relations among categories, let me delve into an example: how director Ben and editor Don stumbled on to artistic discourse during the post-production of Ingrates, and how said artistic discourse ushered in the making of what they agreed 198 was a good film, while at the same time jointly casted their social reputations. I’ll begin with Ben’s telling of the events. When I came back from winter break and saw the first rough cut of the film, I knew there was something there. I hated it for the most part but I felt a bit of a seed in the final scene. If I hadn’t felt that I would be devastated. But if the climax is working, I feel that’s good. And the typical rule with rough cuts is: the film is never going to be as good as the dailies and never as bad as the rough cut. The rough cut is always terrible. - Excerpt from interview with Ben Ben, the director of Ingrates, was frequently stressed during pre-production and filming. He often expressed this to me and the crew. I provided the example earlier about Ben being taken aside by Yasha (DP) and Seth (AD) because he wasn’t complimenting the crew enough. Ben also lost his temper once during filming. However, my interactions with Ben during post-production showed him to be much more relaxed. The reason, I posit, is that he and Don were able to agree that “more was needed from the story” (Don’s words), and in particular, certain shots needed to be “picked up.” This joint discourse, already “artistic” in that it concerned the story itself, was pleasurable for both collaborators, and it generated the momentum towards further artistic discourse and further changes in the edit suite and later aspects of post-production. In the above excerpt Ben delves into Ingrates’ story. In a sense this is not surprising. The post-production process is where the story is shaped. As Don told me (and other student editors like Sid and Maya as well as some of LAFilm’s faculty would concur), “Editing is like the final draft of the script. The role of the editor is basically to 199 try and help [the director] rewrite or almost write the story fresh based on the confines of what has been shot.” Further, resorting to his tacit knowing about the routine of post- production and informal rules about rough cuts, Ben continued to focus on the story. He knew he had a good collaborator in Don. They hadn’t properly worked together in the past, so they were not conventionally resocialized to each other. But Ben said, “Every time I’d seen something he’d done, I had gotten it, it just connected with me, and I always got along with him. He was the first person on the crew I paid because I just said, “I know that I won’t be happy with any other editor besides Don”.” As with his trust in Lara, Ben’s modus operandi is decisiveness with whom he collaborates. Already we see how he differs from Dade, who appears to trust but in actuality ends up doubting much of his crew’s tacit knowing. Here, I submit the following interpretation: Ben tacitly knows that his trust in his crewmembers helps him with the story. Ben’s role is director and he is at the top of the hierarchy. The more relaxed routines of post-production put a person with his “factors of individuality” at ease. His cognition for his craft is very sharp and it motivates him. Ben told me that he knew he wanted to make the movie the moment he had written the first scene, which some of his faculty called “perfect” and for which he found the perfect “pristine” location of the lone tree (referenced earlier). Ben’s crewmembers, unlike Dade’s, would agree that Ben was always honed into the story. That is the first check in the “complex” of tacit knowing. Further, Ben had great respect for Don. They did disagree every now and then. Ben told me that Don was wedded to a particular scene that Ben knew right when they shot it he would exclude; Don “eventually got over it very quickly and agreed” with 200 Ben’s reasons. Ben and Don didn’t show signs of agreement in the first post-production meeting I attended, when Don said in as many words, and in his non-threatening, straightforward way, “To be blunt, I don’t think anyone will think [what you’re thinking about the ending as it currently stands]. I don’t.” So it’s not the case that their conceptions of the story, especially the ending, were always congruent. But Ben respected Don enough, and was relaxed enough, to carry forth the discourse. I would argue that in this case, not being micropolitical allowed for the emergence of artistic discourse, i.e., discourse about the story. Ben tacitly knew that he’d selected Don to challenge him, and he remembered this when Don did in fact challenge him. Another aspect in the complex of tacit knowing is inherent dependency between crafts. Ben was not as skilled as Don at the technique of editing; he (and I) marveled aloud at Don’s ability to execute changes to the cut as Ben voiced them in the edit suite. Their edit suite interactions were a great example of what I referred to above as “thinking along”: Don would take Ben’s idea, hit keystrokes to execute it while imbuing his own take, and Ben would agree. This nearly entirely cognitive interaction and “exercising of the story” (as Duane would put it), I witnessed several times. The point is how the grounded categories I introduced in this chapter—roles, routines, hierarchy, and the complex of tacit knowing—turned out to be the foundation upon which Ben could realize that meaningful artistic discourse, simply in the realm of story, character, and emotion, could be had with a collaborator he trusted. Tacit knowing, in turn dependent on roles, routines and hierarchy, was the foundation upon which artistic discourse about the climax and the final meaning of Ingrates could be had. As Ben put it, once they started working on the initial rough cut, “everyday from that point on, I never felt we took a step 201 back. We were always moving forward, always bettering the film.” The opposite was true with Dade, Sid, and Maya in their interaction as director-editors on Guffaw. The pivotal change that Ben and Don worked out in the film occurred because, as Ben put it, “I remember coming out of the [first screenings of the “polished rough cut”] with the sense that people just did not know what to do with the film,… like everybody wanted something to put it altogether, an “aha” kind of thing”; and as Don put it, “there was a feeling it wasn’t enough, that we, and I include myself, wanted more out of it.” Here is an instance of the push for artistic discourse occurring outside the complex of tacit knowing. I will suggest in Chapter 4 that work gets done and movies get made not simply out of the dialectics of professionalization and reputation-making unfolding at the level of the group and the organization but because movies are separate “domains.” Ben and Don realized from their screenings that audiences were not tuning into the film’s story, the world of the film, so this propelled them to get the work done right. This realization commenced them upon a two-month process in which they started out discussing their different interpretations of the story. In his original interpretation, Ben thought the lead actor lost control at the end in the motel, whereas Don “had a similar seed but his idea was more broad reaching than mine and darker, so as we got more into it, we realized we didn’t have [what ended up as] that final scene.” Don, as he narrated the realization, said, “In part because of the way the actor played it, I had the idea that maybe he’s killed his family [not just merely lost control].” Essentially, Don put the idea in Ben’s head, that the ending was not ‘real’ but psychological, that the motel with the hurricane did not actually happen to the lead character but was in his mind. I remember being there in Don’s kitchen watching the two walk about from one kitchen 202 counter to the other, talking through and decisively exercising the minutiae of the reasoning behind the character’s motivations. Don, like Ben, agreed that the seed of the new idea was Don’s; in that sense there was no “guarding” of his original vision because Ben ultimately wanted to tell the story that the plot “wanted” to tell. However, Don did not take all the credit: even though his idea “helped Ben do what he wanted to do, Ben was the one that designed how [the new ending] happened and how it’s shot.” In my two or three times in the edit suite, I saw multiple smaller instances of the two egging each other on. In our interview, Ben told me, “The interesting thing is that I am never supposed to admit as a filmmaker that this is something that came up afterwards, but it honestly wasn’t,” and he went on to describe how the crew picked up a few shots and the ending scene that got Don, “who’s not an emotional guy,” to say that he loved the pickups. Don for his part agreed that the movie “turned out good.” (his emphasis in tone) The final denouement of the interchange spurred on by their artistic discourse was not just a better film but also their cemented reputations for each other. Ben said that his experience working with Don was “incredible” and that if he ever did a feature, “Don would be the first person I’d call.” Don also said they had “a really good working relationship.” Both agreed that their artistic discourse was a good “learning experience.” Ben said, “That’s one thing I love about filmmaking. Every time I make a film, I learn something. What I’ll take away from Ingrates is that I always need the protagonist’s reaction…. As one of my good filmmaking friends said, “Ben, there’s nothing more interesting than people”.” Essentially, Ben indirectly credited his working with Don to be the reason for a rather crucial realization about his relationship, his tacit knowing, about a 203 story and about a character. And Ben knew coming out of Ingrates that for his future career in the media industries, he had a collaborator in Don. I’ll end by reiterating my formulation of tacit knowing at the end of the previous section. “Tacit knowing becomes explicit when the social phenomenology of filmmaking as practice finds its partner in the concrete structures, recurring enactments and other formal properties of the film crew as temporary organization. The “momentum” generated by such “finding” is, quite simply, agency.” Applying: Ben and Don practiced the routines, roles, and hierarchy of filmmaking in their everyday, concrete interactions in the edit suite. Doing so generated the momentum that propelled their tacit knowing deeper into the realm of story, not just in how it served Ben’s vision, but importantly, on its own terms, as its own domain. It’s not clichéd or naïve to think that crewmembers, directors included, get the work done when they, above all, make the filmmaking process about prioritizing the story. The recurring enactments of resocialization, and later, tacit knowing, within the temporal and task constraints of the film crew as temporary organization, are geared towards good work if the crew can usher in the moment of emergence of artistic discourse. Doing so has the separate advantage of jointly and socially making not just meaning out of everyday practice but also good reputations. The momentum towards and away from of artistic discourse is agency because, as the next chapter will showcase, it is the same moment student crewmembers become “self-reflexive”: not just “students.” 204 CHAPTER FOUR: “TACIT ANTICIPATION” AS “AGENTIVE EMBEDDEDNESS” IN FILM SCHOOL & MEDIA INDUSTRIES Opening Shot “The Head Faculty member of Production Class welcomes everybody on the first day. “We try to set high standards,” he states, and proceeds to go down five points he has written on the white board. 1. “Make it good.” Basically, “Make a good movie.” 2. “Do it safely.” He adds, “It’s not different from what is done in the business.” 3. “Collaborate with the team.” He adds, “All members are equally important. Everyone should work to support the vision of the director, but also be able work with each other.” 4. “Fiscally responsible.” 5. “Creative atmosphere.” He elaborates, “Have fun. Be professional. Say good morning and thank you. Entering LAFilm students look up to Production Class crews. This is the class that forms your reputation in this school. After this class, people ask, “Who should I be working with?”” - Excerpt from field notes, first day on Guffaw field site “Dade and I talk outside the production meeting room. He scoffs at what the faculty member said in class this morning. He was like, “Really?!” He couldn’t believe they said that Guffaw was a comedy and thus camera angles were not important. I mentioned that I was really impressed by everyone’s intelligent comments during the screening of the dailies. Dade scoffed once again, “They were just bullshitting.” … Later, when I asked him whether screening of dailies is a common practice, he said, “They don’t necessarily screen dailies in the industry, but the studio executives, they get the dailies and are looking at it. So I think part of it is they want to make you cognizant that people will be looking at your raw work, so get used to it. You will have 150 critics down your fucking back, and you’ve got to filter the notes to what you think will be good for the story. But honestly, I felt like, that structure of them showing the dailies, it really hurts because it can turn you away from the material if you are not strong enough.” - Excerpts from field notes as well as from interview with Dade, director of Guffaw, on the structure of and feedback received by faculty and other student crews in Production Class Ben casually mentions, “Production Class is an exercise in mediocrity.” - Excerpt from field notes. Ben directed Ingrates, his own thesis film, but had DPed for a film in Production Class some semesters prior to this comment. “That whole process as far as getting involved in a project for Production Class was also a great look into how you get picked for projects at a professional level in the real world because there an extensive process that gets you to really showcase your skills and abilities, and just your self… (After the screenings of the directors’ reels), begins a meat market/speed dating process… All this is happening during a week. You are emailing people, can we chat, can we have coffee. People are choosing each other, and saying, “No, thank you.” It’s hard. And they are also asking 205 others, “What do you know about this person? What is their reputation?” A lot of the times you just know their work, you don’t know what it’s like to work with them.” - Excerpt from interview with Tanya, the producer of Tropos These vignettes portray the key categories introduced in this chapter. Whereas Chapter 2 focused on the “resocialization” of individual students into film crews, and Chapter 3 described “tacit knowing” as a complex of elements that gets work done and movies made by film crews, this chapter proffers the master category of “tacit anticipation” as a salient relation of “embeddedness” of individual filmmakers, film crews, and film schools in media industries. Continuing further along the “dialectic of professionalization,” which I fully explain in the final Chapter 5, I will show that tacit anticipation is seeded in/preceded by moments on two parallel dialectics: (1) the moment on the “dialectic of artistic discourse” when it becomes “self-reflexive” (not alluded to in above vignettes); and (2) “hustling” as a moment, or more accurately, a shape, posture or stance, on the “dialectic of reputation-making” (See Appendix 2). There are new players in the picture in this chapter that were only tangentially mentioned in the previous ones: the film school, its faculty, and the media industries. Given that this study attends to the discourse and practices of students and crews, my goal in this chapter is to showcase these new players from primarily the students’ and crews’ points of view. Certainly they are in actuality far more complex, multifaceted and thus deserving of separate study, but that complexity is not within the scope of this dissertation, though I do converse with the literature that directly addresses these players in this and the next chapter. Returning to the vignettes, I begin with individual students’ and crews’ interaction with the faculty. I found their varying appropriation and resistance to faculty pedagogy 206 (such as the Head Faculty member’s five pointers) to be indicative of a state of their embeddedness in larger media industry discourse and practices. In fact, I found that all talk about the movies themselves—talk that presents itself vitally as “artistic discourse” within the spaces and purview of the film school—is reflective of this state of embeddedness. More generally, I’ll show why I think of embeddedness as an industrial state I find film schools, crews, and students uncomfortably wedged in, one they strive to wade through or at least make sense of. This moment or shape on the larger dialectic of professionalization puts the dilemmas of individual students like Dade in a new light. I had concluded Chapter 2 with comments on the “contradictions” of Dade with regard to the moment of resocialization. In this chapter, I show the film-authoring “artistic discourse” of individual students and crews as a response to said ambivalent state of embeddedness in film school structures. 62 I will also show that the artistic discourse arises from vacillation among transitory states of “pedagogical,” “contradictory,” “resisting,” “cacophonous” and “about telling a story.” My more general point is that film students and crews, given that they are embedded such, have no choice but to confront, contend with, filter and work through all the discourse thrown at them if the film is going to be authored, i.e., to connect to the language of Chapter 3, if work is going to get done. Such is the nature of authoring: it is not simply a “making.” Rather, as Ben refers to above, it’s an “exercise,” which is similar to what Duane said about the storytelling process as “exercising a muscle.” Unlike Duane though, Ben critiques the film-authoring exercises and productions of LAFilm’s much- hailed Production Class by referring to them as “exercises in mediocrity.” I’ll show why I interpret Ben to be really critiquing LAFilm’s embeddedness in media industry dynamics. 62 Dade’s “contradictions” are more precisely seen as mediated by said ambivalent state of embeddedness. 207 This chapter thus presents a substantially different moment describing how work gets done and movies get made. Chapter 3 presented tacit knowing as a force to contend with, one that sometimes results in the “artistic discourse as emergent” between Ben and Don. This chapter, by contrast, shows how artistic discourse arises not from tacit knowing but separately, from students having to contend with, work through, and as Dade said, “filter” discourse engendered by film school pedagogy and structures. This exercising sometimes results in a moment I call “artistic discourse as self-reflexive,” when students and crew find themselves asking, “Is this [film, scene, character, image, sound] too film school?” It is a surprising and distinctive bellwether of professionalization, and the ethnographic evidence in first half of this chapter leads up to this moment. However, this chapter also addresses the crucial, critical question, “Professionalization for whom?” During their film school tenure, students don’t ask this explicitly. However, I found that implicitly, or tacitly, everything they came around to doing was about that question. Thus comes into the fray in the second half of the chapter the dialectic of reputation-making, and in particular the moment of “hustling,” illustrated above in Tanya’s description of the intense “meat market/speed dating” process to get enrolled in Production Class. Like the authoring of films, hustling too is a moment or stance that showcases the school, its students and its crews to be embedded in larger media industrial dynamics. Each of these players is embroiled in a dialectic of reputation- making and reputation-shaping, and the particular “hustling” in order to “crew up” for Production Class, I argue, is evidence of a more general posture or stance of tacit anticipation in face of media industries. 208 The second half of this chapter thereby presents the vista of what the media industries look like to students who have undergone the dialectical moments of resocialization, tacit knowing, artistic discourse as self-reflexive, and hustling, on their personal dialectical pathways of professionalization. If professionalization is for the sake of media industries, how can we describe students’ ultimate state of send-off? I attempt to answer this at the end during my conversation with the literature, into which I weave portraits of some students’ paths leading away from school as well as their tacit anticipation of industry. Tacit anticipation is the master category of this dissertation. This chapter is structured in three parts: (1) empirical presentation of the unfolding of the dialectic of artistic discourse leading up to the moments of “artistic discourse as authoring” and “artistic discourse as self-reflexive;” (2) empirical presentation of the category of “hustling” on the dialectic of reputation-making, leading up to the moment of “tacit anticipation” on the dialectic of professionalization; and (3) a conversation with the literature that challenges and helps refine “tacit anticipation.” The “Dialectic of Artistic Discourse”: Moving Past “Embeddedness” “The Way It’s Done in the Industry”: Discourse as Pedagogy The faculty at LAFilm’s Production program are or used to be practitioners of their craft. So they have plentiful “real world experience” to impart. About eight faculty members are involved in Production Class (hereon referred to as “PC”), each representing a particular filmmaking craft or department. 63 The Head Faculty member (hereon, “HF”), who is the lead instructor during the lecture portion of the class, is a producer, and in separate breakout sessions, advises the students who have taken on the 63 See Chapter 1 for general information about LAFilm. I provide relevant details about Production Class below. Appendix 1 has a handy list of all faculty members included in this study. 209 roles of producer and assistant director in the films being produced in PC. Additionally, PC has a Director of Photography faculty mentor (DPF), one for Production Design (PDF), for Directing (DF), for Editing (EF), for Writing (WF), for Sound Recording (on set) (SRF), and for Sound Design and Mixing (in post-production) (SDF). In addition to weighing in during the main lecture, each faculty member runs separate breakout sessions with student crewmembers attached to their role. Together, LAFilm students agree that the PC faculty forms the equivalent of the “studio executives” in the Los Angeles-based film/TV industry, the powerful folk in the “Big Six” studios 64 who oversee film projects they issue and fund. 65 I weave in below the ways in which they wield this authority. Most strikingly, faculty members insisted that what they were teaching in PC is the “way it’s done in the industry.” Pedagogy was always associated with industry practice, and implicitly, the best or the most useful industry practice. In the introductory vignette above, HF emphasizes, for instance, that set safety is paramount. He went on to distribute a detailed handout of set procedure, and invited two faculty members—one who was in charge of all physical production in the school, and who students knew to not “piss off”—to come to class to discuss safety protocols. Industry practice was thus equated with safe, professional practice. HF and other faculty frequently prefaced these mini-lectures—for instance, on managing editing software and protecting the “data even from yourself”—with statements such as “It’s not different from what is done in the business.” 64 The Big Six studios are Disney, 20 th Century Fox, Paramount, Universal, Warner Bros, and Columbia. 65 One student even referred to the PC faculty as LAFilm’s “internal faculty mafia,” adding that it’s “their way or the highway. You have to be nice to them. You have to be kissing their ass. But that’s the way the world works. You want to get to places.” 210 Given the conclusions presented in the previous chapters about student experiences with regard to resocialization and tacit knowing, I would say that the five points HF listed on the whiteboard were either too simplistic or a bit dogmatic. For example, “Mak[ing] a good film,” necessitates resocialization and tacit knowing, which I have shown are far from easily materialized and which I show below as complicated further by the particular “hustling” ritual to get entry into PC itself, a ritual designed to guarantee a failure of resocialization (what in Chapter 2 I referred to as “screwing up” instead of “crewing up”). “Collaborate with the team” is also simplistic because I showed that students experience the “complex of tacit knowing” as, complex, and depending on the crew’s degree of resocialization, students are differently “efficient” in routines and in adhering to hierarchical roles. Thus, when faculty members emphasize “collaboration,” it comes across as slightly disingenuous given students’ lived experience of production. However, going with the point I am making in this section, the faculty presented themselves and their pedagogy as industrial, as necessary for working together, as strategic, and as normative. In doing so, they generated the conditions for appropriation and resistance, and in turn for “artistic discourse as authoring.” 66 On the whole, though, the faculty were usually very involved, available, and full of advice. They would constantly build off each other’s questions, ask pointed, detailed questions to guide students across the phases of filmmaking, and counsel them through crises. The first few weeks of pedagogy, corresponding to the pre-production stage, took 66 My point here is that the faculty have taught this class several times and they must know what I found during my time in the field: that resocialization is a problem because PC is a “room full of directors.” So simply saying on the first day of class that students should collaborate does nothing to dispel directorial students’ anxieties and ambivalence about working with other directorial students. 211 the form of plentiful advice, rule imposition, and caveats, always contextualized as knowhow about actual industry dynamics. For instance, after going through the five points on his first list, HF presented a second list, which had three bullets: “Script. Cast. Location.” In an encouraging tone he said, “I believe that all films in this class will have great cinematography, sound, and editing,” but he implored students to not forget these three oft-ignored aspects. His advice on casting was on the mark. Guffaw couldn’t get the commitment of their first choice for lead actor, and not all faculty or other crews thought highly of the actor Guffaw ultimately went with; once the dailies started coming in, the class seemed to agree that their initial doubts were warranted. With the crew of Tropos, HF rolled up his sleeves when he learned they had made an offer to their first choice for lead actor without running it by the faculty members. He told Tropos’ producers (who, including Tanya, rushed to cover up for their director) that he saw this violation as a “warning sign of a director who does not follow rules… We are building trust here, so the director, producers and faculty need to work together.” For the other student producers present in the breakout session, this was clearly a sign that PC’s faculty meant business when it came to routines such as casting, because, among other things, LAFilm’s reputation in the industry was at stake when members of industry guilds volunteered their “limited” and “precious” time on student projects. However, by the end of the semester, when everyone praised not just the final film but also his performance, students came to realize that Tropos’ securing the lead actor might have actually been a smart choice. Generally speaking, I found that roughly midway through the semester, students began to see that even though the faculty 212 members’ advice was well-meaning, industry-reflecting or plain authoritative, it only sometimes translated into the authoring of good films, which is ultimately what most in PC were concerned about. The early weeks sowed the seeds for what would become an increasingly vexed vacillation between appropriation of and resistance to faculty pedagogy. Students were evaluating the value of faculty input from the get go. Location 67 was another aspect of the pre-production process that all faculty strongly emphasized in PC’s early weeks. Their pedagogy can be paraphrased as follows: Be flexible with locations; don’t be wedded to what the script says about locations; and wherever possible, construct a set on a sound stage instead of finding a location. For instance, in the very first breakout session for producers and ADs, 68 HF asked Gail and Duane about their desired location for the wedding scene. Duane said they were having trouble nailing one down. HF recommended to find a church to “fake” as a synagogue. His rationale was that the scene was just 1/8 ths of a page of the script, “so sit with the director, figure out what angles are needed, and because maybe you just need three, then you don’t need a real synagogue.” Turning to the producers and ADs of other projects, he said, “All should be willing to not be literal about the location.” 69 As with the pedagogy related to casting, students and crews varyingly appropriated and resisted faculty advice on locations. The Guffaw crew persevered with their search for a synagogue, and the location ended up working well for the shoot day as 67 By “location” I mean all places—exterior or interior—where shooting occurs that is not a sound stage 68 This was the breakout session I attended the most frequently since I was 2 nd AD. 69 Another example of faculty members’ emphasis on location: PDF spent a good half hour explaining to the class the difference between a “location scout” and a “technical scout,” noting that the former (where the entire crew visits the location to see if it meets departmental needs at the level of story) was not an industrial practice but a pedagogical one. Another pedagogical point was about the importance of trying to secure the same location for consecutive shooting days. HF commented, “You have no idea how much of a relief it is to shoot two days back to back in the same location” (referring to the benefit that there is no end- of-day moving of equipment); PDF added, “People [in the industry] will kill for that.” 213 well as for the film. But for the proposal scene, they ultimately had to use their backup choice, a beautiful location used for formal events on the university’s campus. PDF was very vocally supportive of it, but the crew consented to it only after their other choices fell through. As it turned out, the faculty’s enthusiasm about that location was well founded and the crew even decided to use that location for three other scenes. Some production decisions, however, were imposed on student crews by the faculty’s authority as “studio executives.” So when a location had not been fixed for Guffaw’s florist shop scene three days prior to scheduled filming, PDF, citing the production designers’ inability to plan, forced the decision upon crew in front of the entire class: “The time for options has passed. You need to decide by 12:15pm.” This constraint forced the Guffaw crew to revisit the story at the end of an otherwise stormy production meeting (the one which I used as the “centerpiece example” in Chapter 2). Cate led the group to an epiphany that the script’s “florist shop” did not have to be a florist shop but instead any pre-wedding planning ritual. I had not seen the Guffaw crew agree to anything as fast or enthusiastically as to that suggestion. 70 In sum, compared to casting at least, the pedagogical value of faculty’s pointers on location seemed to be highly germane, and students and crews who resisted their advice on this issue eventually came around to see that the faculty’s “way it is done in the industry” approach to locations and sound stages made good sense. However, when 70 Two other examples of faculty wielding their authority as the equivalent of “studio executives” are as follows: (1) DPF telling Gail and Duane in front of the class that “It’s not really being fair” that Cate was the only crewmember loading and unloading equipment each day and that as producers they should find roles (PAs, grips) to help Cate; and (2) PDF, in an extended email conversation with Gail, Duane, Tina (the 1 st AD), and me, chiding the AD department for setting a call time for the crew without consulting the producers; essentially, her intervention resolved the conflict regarding hierarchical role-based authority that I found myself unwillingly embroiled in. 214 production decisions required interpretation of the story, sometimes students’ putting their foot down turned out to be better for the film. Vacillations among Transitory States: Artistic Discourse as “Authoring” I have been purposely presenting ethnographic evidence in a roughly chronological fashion in order to showcase in this section the vexed vacillation among transitory “authoring” states that catalyze the final authoring of films. A bit later, I will explain why I use the term “authoring” rather than “(film)making”; I will also explain how and why authoring is different from “tacit knowing,” although both “get the work done” and movies made. Forecasting Chapter 5, my theoretical goal in this section is to show how the dialectic works in miniature: how shifts in moments are unpredictable before becoming inevitable. The first moment of “artistic discourse as authoring,” I argued in the previous section, is pedagogical. Pedagogical discourse, even as it contains the seeds of what I will call “artistic,” sets up the conditions, i.e., the moments, of what is much more obviously artistic discourse. Continuing to roughly adhere to the chronological authoring of Guffaw in PC’s lecture and breakout sessions will serve to show how transitory discursive states of “appropriation,” “resistance,” “cacophony,” “contradiction,” and finally, “telling a story,” conjoin to bring about the authoring of discourse 71 as artistic. What’s key is that 71 A brief note about how I distinguish between “discourse” and “practice.” Chapter 2 showcased resocialization to be both a discursive and practice-based phenomenon. Actual resocialization, when it happens, is an act, an action, one of volition, but it is brought about by discourse, such as that in production meetings; of course, production meetings can themselves be thought of as routines or practices, but then we are entering a chick-and-egg problem. Chapter 3, by contrast, in its discussion of roles, hierarchy, routines, presented these as structures in situ, as discursive practices, in that people talk about and learn about them in order to enact them. However, tacit knowing as the final moment in that particular mini-dialectic, was purely practical and practice-based, in great part because it was tacit, not articulated. The first half of this chapter, though, foregrounds just discourse, which I generally take to be the everydayness of discussion, exchanges of ideas, debate, deliberation, and disagreement. 215 each of these transitory states contains elements of the others. That is the nature of “dialectic” as I use it. In PC, discussion transitioned from a more stable “pedagogical” state during the first three weeks of pre-production to various vacillating states during production and post-production. The three films being made in PC were shot on four successive weekends, and during the lecture period mid-week, “dailies,” or rough footage from the previous weekend, compiled by the student editors, would be screened for the entire class, including the faculty (all films were strictly on the same shooting and production schedule). Following each film’s dailies would be a period of discussion as well as talking about plans for upcoming filming days. Once filming on all projects was completed, the remaining eight weeks of PC were devoted to discussion about “cuts” of each film, starting with the editor’s cut, followed by the director’s cut, and finally the producer’s cut. None of these cuts had the final sound or score; it was all about the “picture,” the visual concatenation of the story. Four weeks into the “cuts,” picture was “locked,” and crews embarked upon the second stage of post-production, involving ADR, foley (both aspects of sound design), color correction, scoring, and the final sound mix. In what follows, I focus on the “authoring” of Guffaw through the discourse generated by the weekly screenings of its dailies (corresponding to the four weeks of filming), its director’s cut (around the third week after filming ended), and the week of “picture lock.” My goal is to show how vacillation among varied types of discourse influenced the film’s final authoring, and in what manner the discourse tended towards “artistic”. 72 72 Like previous chapters, the sections that follow map on to grounded theory subcategories of the main category of “artistic discourse as authoring.” Unlike previous chapters, the subcategories are connected dialectically (which is why I think of them as “transitory” “states”) and don’t cohere as well in standalone fashion as, say, Chapter 2’s “factors of individuality” and Chapter 3’s “routines” and “roles.” 216 “Appropriation” & “respect”: Fleeting instances. Fleetingly yet continually, PC crewmembers showed that they listened to and incorporated faculty pedagogy. Meticulous Cate recommended to her crewmembers that a “pow-wow after the blocking rehearsal” early on a filming day would put everyone on the same page regarding the camera setups planned for the day. Besides, the crew did do blocking rehearsals before makeup, a routine that was not followed by the more “experienced” Ingrates crew. Further, both Gail and Tina told me separately to follow industrial practice and not refer to the extras as “extras” but as “background actors.” Students in PC also followed aesthetic norms of filmmaking that their faculty mentors taught them. For example, Maya asserted during one of Guffaw’s intense production meetings that she wants to be able to “cut around performance,” so it was not surprising to see her nodding along when the cinematography faculty (DPF), rather than her editing faculty, reiterated this norm and added, “Never cut around a technically poor shot.” Dade tended to wear black on many shooting days, per the directing faculty’s (DF) suggestion to not distract actors with sudden movement right before calling “Action.” Maya also insisted, per the editing faculty’s (EF) suggestion, that the script supervisor provide her with the director’s “circled” (most preferred) and “hold” (next preferred) take for each camera set up. To Kim’s question about whether the background wallpaper for a particular scene could have been shot differently, DPF and PDF deliberated but ultimately supported the producers’ scheduling-based decision, shrugging that it could not have because, as in the industry, “these things require a time- and money-based solution.” 217 Finally, even as students incorporated industrial-aesthetic filmmaking norms and pedagogy, faculty occasionally communicated their respectful distance as well. For instance, Ben’s Ingrates script was praised greatly by his faculty and they did not request any changes to his prized Scene 1. To the Tropos crew, who were wondering about the feasibility of having a dog on many production days, the physical production faculty said, “I don’t want to step into the writer and director’s bailiwick, but you can keep a dog alive in a different way, through sound, so you might help the director by not cutting to the dog each time the script says so.” Faculty ensured they did not phrase their suggestions as total revisions of students’ ideas. However, despite these instances of mutual respect as well as direct appropriation of faculty pedagogy, for the most part, what I witnessed was varying degrees of resistance and contradiction to faculty and other students’ feedback during the screening of dailies and rough cuts of the film. In fact, the vacillation among these transitory modes of discourse was so great that I am tempted to bedeck HF’s oft-repeated statements— “We won’t tell you how to make a movie, but we will support you,” and “There is no right or wrong in the creative process”—in increasingly rusty irony. In what follows, I trace some of this vexed, ironic vacillation. “Resistance” (and clarity) peek in during pre-production. One of the first clear instances of “resistance” occurred during a breakout session when producers interfaced with their production designers and editors. This was early on in the process when locations were still being finalized. PDF and HF were discussing whether a bar was necessary for a scene written inside a bar (since Gail and Duane were having trouble 218 finding a suitable location). Dade was quietly listening to others imagining the scene, until he said: Dade: “Just to chime in, this is a life where bachelors go pick up women.” PDF: “I totally get why you want a bar. It sells that life. You’re also 2 weeks from production.” Juan: “It could be a picnic.” Dade: “It can’t be a picnic.” - Excerpt from field notes In this situation, production designer Juan might have wanted to show his supervising faculty member that he had ideas relevant to the story. However, Dade had already thought a lot about the bar scene and was committed to its taking place in an actual bar. This was evident in his directing the three male actors during the table read of the script. It was also evident in his constantly changing the shot list for the bar scene. So given that the faculty and Dade agreed that a bar would “sell that life,” Juan’s comment seemed off the mark and it got Dade more determined to stick to his vision. Resistance in this case fueled the search for the right bar, lest the faculty members impose a deadline on them as they did with the florist shop scene. Resistance generally works to reinforce a filmmaker’s vision or forces them to eliminate alternatives. Dade knew the story point he had to sell, and felt strongly about it because he said he could personally relate to the lead character because he too had give up the life of a “player” when he decided to settle down and get married (in fact, that’s how he described the story when recruiting a storyboard artist). In resisting obviously bad ideas for locating a scene, Dade and his crew took the stance of authoring by wanting to stay true to the requirements of the story. 219 Alongside resistance, clarity also peeked in during the early stages. A week later, in conversation with DF during the directors’ breakout session, Dade came to think Scene 1 anew. DF began the discussion by stating he thought the scene “opened too abruptly.” After some consideration, DF suggested starting off the film with the camera focused on, per the script, the lead actress’s generous physical endowment. This, he said, would refocus the audience’s attention to the lead actor’s core motivation of coming around to propose, while setting the comedic tone and the narrative events of the rest of the film. In the way the discussion unfolded, almost with a tinge of “synergy” (Chapter 3), this sounded to all in the room like a good solution. Dade remarked gleefully, “I suddenly like my film much more.” “Cacophony” alongside production: Accelerating vacillation. However, as Chapter 2 showed, Dade is very indecisive, and Scene 1 remained plagued with problems the movie never really fully recovered from. In the coming week, Dade found himself unable to stick to the spirit of DF’s suggestion and wavered quite a bit between the emphasis on story and his penchant for fancy (read: difficult) camera angles and transitions. This was particularly obvious when he did not follow through with what he had decided in the shot list meetings with his cinematographers Cate and Maurice. Thus, it was not surprising that his indecision would show in the dailies, prompting the following discussion during the PC lecture when they were screened: Mikhail [Tropos AD]: “Camera style is working against comedy. I’m not connecting to the story.” DF: “This is a work-in-progress. It’s too early to tell if the comedy is working.” 220 Tanya [Tropos producer]: “I’m not sure what you’re going for here. It feels more like a sketch parody than a fluid story with real beats.” Juan (to Dade): “It’s not moving. Let it flow. Don’t heavy-hand it.” Another student: “Lead actor is playing it as though he is nervous but then he is dressed too casually for his purpose in the scene.” Gail (responding): “The decision was made to portray him as clueless.” (turning to Dade) “A lot of people are reacting to style and pace. If you speed that up, it will be fine.” Faculty member: “After I watch a comedy, I don’t leave the theater thinking about the brilliant cinematography. I think about what made me laugh.” HF (to a silent Dade): “Tough to be in a room full of directors. Everyone thinks they can do a better job than you, and by the way, nothing wrong with that. I have a feeling you have the shots. In the cutting room, it might all come together.” - Excerpt from field notes In the thirty minutes the class had to respond to Guffaw’s first set of dailies, the feedback spanned a gamut of topics: in this excerpt itself, camera angles, lead actor performance, wardrobe, pacing, what makes a film a comedy, where a comedy comes together, were all brought up. People were not responding to each other as frequently as they were simply stating what had struck them: the discourse was not dialogical. Yet, the class seemed to agree that Dade might be overemphasizing camera angles, or at least underemphasizing “storytelling.” The word “story” is thrown out lovingly all too frequently in PC as well as LAFilm, but it never is intonated as clichéd. “Story” is portrayed in classrooms as the be-all-end-all of filmmaking. Filmmakers tell 221 stories: it’s as simple and as difficult as that. So, when Dade continued to receive a similar note over the next few weeks, he gradually—some would say too gradually, or even too late—began to get change his focus on storytelling, which was DF’s intention in the breakout session described earlier. This change in focus to “story” is the turn to what I refer to as “artistic.” I want to be clear that student filmmakers or faculty did not themselves use the word “artistic.” I found it difficult to come up with an umbrella term. I found that when people said that a film had a great “story,” or that filmmakers should pay attention to story, they say “story” with a positive valence and intonation. That positive valence is what I associate with “artistic.” 73 In the abstract, being artistic or being “about the story” implies that the filmmaking and the film have risen above the level of mere plot. The film has found its emotion, its characters have clear goals, and the movie moves towards drawing out these out. The film does what it’s supposed to do, i.e., tell a story, and by extension, tell a story well. However, how to actually achieve “storytelling” in the concrete was far from clear. In the above excerpt, it appeared that the room was disagreeing with what the film was about. Tanya wanted a “fluid story with real beats;” her comments on that and later days revealed her reading of the script to be dramatic rather than simply comedic. By contrast, Mikhail and a faculty member wanted a more out-and-out comedy, but the former thought that the camera style was wrong and the latter thought that comedies didn’t need the best camera work (which Dade later said was preposterous). This is one of many moments of contradiction that I argue—despite HF’s sympathy for Dade 73 Also, my use of “artistic” does not correspond to what my subjects would call “art” or “artistry.” In fact, I almost never heard the word “art” brought up. 222 regarding the critical directorialness in the classroom—made Dade’s life difficult in the month after filming started. 74 And it did not help the Guffaw crew for its remaining production days that people in PC began to agree that that the edit suite was the place where comedies and where Guffaw would “live or die.” That assertion flew in face of the room’s other comments that extracting performance during filming was equally important, and Dade’s own belief that “he was good at performance and proud about that.” Authoring, because it vacillated among seemingly irreconcilable demands, remained in its shell: the film’s telling of its story did not immediately develop. As the screenings of dailies continued, things continued to remain cacophonous, muddy, without clarity. The following week the class could not agree whether the wardrobe for the dinner scene was contemporary enough. One student thought that polka dots made the lead actress look from the 80s or 90s, whereas PDF remarked, “I don’t think it’s not contemporary.” Meanwhile, another student director who practiced the same religion as the lead female character turned to Dade and said, “You nailed it,” adding she could really relate to the wardrobe and performances. Tanya, who previously wanted a story with “real beats,” switched to talking about camera movements, saying that she was missing a dolly shot round the table. To this, DF scoffed in a show of favoritism, “Try being a producer on this film,” which prompted Duane to get up and clap. Classroom feedback sessions began to take the flavor of dramas in their own right, far removed from the pedagogical tones at the start of the semester. Cate would later recall, “The faculty [members] are funny. They like to one up each other all the time. Some have a better understanding of film than others… Some just bring up their opinions 74 It’s possible that Dade entirely ignored the motley feedback; my point is that the discourse did not help Dade with his film (more on this in below section). Dade is a bit inscrutable compared to Ben, who would state when a feedback or a situation was helping or not helping him. 223 and back off. Others will bring up something every single time until you listen to them. A couple like to play ping-pong with each other. Sometimes it becomes this ridiculous dance.” Two weeks later, when the last dailies were being screened, a student from another crew said critically, “There is a really funny movie in there.” Tanya, returning to her expectation of drama within the comedy, said, “The living room scene was emotionally all over the place. The drama is not fully justified.” In direct contradiction, the sound professor said, “I liked how serious the living room scene got.” Juan, who was confronted by Maurice in the previous production meeting for “airing dirty laundry in the classroom,” stated, “I will refrain 99% of my comments for next week, but I just have one question for our producers and editors, “Who is our lead male character?”” Cate told me in our interview that the problem throughout was just that: “We don’t have sympathy for the lead. Because he’s just stupid. We feel sorry for stupid people but you don’t feel empathy. And empathy is the most important thing in film.” So authoring for Cate meant creating empathy, and from how I heard Dade describe the film, they were not on the same page. In this manner, the quantity and cacophony of feedback vacillated in PC among seemingly arbitrary topics but also among registers of storytelling. No pedagogy, but no artistic authoring either. The kind of storytelling favored in LAFilm. Mikhail’s reflections on storytelling at LAFilm help make sense of people’s varying stances on the nature of comedy. He said, “Here they tell us it’s all about character development and character change. People like really touching stories that are about people and learning, not about people shooting other 224 people [referring to Tropos]. That’s what they’re trying to teach us here: touching character stories.” Melbourne, Tropos’ director, agreed. They definitely teach you the traditional style: three-act structure with a beginning, middle and end. You should think about your characters in a certain way. They don’t really explore experimental filmmaking here. It’s more of the commercial structure and traditions… They are training us for the Hollywood studio system [where] studios give you notes, saying you should do this, you shouldn’t do that. They’ll give you lots of money and resources… but the studio executives have a lot of say in the final film. - Excerpt from interview Mikhail and Melbourne’s comments help make sense of the industrial tensions and influences undergirding the discourse in PC. I am forced to conclude that the faculty and students did not know what to do with a comedy, or at least could not figure out the balance between jokes for the sake of jokes versus dramatic characterization and tension. With Tropos, a psychological thriller, which according to the faculty and other students, was the best of the three films produced in PC that semester, the feedback was more consistent. Mikhail said, “Our big thing was showing vulnerability in our lead character. We heard that critique multiple times. And we knew going into the last scene we shot that it is going to be super vulnerable. That was the contrast we knew is going to be there.” With Tropos then, the storytelling note from the lecture was more monotone, decisive, and thus more actionable, more author-able: balance out the psychological thriller element with a dramatic element elicited by vulnerability in the lead character. Tropos seemingly fit in better with PC and LAFilm’s conception of a good film and 225 story, which is why it isn’t surprising that some faculty thought it was the best film to come out of PC to date. 75 What’s “funny?”: Vacillation between building jokes and building character. With Guffaw, by contrast, the storytelling notes remained opaque. When the director’s cut was screened nearly three weeks later, one of the faculty members remarked, “It was funny but I did not laugh.” Some of the film’s crew, including Abe, took this to mean that the comedy aspect had failed. However, others disagreed about whether a comedy is supposed to make you laugh. Sid, in an unusual show of defending Dade, said, “Not everything needs to be laugh-out-loud funny. Often you see things and think they are funny.” And yet others took the acid test to be actual laughter. During the sound design session, when a new faculty member came in and saw the film for the first time, he laughed out loud during nearly every scene. His response immediately elevated the mood of the room; so far nobody had guffawed at Guffaw. Dade and Duane were smiling at each other. Duane would later choose this moment as his favorite memory from working on the film. Overall, though, faculty members showed signs of not agreeing on what to do with the film. This was especially apparent when the faculty and just the Guffaw team convened in a small dark room for a scene-by-scene “table screening” (as opposed to a “table read”) of the director’s cut, wherein the faculty members tried to tread the clearly tricky line between joke building and emotion generating. 75 And maybe it’s also not entirely surprising that Guffaw, termed by many as a “one-joke comedy,” had trouble getting its feet of the ground. HF would tell me in our interview that a comedy hadn’t been selected to be produced in PC in many semesters, so Guffaw was picked in part for its novelty value. 226 DF: “Paul Newman is known to have said, sometimes if you cut it quick, it feels longer, This is cut quite fast.” Another faculty: “I think DF has a point. In humor, there needs to be a build. If a joke is not built properly, it does not work.” PDF: “I don’t think the jokes [in this cut] build. The core problem is that the lead character is a cipher. A marshmallow. Everyone around him has juice.” DF: “Reinstall some pathos...” DF: “There is a concept called “snowball”, and it comes from vaudeville. The audience laughs once, keep them laughing. Wait too long, and they have to start all over again. Cut the movie to keep the snowball…” DPF: “At least if it’s not funny, I should care about the lead male character and right now I don’t.” - Excerpt from field notes Here the faculty disagree on whether the jokes in the actual cut “build,” but also in responding to each other’s differing views, change their own stance. So DF started out saying that the cut worked because it was fast, but later on went to say that the joke- building should be even tighter, while also adding they should reinstall pathos. Sitting in the dark room with a dozen Guffaw crew members and another nearly dozen faculty, I began to see discourse that spanned the logical spectrum of possibilities as the enemy of artistic discourse, which I in turn began to understand as that which breaks a film from its narrative strangleholds, the kind of unshackling that was “emergent” in exchange between Ben and Don documented in Chapter 3, an exchange which generated momentum towards a satisfactory getting done of work on Ingrates. 227 “Embeddedness” without “authoring”: “Turn[ing] you away from your material.” Overall, a confusing and seemingly pointless cacophony of individually smart-sounding opinions compounded the problem of the film’s authoring, especially in Dade’s mind. The film came to be a stuck in a state of “embeddedness,” in an echo chamber of opinions on a baffling range of issues, opinions that ran the logical gamut 76 and frequently contradicted each other. Embeddedness in this moment means an inability to even resist. In our interview, Dade insightfully reflected on an unexpected danger in this situation. You’ve got to know who to trust. People [including professors] will say bullshit things like, “This isn’t going to work because it’s too gray…” But in my mind, I already know the pieces… of the puzzle [and in the dailies, you don’t get the entire puzzle.] They don’t necessarily screen dailies in the industry but the faculty want to make you cognizant about [the idea that] people are going to be looking at your raw work, so get used to it… But I honestly felt that the structure of showing dailies really hurts because it can turn you away from your material. It turns you off if you’re not strong enough.” - Excerpt from interview I used this excerpt in the vignette opening this chapter because I felt Dade made a very germane point. When he uttered the words, “turns you away from your material,” he helped me realize the thoroughgoing industrial nature of embeddedness and authoring in PC and LAFilm. The class was designed to push directors, as well as its directorial 76 There were many examples of the class having an unproductively wide range of opinions on a topic. For instance, when it came to weighing in on a casting session performance, people chimed in the following: “layered” [good], “very flat” [very bad], “milque toast” [bad], “vulnerability” [good], “chemistry read” [ambivalent]. 228 students, to the brink of confusion about authoring. This was the antithesis of how faculty framed their role in “supporting” students in making the film. Dade’s manner of phrasing allows us to interpret all classroom discourse as a fog that authorial (corresponding to Chapter 2’s “directorial”) students have to wade, struggle, and strive through in order to author. It was a game designed to “screw up” individuals and crews just enough to then help them soar: a sort of extreme ‘tough love’. Film “authoring” is not film “making” because certain crewmembers—be they directors, or possibly editors, who according to EF and students like Don, write the final draft of the film—are forced to drown out other authorial voices. Authoring is a process of elimination, of surviving contradiction, of forcefully enacting resistance. Authoring is forming an armament, a hard shell, in order to draw out your story. When I asked students about this interpretation, they concurred. Cate claimed that “it is very useful” to have a wide spectrum of opinions “only if you can filter that kind of stuff.” Lavos, the student assistant for PC, shrugged that the classroom situation reflected industry reality; “People need to get used to getting critiqued. So as the director it’s your job to filter the ones you don’t agree with. That’s why PC is a good learning experience.” Everyone agreed that authoring required filtering. Sid, among the most directorial students, put it this way: You need to have a strong idea of what you want going in because if not, every week you are going to hear this chorus of eight different voices [referring to the “studio executives”] that have conflicting opinions on your film. And if you try to appease everyone, what you’re going to have is going to be very vanilla, a movie that neither offends nor entertains.” 229 - Excerpt from interview Outright “contradiction” and “resistance” during post-production. During the long process of post-production, I began to find even more instances of contradiction, disagreement and resistance between faculty and students as well as among faculty. As noted, there were always moments of resistance, even during pre-production, like Dade’s insisting the bar scene not be reconceived as a picnic, or Tanya’s citing “creative preference” as the reason the producers were taking their time finding the right breed of dog for Tropos. And during production, when all crews faced the problem of soft focus (blurry footage) because they had opted to use lens adapters on their camera, they resisted and even resented when HF said, “I hear all these complaints about the flatness of the image. The lens adapter, which you all opted to use [against our advice], flattens the image. So you are battling the choices you made… With the adapter there are great moments you cannot use because the shot is not in focus.” To this, the Tropos crew who was in the line of fire that particular day said that the lens adapter made the image more “cinematic” and less like video, adding, “It looks ugly without it.” HF countered, “The image looks pretentious.” Tanya cheekily shot back something to the effect that they were all in film school, so pretentiousness was expected. By contrast, during post-production, displays of resistance became bolder, more obvious, more articulate, or downright iconoclastic. One day, I was observing the interaction among Sid, Dade and DF (directing faculty) in the edit suite as they working on Scene 1. DF was making detailed, specific suggestions about how to rearrange shots and edit out dialogue to increase comedic effect. It was mostly DF making suggestions, Sid executing them, and Dade watching in silence. At the end Sid told DF, “I have to say, 230 it’s playing a lot better than when we started this.” I jotted down that this was an example of “good collaboration.” So, when Sid told me in our interview that he was faking it and trying to control his anger the whole time, I was completely taken aback. He explained, Right after the editor’s cut, in the breakout session with EF [editing faculty], DF just assailed Maya and I for having ruined Dade’s film. As if, Dade had gone out and shot perfect footage and we just totally botched it… I found this personally really annoying because none of the professors had bothered to get to know me or my skill set. A lot of times he would say things like, “Well, you guys don’t know but real editors blah blah.” And the truth is, I have been editing for real. If DF has seen MTV, he has seen stuff I have done. I’ve never fucking seen anything DF has done except when they forced me to watch it in school. So I found it kind of offensive and a bit idiotic… So that day, when he comes in, I insisted on just him being the voice in the room… And there were some points when I think it was obvious that I was a bit angry and they were telling me to calm down. But I wasn’t interested in how I was coming off than for DF to see that the solutions were not that easy, that the footage [he wanted] didn’t exist… I wanted to show them, “Look how fucking bad this is.” This guy who you thought is going to be the messiah for Scene 1 came in and this was his idea. But the thing is, Dade is so fearful a guy and has so little conviction in his own ideas that because DF came in and said, this is the way it should be cut, that’s the way it was cut and that’s the way it stayed cut. - Excerpt from interview 231 Sid’s revelation can be explained and contextualized in a couple of ways. At this point in the semester, when students had been through the physically and mentally challenging period of planning, shooting and having their films being screened to a “room full of directors,” students tend to become less reverent of authority and pedagogy. They begin to see the discourse as cacophonous. They begin to see their faculty as mere professionals, and in doing so, begin to understand themselves as more than just students. Plus, Sid also tends to be a very directorial student, so for him to work on a film that he already thought was not made well in the filming stage and then be chided for bad editing became too much to bear. Resocialization problems at the level of the group impacted authoring at the level of the organization. What’s more, as I’ll showcase in a later section, students come to realize that Production Class doesn’t live up to its reputation for being the class they “hustled” so hard to get into. They begin to vocalize and enact resistance in order to fight through such disillusionment. Sometimes, how students are treated in the classroom itself is an impetus for resistance. Mikhail, who was usually the first to have his hand up after a cut had screened, was told on an occasion or two to dial down his critique, and that he should not “critique as much as give comments.” So Mikhail thought the faculty were “overly protective of the filmmakers.” Echoing Sid’s sentiment he added, “I’m tired of being treated like I’m 18 years old. I’m 32. I’ve been in the business for eight years. They treat us like we’re little kids, like we’re dumb.” The final straw for some was when HF screened a feature length film he had produced. From what I gathered most people thought it was atrocious. So Abe, who was told once or twice by HF to not laugh at inappropriate moments during in-class screenings because it is “disrespectful,” was also 232 incensed during our interview. He said, “I’m always laughing my ass off because I think [a movie] was terrible and HF got pissed at me… [After the screening of his film] I was like, “Fuck you, HF.” Like, the movie was terrible. And I’m allowed to laugh.” I would say that Abe is justified in pointing out the contradictions in faculty’s stances. A couple of days earlier, HF had insisted to Gail and Duane that as producers, it is their job to “decide what the [story] is about. For the movie whose premier I have this evening, I sat down with the director and asked him to explain every scene… Ask the dumbest questions. If I don’t understand what’s going on in a scene, I can’t do my job as a producer. From what I see, I don’t think you’ve reached that point with Dade.” Abe’s point simply was the faculty don’t practice what they preach: how could HF have sat down with his director and yet have the movie turn out so bad? So for Abe, they don’t understand what they’re asking from students and then it’s absurd for them to arbitrarily ask some students to restrict themselves from adding their opinion to what is already is cacophonic rather than meaningful, let alone artistic, discourse. Review: Dialectic as Shifting of and Sifting through Discourse To summarize, discourse about filmmaking in PC proceeded through several moments, and like a dialectic, these moments were distinguished by the particular combination of elements they contained. If there were hints of “appropriation” of or “respect” for faculty pedagogy, they were more so in the initial weeks, corresponding to pre-production, when the faculty themselves were more “pedagogical” and dogmatic about issues like casting and location. As filming started and dailies began to get screened, “contradiction” and “resistance” more clearly entered the picture. At the same time, there was more “vacillation” among modes, spurred by students and faculty 233 wavering about the relevant registers of storytelling and offering opinions that spanned the logical spectrum of possibilities. Some students such as Dade began to feel the noose of this “embeddedness” tightening. “Authoring” would remain comatose until students and crews realized that they had to confront, contend with, “filter” and sift through said vacillations and contradictions; they had to, simply, return to the story. Especially during post-production, this realization was manifest in moments out of outright “resistance.” Authoring thus meant being not just directorial but being authorial. Authoring meant drowning out the “cacophony” of voices that seemed authoritative. Authoring meant remembering that it was, in fact, as everybody was saying all along, about the story, about the emotion. This move, of seeing the truth within the cliché, is what I call the emergence of “artistic”. “Artistic discourse as authoring,” in a structure similar to “resocialization,” has to repeatedly instantiate itself and reboot itself. Just like filmmaking proceeds across stages—common wisdom is that the three “drafts” of a film are the screenplay, the filmed dailies, and the edited cut—filmmakers, to the extent that they are vested with the sole authority to be authorial, also have to repeatedly instantiate themselves as authors. The trick of the pedagogy of Production Class is to make you forget you are the author and then gradually elicit the remembrance. Others’ discourse about story at some point becomes your discourse towards your story, your (artistic) spin. Authoring, thus, is moving past embeddedness and cacophony, into the realm of “story.” Authoring is a long, drawn out moment towards “self-reflexivity.” 234 Coda: “Authorial-ness” as not “Directorialness” A counterargument to my raising the grounded category “artistic discourse as authoring” is that it is too similar to the category “directorialness” from Chapter 2. The intuition would be that directors eventually shake off their embeddedness in the film school cacophony and get back to doing what they always wanted to do: i.e., be directorial, have complete control over the film and the storytelling. In other words, the objection is that the category is redundant. In response, I do not claim that it is simply the director, or the director in conjunction with the editor (as in Chapter 3), who achieves the moment of discourse as artistic. A crew can occasionally also achieve that. Moreover, the objection is not valid because it conflates processes at the interface of individuals and groups with those at the interface of individuals, groups and organizations. I propose the confusion has partly to do with the terminology associated with the word “embed.” In the former interface, individuals have to molt or preen their factors of individuality, such as directorialness, in order to insert or “embed” themselves as functioning, efficient members of crews; i.e., individuals, including directors, have to engage in resocialization with the particular crew and story. In the latter interface, individuals have to ‘un-embed’ themselves out of cacophonous, vacillating discourse at the level of the organization, and become re-attuned to the story. The former is a process of resocialization and is implicated only at the level of the group or “temporary organization” – I don’t think it means anything to say that individuals resocialize into non-temporary organizations such as film schools, which is partly why the category “resocialization” is different from “socialization.” The latter interface, by contrast, 235 indicates a return not to individuality but tacit knowing about story. The dialectic portrayed in Chapter 3 began with group processes and structures such as roles, routines and hierarchy, showcased how they undergird tacit knowing, and how tacit knowing was disposed to the emergence of artistic discourse. The dialectic portrayed so far in this chapter begins with organizational discursive structures such as pedagogy and industrial embeddedness, and showcases how individuals and crews that are embedded such must return to group-level tacit knowing and artistic discourse. Resocialization involves discarding of self, whereas tacit knowing involves communication between selves, and different from both, authoring or authorialness involves a self-reflexive return to tacit knowing and group-level artistic discourse. I’ll end this section by narrating how the Guffaw crew somewhat managed to get past their embeddedness in the organizational structures and discourse of PC and return to group-level artistic discourse. It was the afternoon after the director’s cut had screened in the lecture. Maya and I were walking from the elevator to the above-mentioned table screening when she told me with a carefree tone, “I have no idea what a table screening is... Just watch out, they’re going to yell at us.” At the end of the table screening, which had descended from systematic scene-by-scene feedback to overlapping in talking, I heard Sid whisper to Dade, “Don’t take this [mixed feedback] personally. You’re the director.” I am not sure if others heard it, but it was definitely an utterance of defiance, considering it was just the key faculty and the Guffaw team in that small room. Right after the table screening, when the crew met to debrief and discuss the storytelling needs of the film, Gail—who had until then been careful to not dismiss the faculty’s opinion and feedback, and who two faculty members told me they greatly respected because of 236 her abilities as a producer—admitted, “I don’t think we need to base everything we do on what the faculty said. They have given us too much.” Juan, always the first to resist, quickly agreed, “They keep contradicting each other so let’s forget what they said… I could never be a director for this class because I would just disagree with everything they would say.” Immediately after, the crew went on to reconceive their plans to reshoot the problematic Scene 1 on entirely their own terms, not explicitly taking into account any of the notes provided by the faculty members or the class. In fact, what I witnessed that afternoon on the balcony was the crew actually prioritizing how to be smart about storytelling. Everybody began to “brainstorm” ideas (Cate’s term for the process) and unlike their heated production meetings of the previous month, I actually detected an atmosphere of “synergy.” In particular, I found that the crew enter a light-hearted banter about the film’s characters, and witnessed that light-hearted banter crystallize into a distinct reconceptualization of Scene 1. 77 The final idea was Sid’s, but it clearly emerged and was reinforced from the group’s exchange; everyone (but Cate, who continued to think that we never empathize with main character) was laughing at Sid and Dade’s enactment of the new scene. Overall, I found that as a crew, Guffaw had gotten past the fog of contradictory cacophonous discourse and had verged into the territory of “artistic” by refocusing on the needs of the story, the goals of the characters, and the nature of the comedy. It was completely unexpected, given everything I had seen about the crew, and it was very pleasant to watch unfold. It came close, however temporarily, to match the synergy Ben 77 PC crews are allowed—as well as many thesis films and, generally, industry films choose to add—a couple of days to “pick up” shots or scenes that, during post-production, they find the need to rework or add. 237 and Don accomplished on Ingrates. Of course it was a separate issue that many in the crew thought the film was already too compromised (in fact, some had always thought the script was weak). My point is this was a breakthrough moment and that it took the eight weeks of persisting through inadequate resocialization (Chapter 2; and thus inadequate tacit knowing), and somewhat separately, vexed vacillation of discourse about their film, for the crew to reach this point. They would continue to gossip about each other and think that Dade was inefficient and indecisive. But they did reach a moment of focusing on “telling a story,” of talking about their film as one with a not entirely silly plot, and with a character who was not entirely beyond their help. A final point: authorialness is also not directorialness because the former is not bedecked in certainty and self-assuredness. To that extent, authorialness/authoring is clearly a group-level attribute indicative of a collective process. For instance, Melbourne said the following about Tropos. Yeah. I’m very happy with the film that we have now. I think the performances are great. Would we have had the same performances if we were outside shooting overnight with cop cars? Maybe not, but I would have like to have seen if we could have… I knew that going into it I’d have to make concessions. I didn’t know that it was going to be that big of concession… I’m very happy with the film we have but there’s always that thought in the back of my head, “What if we had made that scene the way it originally was? Would it had been even better?” - Excerpt from interview Melbourne points out how the final film was not just his own venture. He had to work through the cacophony of organizational discourse as well as come to see his producers’ 238 and HF’s concern about the logistical problems associated with the final scene. He had to drown out his directorialness in order to see that his crew was engaging in tacit knowing with the needs of storytelling from the perspective of their roles. Thus, from an authorial standpoint, Melbourne was satisfied with Tropos. From a directorial standpoint, not as much. “Is this too Film School?”: Artistic Discourse as Sustained “Self-Reflexivity” I argued above how “authoring” is a self-reflexive moment lifting students out of embeddedness into the realm of story. In this section, I present what I found was the pinnacle of the manifestation of “self-reflexivity,” a moment of wading not just past embeddedness, which requires the minimal appearance of self-reflexivity. Rather, I present moments of sustained “self-reflexivity.” They occur when students find themselves asking something akin to the question, “Is this [story, scene, image, sound] too film school?” I will show that it is a surprising, unexpected moment of professionalization, connecting the dialectic of artistic discourse to the grander, parallel dialectic of professionalization. I found five instances of the use of the phrase school “too film school” or “film school perfect,” or the question “Is this too film school?” I also found three instances of the use of “organic,” which students consider to be the antidote to, or at least the opposite of “too film school.” All utterances were made Ingrates crewmembers. This is not entirely surprising, because as I will suggest, Guffaw, according to some of its crewmembers, was so obviously “film school” that it would have been puzzling had its crewmembers asked the question. Yet, crewmembers from all three films could readily explain what the phrase meant, even if I did not hear them say it about their films or even 239 if they didn’t use it themselves. The meaning existed, and they knew it. In this manner, “too film school” is another example of tacit knowing that largely remains unarticulated. The very first time I was alerted to “film school” being referred to in a reflexive manner was during the casting session of Ingrates. Of note, this conversation occurred in an “industry setting,” in the offices of a “professional” casting director. At the end of the afternoon of auditions, he casually remarked that he could totally tell Ben had gone to film school because he was acting as though a director should be acting. Student directors, unlike “real world” directors, always try to give specific directions to actors during casting sessions. So if they wanted to see how an actor plays “angry,” they would try to prod them to become angry “organically.” Whereas, the casting director said that real world directors just say, “Be angry.” “Move faster.” Ben, somewhat amused, related this exchange to his co-producer. A few days later, when Ben and Yasha were at the latter’s house going over the shot list for the opening scene, Yasha mentioned that focusing on the tree (what in previous chapters I called the “lone tree”) in a particular manner would be “too film school perfect,” even though it would make for a nicer frame. Ben seemed to agree, and they continued” to “negotiate” how the tree should be framed so as to still meet the needs of the story. It was clear that the use of the phrase was in the context of artistic discourse about the story. A few weeks later, when we were on location, Ben and Yasha were peering through the camera and adjusting the tree’s position. They were shifting between two aesthetic extremes. On the one hand, Yasha said, “If you take out the rock, then you are kissing the tree [to the frame], and that’s bad;” here Yasha implies something that clearly should not be done, the equivalent of a major grammatical error. On the other 240 hand, as they adjusted frame, Ben pointed out something that he said was “too film school,” implying, to extend the metaphor, that it was too grammatically conscious. The former is amateurish because of its lack of understanding of craft; the latter is amateurish by being over the top regarding its understanding craft and story. On a related note, at Yasha’s house, I pointed out to a poster on the wall that said, “You want to keep doing it until you get to the thing nobody could have planned.” I asked Yasha why he liked it; he said it is a “good piece [on] direction. Ben laughed, saying it reminded him of what they had been taught in school about trying to achieve work that is “organic, raw.” It was also instance of I take to be a light-hearted picture of film students behaving like students: they know the high watermark, they are probably more ready than they know, but sometimes they just wonder if all of that—that industry glory—is worth it. These comments might seem speculative here, but by the end of this chapter, they will make sense as one of the vagaries of students’ “tacit anticipation.” Two other instances bring out the distinction between “too film school” and “organic.” Faculty were far less involved in thesis films such as Ingrates, compared to films like Guffaw and Tropos produced in PC. However, even Ben and crew had to seek multiple “greenlights” before Ingrates could go into production. 78 During the meeting with one of their faculty overseers, the latter laughed out loud when going down the script. “The room explodes,” he read. He then looked at Ben and chortled, “Only a film 78 “Greenlighting” a project is a term widely used in the film/TV industry to denote that an organization of some weight or influence has accepted a novice’s, an up-and-comer’s, or even an established filmmaker’s project, have decided to fund it, or given it the go-ahead (the ‘green light’) to step into production. “Greenlighting” is associated with accomplishment, a sense of joy and relief, and going into the next gear of stress. It is part of what Newcomb (2009) would call the media industries’ “dance.” It would be what Caldwell (2008) would call an above-the-line ritual that retains the creative decision-making with those in power. Incidentally, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s endeavor to competitively select new directors and do a reality show around the making of their chosen ones is called “Project Greenlight.” Recently, an LAFilm student director was selected among the final ten. 241 student would write that.” He went on teasing as he went down the script, “Who knew you were so violent? You seem like a perfectly reasonable guy,” eliciting some laughter from Jolene and Seth, as well as amused, nervous fidgeting from Ben. Clearly, the faculty member thought that students’ writing and attempting such sequences is “too film school,” too over the top, too not subtle. By contrast, after the shooting of the hurricane sequence on the motel exterior (the one which Yasha chose to include on his latest reel), Lara, the production designer, summed up the enthusiasm and the joy of the crew (me included) when she said that day was “epic” because everything was happening “organically.” However, the instance that first alerted me to the significance of the term occurred last chronologically (I had to go back and scour my field notes for the previous instances). It was a rare moment in the field that gave me pause and allowed me to see my subjects and the relations among my categories in a new light. I mentioned the setting in Chapter 3 as an example of role-based hierarchy: during Ingrates’ first formal post- production meeting, right after post-production supervisor Merle, co-producer Richie, editor Don, director Ben and I had just finished seeing the first rough cut of Ingrates. After a few initial comments about how Ben liked the opening shots because they were “exactly how I wrote it,” and about whether the cut was too long, Merle posed the question in a serious, self-assured tone, “So let me ask, “Does it feel like a student film?”” Ben smiled broadly, Don’s face betrayed nothing, but I was a bit stunned. I suddenly saw these individuals as not just students, and definitely not just friends who a few minutes before were behaving like old buddies. I was surprised that students were 242 asking whether the film was too much like a student film, and moreover, that an undergraduate, Merle, asked this question of a graduate student. I quickly realized the level of “student” did not matter because clearly the question revealed they were aiming for a level of quality beyond ‘graduate’ or ‘undergraduate’. Yet, given that I had heretofore witnessed quite a few amateurish mishaps even on the generally “efficient” Ingrates set, and that the three were friends who had worked with each other in the past, I was surprised to see this level of solemn candor and deliberate self-awareness. Ben did not answer the question, but the tone of the room was immediately elevated to a level I have come to think of as an awkward yet productive juxtaposition between “not yet professional” and “professional.” This juxtaposition is different from “embeddedness,” which I conceive as a space that does not allow artistic discourse. If anything, the juxtaposition signifies the next plateau after students have extricated themselves from film school “embeddedness”. The questions “Is this too film school” or “Is this too much like a student film?” usher in, catalyze, or create the conditions for artistic discourse, as is what happened for the most part of the next seven months on Ingrates (some of which I captured in the last section of Chapter 3). Asking these questions strangely means student filmmakers feel freed from one set of constraints (organizational), while paradoxically showcasing them as cowering to another set of constraints, those of the wider industry looming in their backyard. So, in a sense, it’s a movement from one plateau of embeddedness to another. It’s its own kind of vexation, but the crux is it does not initially come across as that. Initially, the question frees up students from the immediate organizational and film school pedagogical, cacophonous and contradictory discursive moments. Students may 243 not yet be “professional,” but in asking themselves this question asking as though as though it was their and not the faculty’s question to ask, they are no longer in their own eyes, to their own worth, “students.” Asking the question, “Is this too film school” is the final moment in the “dialectic of artistic discourse.” On the “dialectic of professionalization” which they are simultaneously traversing, I think of this question as falling between “tacit knowing” and full on “tacit anticipation.” I clarify these relative positionalities in Chapter 5. The Meanings of “Too Film School” But what does “too film school” mean and does everyone agree on the meaning? The answer to the latter is an unequivocal “yes.” Maya ventured, “[It probably means] very cliché topics, like suicide, or abortion,” before going into a mini-rant, “I remember in our first semester there were at least three projects about rape and they were from guys. I was like, “What do you guys know about getting raped? I just feel like they are very cliché, overdramatic topics that filmmakers in short films reach out for because they just want to hit it hard.” So one connotation of a movie being “too film school” was that it was pretentious and trying to make a splash just so that its filmmakers could gain attention. Abe concurred with the point about pretentiousness. He thought that Guffaw was a one-joke film, which is a type of pretentiousness; he added on the example of favorite go-to genres for film students, the zombie genre and movies with guns, which in his opinion, “lack creativity because it’s like a mini-conflict for a movie. Oh, zombies got him. So it’s like instant comedy as opposed to like [something] emotional, with real thought.” Another type of pretentiousness according to Abe is the “film school mentality” 244 that “everything has to be high intellectual drama.” Abe thinks a good film is something between cliché, instant gratification and overly intellectual drama. Meanwhile Lavos, the student assistant, agreed with Maya’s point about cliché storylines. His example was “dreaming. It was all a dream.” Finally, Yasha had a humorous take on the subject. There’s two ways to use that term, at least. “[Too] Film school” usually means that the shot itself is too ‘thoughty’. Like, it’s too heavy… You can see the filmmaker in it too much, to the point like, “Oh my god, this is so amateur.” [The second way…] I have this joke about a movie… a second semester film [that] starts off with a person sleeping and then you hear an alarm, and the person just slams the alarm, and then the feet come down. And then he goes into the kitchen, and he opens the fridge. And the camera’s inside the fridge. Then he closes it and gets his bowl of cereal… It’s basically things they do in film school all the time that you don’t want them to do.” - Excerpt from interview Yasha suggests that “too film school” can refer to shots as well as stories. Typically, a shot that is “too film school” is heavy-handed, whereas a story that is “too film school” is predictable, boring, even excruciating to watch. Maya and Lavos’s comments support the latter. Two of the faculty members would also agree with Yasha’s aligning “too film school” with cinematography problems. HF said that students tend to “overthink” and “apply too much external pressure on their materials”. PDF was a bit annoyed when she remarked, “Lack of craft… Students always try these dolly shots that look like crap. Well, then, just don’t do it. What you want is the technical to disappear and it can only 245 disappear when you’re not aware of it. As soon as you’re aware of it, you’re not in the movie.” Cate put it more directly, “In film school, if someone says your film looked really good, or that it was “pretty,” that’s not a compliment. [What they mean is] that the story wasn’t there. The acting wasn’t there.” And Cate clearly thought that Guffaw’s story was not there because she did not empathize with the main character. Melbourne described the difference between a “student film and a professional film” as, “Were you ever taken out of the story?” For him, the culprit is not a technical category but the performances and acting, as well as the “believability of the characters.” He said that Hollywood films can get away with bad acting and performances because they have a bigger budget and make up for any defects with “big special effects.” If a student film can’t make “really memorable” performances and characters, then “it’s just a student film.” So Melbourne’s way of answering the question was to describe what a “professional film” did well, rather than what a student film overdid. And yet, it’s clear that he associates something that is merely a student film as not “professional.” Similarly, the spirit of Merle’s question was also that a film that is “too much like” a student film is not professional. What’s revealing is that the balance students want to strike—i.e., the place of subtlety, restraint, quality, in shot design, storytelling, performance and character they want to reach—has shifted to the realm of what they consider to be “professional,” and thus outside of film school. Students are going “industrial.” Going beyond “film school” or avoiding being “too film school” means extricating oneself from the organizational and pedagogical embeddedness of film school structures and finding the right flavor of artistic discourse. When I asked Melbourne what the opposite of “too film school” was, he laughed and said, “Good.” 246 Ben approached the question differently when I asked him to describe what “film school perfect” meant. Shots and frames that seem familiar to you… because you’ve seen it in student filmmaking… And the idea of being a student filmmaker is that you are in a safe space… You’re not working for anybody that is asking you to create a product that’s going to make money. You’re working for yourself. So take chances and do things. Make it not want to make sense all the time. There’s no appropriate way to filmmaking. The “appropriate way” is the film school way… which is a subset of the industry standard. - Excerpt from interview Ben suggests that it is hard to escape the industry either way: in film school, one can be too appropriate, and then when one is in the industry, you have to only be in its commercial ways. So subverting the danger of “too film school,” he suggests that there is a way of approaching filmmaking that is uniquely your own voice, that takes risks, that is not familiar because other students are doing it nor is it familiar because it’s commercial and industrial. He squarely associates creativity with being the right degree of film school. At the same time, he insisted, “You can’t teach creativity,” so essentially, film schools can’t teach you how to be the right degree of film school. I would submit that for Ben, the only solution, to use my terminology, is to filter and contend through the cacophony of what film school teaches you and find that particular level of authoring or engage in that level of artistic discourse about your student film that makes it also unlike the “familiarity” of other films but unlike the familiar commerciality of the industry. 247 Ben also agreed with Melbourne though that one criterion of a “good” film is strong acting. To this end, he defined “organic” as “something you don’t expect. It’s natural. It just comes.” And his fellow collaborator in “artistic discourse,” editor Don described “organic” as “the moment grows out of what’s naturally there and what a realistic and natural response should be. [Organic] is a good thing.” Don had an evocative way of describing “too film school.” He said it has the “connotation of biting more than you can chew. If you’re in film school and going to make a 15 minute film but you want to make it about everything.” Tellingly, he associated a student film with “pseudo” emotions. Describing indirectly what he and Ben ensured Ingrates avoided, he said, “I think student films, often when they are psychological thrillers, are very hung up with the idea of twists or packing in stuff that’s kind of pseudo emotional, and I think that’s the fear. Trying to go for those big ideas or big stories without having the capacity to pull them off.” It’s not surprising then, that starting from Merle’s provocative question, Ben and Don began to engage in the kind of artistic discourse—a very deep plunging into, examination of and alignment of their tacit knowing about what constitutes a good film, a good story, a good character, a good psychological thriller, and finally, the crowning jewel [which I will argue is still an industrial standard], a good emotion—that prevented Ingrates from becoming, in their eyes at least, “too film school,” or “film school perfect.” Taking what everyone has said about “too film school,” it appears that Ben and Don, and the movie itself, avoided the traps. Furthermore, their collaboration increased their respect for each other. Ben said that he would always choose to work with Don in the future (and he has). 248 In this manner, the dialectic of artistic discourse intersects with the dialectic of reputation making and the dialectic of professionalization. “Artistic discourse as self- reflexive” means very consciously, very deliberately engaging in the kind of talk about your film that tries to prevent a bad film from happening. Further, what you think is going to be bad film is dependent on what you have observed are traps other individuals have fallen into within the organizational discourse (“too film school”) or industrial discourse (Ben’s notion of “commercial” as not the way to go either). Artistic discourse as self-reflexive, like resocialization and tacit knowing, needs to be repeatedly sustained. Besides, it takes self-reflexivity to constantly question one’s standards and one’s balancing act. Because it makes one see oneself in a state of embeddedness, it ushers in the possibility of organically authoring a good film. And yet, the discourse appears to be directed towards, to be for the sake of industrial discourse and practice. All students who talk about preventing their films from being too much like a student film are intensely conscious about the looming industry. Their actions might want to deflect industry sometimes, but they can’t hold off too long. They are on the path to industry and/or industrialness, or at least some version of it. They have been “hustling” for it; after all, finding the right balance and moves on your not “too film school” student film is a kind of “hustling.” All engagement and disentangling from discourse—all authoring—is in tacit anticipation of the more all-encompassing structures of industry. What this “tacit anticipation” looks like at the threshold between film school and industry is what the second half of this chapter tackles. The first moment of professionalization, “resocialization,” will seem startlingly simple compared to the much 249 more complex and involved lead-up to the moment of “tacit anticipation.” Traversing the dialectic of professionalization for these students means a gargantuan amount of sifting, shifting, contending, knowing, a large proportion of which is tacit, but always social, poised between discourse and practice. The Dialectic of “Reputation”: “Hustling” as “Industrial Reputation-Posturing” That students and crews are embedded in organizations has implications for not just artistic discourse but also their reputations. Students and crews are embedded in organizational as well as industrial discourse and practices. Their resocialization at the interface of individual and crew, and their tacit knowing within groups, are made more complex, more involved, more mediated, by their tacit anticipation of industries. Alongside and correspondingly, their reputations are individually preened, socially formed, as well as industrially. Chapter 2 presented the example of how crewmembers “preen,” “molt,” i.e., arrive at reputations of other crewmembers (such as Dade) through the iterative process of resocialization; I termed this moment “individual reputation-preening”. Chapter 3 presented the example of how crewmembers’ engaging in tacit knowing helps socially form reputations of each other (such as Ben and Don); I termed this moment “social reputation-making.” This chapter presents several examples of how individuals, either as crewmembers or as filmmakers (see Chapter 3), come to posture themselves within organizational discourse and practices, and moreover, in face of the influence, draw, and lore of media industries; I term this moment “industrial reputation-posturing.” Most readily, “industrial reputation-posturing” takes the form of the phenomenon, the habit, or alternatively, the indulgence known as “hustling.” Hustling need not simply be a 250 synonym since not everyone overtly hustles but everyone postures and primes their reputations in face of industries. If “preening” is on account of others, “posturing” is students and crews accounting for themselves. I will show that their posturing is “en face de” (in the face of) and in their tacit anticipation of media industries. “Hustling” One of the characteristic features of my understanding of dialectic is that more we “zoom out,” from the level of the individual to the level of organization or field, the more complex, involved, and mediated the phenomenon becomes. Artistic discourse appeared as mere aesthetic subjectivity when we focus on the individual. It seemed more complex to pull off as the outcome of tacit knowing in the group/crew. And as we move to the level of the organization, we saw it emerge only after much vacillation across transitory discursive states. Similarly, reputation also changes as we move across the levels of analysis; it does take on various shapes. Particularly, it is manifest in how students think about and enact competition, make connections, consider lore, and downright engage in hustling. I propose they are all shades and shapes of reputation posturing. Hustling as forming “connections.” LAFilm’s courtyards, cafés, elevators, post- production suites, and sound stages are rife with connection forming. Students shake hands, fist bump, smile at each other as they shuffle through, text, carry equipment for each other, pitch ideas, and always, talk. They talk about who is working on whose project, who is writing what latest screenplay, which faculty member was posing a tough time greenlighting whose thesis film, who was being a nightmare to work with, who in their network is good for what crew position, and most excitedly, who had what major or minor breakthrough, by either bagging an internship, getting a film into a festival, making 251 the final ten of a screenplay competition, or securing a “first look” meeting with an industry executive. The students in LAFilm are constantly making connections, exchanging notes, drawing comparisons, displaying schadenfreude, guffawing at each other’s ideas for sneaky tactics, discussing script ideas, taking meetings. Their discourse is practical and cutting-edge. They always have their game face on. They are by nature inquisitive, competitive, poker-faced, but also quick to help connect each other. They wear multiple hats and are simultaneously working on several projects, even while seeking leads for next projects. They are constantly posturing. They are, in their own words, “hustling.” Examples are in order. During Guffaw pre-production, Dade was impressed by Tina’s connections to the Animation department. He referred to Tina’s network and her help in securing storyboard artists who were in turn eager to work with students in the ‘glamorous’ Production department. At the end of one of Guffaw’s production days, Cate thanked a student who had volunteered to be the 1 st assistant camera for that day. She knew that the 1 st AC job is tricky and both she and Maurice were impressed by his focus pulling, given that he was only in his first semester. She said, “It was cool to work with you,” and added that she would definitely recommend him for future projects. Right after, the 1 st AC and a grip said they would friend each other on Facebook; I’ve noticed that people on a camera crew tend to stick together and DPs always have a go-to list for various positions. Later in the semester, when Tina’s commitment as 1 st AD on Guffaw was completed and she could focus on other projects, she pitched Kim an idea for an international project. After all, they had gotten to know each other better during the 252 intense production period for Guffaw, so she could demand that favor. The script supervisor, who was an Animation student (and Tina’s friend), also took advantage of volunteering his time to ask for a quick exchange from Dade regarding his story idea, since it was similar in genre to Guffaw; Dade could not refuse even if he wanted to. At the end of the Ingrates shoot, Jolene told the makeup, “Once you’ve found someone and work well with them, it’s great to work together again. That’s what it’s all about.” Two students from another film school who Maurice had brought on as the key grip and gaffer for Guffaw said that they primarily got on the project because they wanted end credits on an LAFilm movie. So basically, forming connections, securing temporary employment, gaining favors, and getting “credits” is all a part of hustling. Hustling also presumes resocialization; students offer to connect each other knowing that they will resocialize to the crew, else their reputation will suffer. After a point, students come to know it really is all about who one chooses to call or text to staff on their project; it’s about calling in favors and being on the grid in order to be called in. Hustling as working simultaneously. Along with connection formation, working simultaneously on multiple projects is extraordinarily commonplace. Tanya said matter- of-factly, “That’s the nature of film school. People want you if you have a good reputation, and you do it because you want their help down the line. It’s like free labor.” Tanya implied that being free labor on each other’s project was just how things work: unavoidable, and not entirely bad. Merle told Ben that he should recruit first year undergraduates: “Freshmen are very eager. Working for a thesis film for them would be like for working on The Dark Knight.” Lavos, the student assistant for Production Class, 253 said, “I keep hustling, trying to find new ways to get more money, doing good work… [I became a student assistant] to network with the faculty, so they know who you are, they learn how you work, your work ethics… They have a lot of recognition in the industry.” Lavos states that not only is networking with other students important, but also faculty as well. In fact, some of the faculty have gotten who they consider to be promising alums work on high-profile industry projects, and they continue to work with these star students after film school. Strikingly, students hustle for future work even while they are on projects. During “downtime” (when, for instance, the camera crew is changing setups, or the director is having a brief aside with the actor) on both Ingrates and Guffaw, I noticed people chatting each other up for upcoming work. Seth, the 1 st AD, showed the digital intermediate technician, an undergraduate student, his reel. Ben, doing Merle a favor for co-producing Ingrates, agreed to produce a commercial Merle was directing, and during downtime on the set of that commercial, Ben was working on Ingrates-related work. Thus, once students advance in the program and understand the trick of resocialization, they spread out to help each other on projects. Don said that especially with thesis films, “it is basically assumed that people are working on other things.” Mikhail said with his curious detachment, “Film school in general is making stuff for cheap with no resources, while taking other classes.” I thought that was a great way to summarize the general experience, but I prodded him further in our interview because even after more than a year in the field, I continued to remain impressed by how busy film students were. Ritesh: “So you don’t want to take a break?” 254 Mikhail: “No.” Ritesh: “Why?” Mikhail: “Because we’re crazy, man. It’s seriously, like, we all have problems. After I finished ADing on Tropos, I just needed to relax. I was like, “I can’t take this anxiety any more.” So, I try to sit in my apartment and just watch a movie, and I couldn’t. Not having anything to do gives me anxiety. That happens with every semester. Because you are used to being busy every waking minute for every single day for 16 hours a day. You’re always doing something.” Ritesh: “So, even when the busy gets crazy, that’s preferable to sitting in your apartment?” Mikhail: “No, I mean, it’s readjusting to not having stuff to do… And the film industry is whatever you make of it. Like, no one is ever going to say, “You have to come in tomorrow from 8 to 5.” You’ve kind of have to find that work yourself, make sure you’re doing something… Everybody knows it’s competitive… You call it “hustling.” It’s good to always be hustling, and trying to make things happen for yourself. And be successful.” Ritesh: “You’re hustling even while the project is going on for the next project?” Mikhail. “Yeah, totally.” Ritesh: “Wow. I mean, I just couldn’t do that. What I’ve seen is students hustling all the time. People don’t get exhausted.” Mikhail: “They want to do good things.” - Excerpt from interview 255 What’s interesting here is how Mikhail thinks of hustling as sort of an addiction, 79 a necessity for success and survival, but also, interestingly, as a benchmark for quality of work and movies themselves. If you don’t hustle, then movies don’t get made. I think there’s more where this sentiment comes from, and I’ll explore it a bit later. Mikhail suggests that movies just don’t sit around waiting to get made. He implies this is an industry where enactment and self-presentation is normative, where the ‘culture’ (my word) is people hearing out others’ ideas. Hustling is necessary for movie-making. Hustling is thus a social process of posturing in order for ideas to be heard and eventually greenlit. It might be exhausting, but the constant giving of one’s self, in terms of connections, recommendations, pitches, ideas, could be seen as agency within an otherwise embeddedness. I am not sure what comes first: the culture that expects hustling and selectively chooses people and projects, or hustling that brings about projects and movies, which in turn creates a culture of movie-making. What’s interesting here is the seed of the idea that reputation formation is not simply for the sake of employment, for labor. It’s for the sake of work, for movies. Hustling students want to work on good projects because, to a certain degree, they want to make good movies, do good work. I’ll return to this idea in the conversation with the literature. After all, we still have to ask “good for whom?” or “good according to whom?”. Hustling as “competition.” An air of competition permeates the culture in LAFilm’s MFA Production program. It starts off with the orientation session when 79 Rowlands & Handy (2012), in their study of New Zealand’s freelance film production workers, connect “the structural conditions of project-based labor with workers’ anxieties of repeated unemployment. They say, “The stark contrast between highly gratifying periods in work and highly aversive periods in between work produces an addictive psycho-social dynamic that repeatedly draws freelance production workers back into the industry.” (p. 1) Their concept of “addiction” might apply to Mikhail, and is a feature of tacit anticipation. 256 students are asked who wants to be a director, and practically everybody in the room raises their hands. And the idea that there are waitlists and shortlists is equally commonplace, especially for classes with certain revered professors. Usually, the more senior you are, the better are your chances to get in, but that doesn’t stop the hustle-and- bustle to throw your hat in the ring. However, the class that is considered the most competitive to get in, and the one that “everyone” wants to get into, is Production Class (PC). In the opening vignettes of this chapter, I noted that the Head Faculty of that class opened the first day of lecture by asserting that this is the class that “makes your reputation in this program. After you take this class, people ask, “Who should I be working with?”” Mikhail qualified this proclamation by noting that you already need to have a good reputation to get into the class, but agreed that the class “cemented” your reputation, “like, you can work well on a big crew, with lots of people” (i.e., people know you can resocialize to a large crew). Duane stated, “PC is presented and packaged as the crown jewel of the Production Program,” while its student assistant Lavos said that “it’s God, especially for newcomers.” Others noted that even people in the industry knew about this class, and those alumni who had worked on it bonded with students who had just taken it. In a previous section, I presented evidence to suggest, along Ben’s comment, how PC was actually “an exercise in mediocrity,” since, I argued, it required students, especially student directors, to drown out the cacophony and pedagogy, to engage in resistance and appropriation, and to find their authorial, “artistic” footing. In this section, though, I’ll showcase the hype and the hoopla before the realization of mediocrity sets in (for some; not everyone is unhappy with PC), and how hustling for this class is an 257 industrial posturing that presents PC and LAFilm to be embedded in media industry dynamics. At least I’ll show how the trials, tribulations and rituals of getting into Production Class function somewhat as synecdoche for the perceived competitiveness and harshness of the wider media industries. Every semester, a significant proportion of LAFilm students submit scripts, directors’ reels, or producer forms to the application pool. Without going into it in detail, there are several “cuts” before ten to twelve producers, directors and writers are chosen, who go on to engage in what Tanya described in the opening vignette, ever so casually, as a “meat market/speed dating process.” Cate reflected that it is a “politicized” process, especially script selection. Since I did not have access to the pitching and the speed dating portion of this hustling ritual, I highlight a few students’ experiences from our interviews. Sid said that he applied for the process not as writer, director, or producer, but as editor, because he was confident in his editing skills and was motivated by the competition for the slots. Cate, having already been through the ritual the previous semester, was very picky and “thorough” about which crew she wanted to align herself with and what role (editing or cinematography) would give her the greatest advantage and experience. Kim had just finished producing a TV pilot with a somewhat renewed confidence in herself. The original producer for the TV pilot I was on just left and gave no word as to when she would return… So I just naturally took on all her duties. The showrunner of the pilot told me halfway through the semester, “You know, you’ve really changed a lot of people’s opinion about you,” which is really a 258 back-handed compliment… So because I did surprisingly well and everyone thought I was doing great, [and because] I heard Duane was looking for a producer for Guffaw, I … approached him. I felt good about people feeling good for me. - Excerpt from interview Kim didn’t eventually get the producer’s role, but she agreed to do sound design for the film. My point in relating Sid, Cate and Kim’s experiences is to show diverse motivations for hustling and getting on projects in general, but also to show the differing amount of control students have over which project they get on and which role they get to work in. However, that unpredictability is nothing in comparison to the selection for the prized slots of director, writer and producer, which Kim said was akin to “winning the lottery.” Here is a somewhat long excerpt from Dade’s relaying of his experience. I did meet a lot of writers and when I met with Guffaw’s writer, we just connected and he didn’t even think his script was going to get chosen. It was six pages. I’m like, “Dude, this script is funny as hell.” Nobody wanted to touch it because it had “fuck” and every other word… It was Friday morning, matter of fact, and I was in the courtyard and I was going to go with another script. I was like, “Which script should I go with? Should I go with Guffaw or should I go with this drama?” And then one of the guys that was pitching that time, he was like, “Yo Dade. What script are you doing?" I was like, "I need to make a decision.”… He was like, "You should pitch Guffaw. Nobody else could do it but you… Nobody would touch it and nobody else would have the balls to do it but you.” I was like, “You know what? You're right.” I got a call from the first writer [of the drama script] 259 that I wanted to go with. He was like, “Man…I love your ideas but I think I’m going to go with another director.” I was like, “All right. Great." So I called the Guffaw writer, “I was thinking about going with you. Let’s make it happen.” He was like, "All right. Let’s do it.” … I ran into Duane soon after. I was like, “Duane, I want you to come with me.” He was like, “Wow! I’m looking at all these others.” I said, “Get the fuck out of here.” I was like, “Bro, you need to get down with A team. Stop playing around.” He was like, “Why?” We sat down. We talked about it and he was like, “All right. I’ll do it.” - Excerpt from interview Dade reveals here how much back-and-forth occurred before he got naturally pushed into Guffaw, which interestingly was not his first choice, and how he formed the writer- producer trio that would pitch in the final round of selection, get chosen, and in turn, hire the rest of the crew, including Sid, Cate, and Kim. As is evident, already established personal connections and prior working experience (as with Duane) matter, but Dade describes the serendipity as well. He also admits that he was courted, that somebody played to his ego, i.e., his particular brand of directorialness, by saying that only he, Dade, could, would and should “touch” Guffaw. Mikhail confirmed the craziness of the process in describing the upcoming semester’s selection process (after his stint as AD for Tropos) and how he was one of the lucky selected finalists (it was his second attempt to submit a script). He too was “courted” by many people as well. A student who vying for the role as a director invited Mikhail to his house and cooked him dinner. “It’s really like, grab the best script as soon as you possibly can.” Eventually Mikhail’s script was selected among the final three for 260 the next installation of PC. Given his “crazy” experience on Tropos, Mikhail’s sense of accomplishment in being one of the three screenwriters was lessened. “It’s kind of full circle. It’s daunting.” Not everyone was as lucky as Dade or Mikhail. Lavos described being “heartbroken” in not being in the final dozen when he’d applied for Production Class during a previous semester. Lavos: “I mean, I don’t want to sound cocky, but I know I’m one of the better filmmakers in the program. So I was really curious to see why that didn’t happen. Then I became a student assistant and I’ve seen the process, so that’s why I’m not as crazy.” Ritesh: “So are you saying that the process leads you to believe that they don’t always pick the best people?” Lavos: “Yeah. I mean, Dade is a really bad director... I’m sure Gail and Duane feel that way about [him]… The more I grew in the program, the less I fell in love with Production Class as a director. I am disillusioned.” Ritesh: “So the directors who are good and who don’t get a chance, what do they end up doing?” Lavos: “Thesis film.” - Excerpt from interview It is entirely possible that Lavos was feeling sour grapes from being rejected, so he took the stance that the much revered PC was not that great. My point is, irrespective of the authenticity of his words, that was the stance he took. What makes “hustling” intriguing is that it is built entirely out of and runs on perception, much of which is quickly or 261 arbitrarily arrived. Kim felt good about her previous project and wanted to continue feeling good; somebody appealed to Dade’s ego and/or sense of worth about directing a unique comedy such as Guffaw; and Lavos felt that the best projects actually lie elsewhere. What’s also interesting is how the process pushes some students to be quite frank about where they think they are on the pecking order despite any actual shortlist. Ben, who eventually did Ingrates as his thesis film, somewhat corroborated Lavos’s appraisal of PC. Every semester, I took my reel, which I thought was very strong. I think my last film I directed [many semesters before Ingrates], I was really happy with. I remember being at the screening and how many people came up to me and said, “I love your film.” So I really thought I had a strong reel to show off my work. And I submitted to [Production Class] short list five times, and I never got on it, never. And I saw people on that list that I’ve worked with and whose films I’ve seen, and I do not understand how they got on there… But that’s the way the industry work. There is no reasoning one way or the other. Nobody could tell me why. I talked to the Head Faculty member many times and he never game me a straight answer… That’s the way the industry works.” - Excerpt from interview Ben’s reflections on the arbitrariness of the PC selection process came after the screening of his thesis film Ingrates, so a couple semesters after he had completed the coursework for the program and was already working in the industry. Like Lavos, Ben undertakes some self-appraisal, and his genuine bewilderment at his constant rejection sheds new light on his comment that PC is an exercise in mediocrity. It’s not just that it’s an 262 exercise—a trial—because students and crews have to work to find their authorial voice. It’s an exercise—a trial, a tribulation—because it is reflective of an industrial process that constantly aims to arbitrarily shut out some (talented) voices and accept (mediocre) others. It’s also a competition through and through, and from how other students describe PC, it felt akin to a Roman gladiator arena. Abe, Tanya, Cate, Mikhail and Dade, to varying degrees, agreed that films in PC were competing with each other. Tanya insisted they should be competing, especially since some films made in PC “do wonderful things on the festival circuit and are sometimes people’s calling cards in the industry.” Cate said they are “secretly competing” with one another, but added her own personal philosophical spin on competition: “You don’t want to be better because someone else sucked. You want to be the best when the other groups are good as well” (and she did not think Guffaw was good). Evidently, Lavos and Ben would differ, because according to them, the best scripts don’t make it (in fact, I heard a couple other students whisper this: that the best writers in LAFilm don’t even submit their scripts to PC because they want to save them for industry competitions). By contrast, Abe, whose tragedy had once gotten on the PC short list but which he said no one wanted to touch because it was too gruesome (“In the opening scene, two kids die… It’s beautiful but nobody wanted to take it on.”), was of the opinion that it’s “a terrible mentality” to say that you are competing with just two other films because you’re really “competing with every movie ever made.” In short, not only is hustling for PC an unpredictable rollercoaster of motions and emotions for those who successfully or unsuccessfully traverse through its cuts, but it also showcases the “meat market/speed dating” process of “hustling” in LAFilm as a 263 highly competitive series of postures and self-evaluations. In the final section, before I converse with the literature, I connect these aspects of hustling explicitly to the notion of “reputation.” Hustling as “reputation-posturing.” Three points need to be made that connect hustling with reputation. First, hustling means that people will “gossip”. Cate said that even though she didn’t condone it, “talking shit” is normal. And some people are aware of their reputations as they work themselves down the grapevine of hustling. Lavos said that in the semester he took a non-director role in a PC production, he was known as the “asshole producer. A lot of people didn’t like me because I was cutthroat. [But] this is graduate school. This is not undergrad.” I asked him how he felt about this reputation. He replied nonchalantly, “I am a good producer, but I don’t like it. But I do it because I have to do it if I want to direct. Right now, I don’t have a name as a director, so I’m producing my own stuff so I can create my own name…” Thus, for Lavos, being cutthroat and being a director were more important, so he did not care if people thought he was a “hard ass.” He pointed to the industry and said that gossip was part and parcel of networking, “going to parties, talking to people. The key thing in Hollywood is people talk a lot. So when you talk a lot and actually deliver, then people pay attention.” Lavos had the understanding that ‘small talk’ gossip was harmless but talking the big talk can work to your advantage if you also show that you do good work. And being an asshole producer at the very least, for him, produced good work. By contrast Abe was more sensitive and had mixed feelings about gossiping. He reflected, “They say that when you gossip, you hurt three people. You hurt the person you’re talking to, you hurt yourself, and you hurt who you’re talking about.” He recalled 264 how he “made the mistake” of being on a crew because his friend wanted him to be on it “and not because I thought it was a good film… I hated it from day one. I thought it was the worst idea for a movie but I didn’t care because I was going to hang out with all these cool people.” One day, he was “caught talking shit” about the film to a person who turned out to be the director’s roommate, who ended up telling others on the crew that Abe was a gossiper. Abe also talked about another film he was hustling to get on, but heard through the grapevine that the director didn’t choose him because she thought he was a “slacker.” Abe also said that if anyone dropped out of a class such as PC, everyone would know about it because people “gossip like crazy in this school.” And yet, despite all this, Abe partly condoned gossip: “We’re all storytellers. When you gossip, what are you doing? You’re saying, “Hey, did you hear about Jane and Michael? They got together and did this thing.” It’s a juicy story. That’s what gossip is.” Interestingly, according to Abe (and Lavos), hustling was infused with gossip, and gossip was cut from the same cloth as storytelling and artistic discourse. In this light, what I earlier characterized as cacophony, the antithesis of artistic discourse, contains within it the seeds of storytelling. Hustling is a posture of reputations, a masquerade in which people talk each other up (as with Dade), sometimes backhandedly (as with Kim), talk each other down (as with Abe), talk the bigger industrial talk that cashes in and enhances reputations (as with Lavos), and talk because filmmaking and storytelling is a certain kind of talk. I think of the cafes, corridors, soundstages, post-production suites and courtyards of LAFilm. All student and crew talk postures. People take stabs and stances. People posture in order to create an impression. 265 They hustle. They are constantly anticipating each other, even as future work—their future work, their future industrial work—lies in anticipation. A second point explicitly connects prior resocialization with current reputations and future crewing up. Students have heard enough lore about alumni who worked well together in school and went on to successful collaborations in the industry. So they come to value finding good future collaborators. Both Abe and Duane said that based on their Guffaw experiences, they knew exactly who they would work with and they wouldn’t (and even though I didn’t ask them, they said they won’t mention names). When Sid was talking about how disillusioned he became with the quality of films coming out of PC, I asked him whether he thought PC products were destined to be mediocre. After thinking for a moment, he said, “The only way I would consider [directing my own PC film] is if I could game the system, and by that I mean, the semester before, I know exactly the people I want, I put them in specific roles… So it wouldn’t be like when we get greenlit, I start holding interviews. It would be like, I get greenlit, I have everything ready.” So Sid would hustle in advance to ensure a crew that was already resocialized, and this would guarantee, as much as these things can, a good reputation for all involved because the crew stood a better chance of making a good film. Mikhail was already doing a bit of what Sid was suggesting. Having ADed for Tropos and having a script selected for the following semester’s PC, he, along with the director (who had cooked dinner for him) and the producer, was in the position to select the crew and was already “gunning” for certain people. So even though he was daunted about going through the process again, he was also excited. 266 Finally, some students remained skeptical about “this big idea of reputation,” which Maya thought was “a lot of ridiculousness.” She elaborated, “I guess that in this program more so than other programs, you have to work with people who are not in your semester, so you ask around, “Hey, is this person cool to work with?”” At the same time, it didn’t matter to her so much because she thought most people are friendly, which suggested that that they are easy to work with. I would venture that Maya, given her interest in making a “career in comedy,” generally found people’s idiosyncrasies and problematic situations funny and interesting. I don’t have evidence for this other than my noticing her general amusement at Guffaw’s conflict-ridden production meetings and her joviality (as opposed to Cate’s strain) when reflecting on them during our interview. Further, Maya and others said that sometimes crew work really well together but the resulting film can be bad, so there’s no guarantee either way. So, there remained some people who drew something else out of the gossip, failed resocialization and the hustling: they potentially drew out stories and got to know themselves a bit better as filmmakers. I recall the strangeness of witnessing a moment of crews embedded in organizations. It was right after the temporary “breakthrough” had by the Guffaw team on the balcony. Walking to the elevator, the group ran into the Tropos crew, who were just coming out of their own table screening with the faculty. Faces were tired, the “hi”s were muted, and there a sense of awkwardness running into each other like that. By that point in the semester, the cards were on the table about the relative quality of the two films (Tropos was perceived to be clearly better, at least by faculty). Earlier, Juan had seen them walk into the table screening and shouted on the other side of the glass doors, “We don’t like your film,” which prompted me to informally ask 267 some of the Guffaw crew what they thought of the Tropos director’s cut also screened earlier that day; most shrugged that it was “okay.” Now, as I witnessed the two crews uncomfortably pool around the elevator, greeting and smiling past the gossip they had surely exchanged about each other, but also looking tired of all the hustle leading up to that point, as well as aware of the weight of their inchoate reputations, I could not help but realize how exhausting the dialectic of reputation-posturing must be. If it’s in tacit anticipation of media industries, then posturing occasionally beats down hard on students and crews. Many, like Ben and Lavos internalize and form a hard shell. Others, in a small minority, are amused by the process, or like Yasha, come to think that it’s not about competition but about great working relations. Eventually, though, people put their game face on, their industrial moves on, and go back to connecting, comparing, competing, and talking. The dialectic begins again. Just as Production Class begins again: later in the semester, I saw Lavos orienting the upcoming semester’s crews. The new chosen ones, who had just completed their rounds of speed dating. The dialectic is a cycle. The elevator doors opened and tall Dade reminded everyone they should hustle to the after party he was helping organize after the public screenings of their films. There was forced enthusiasm. Anticipation is thoroughgoing, but also, some students hope, the right kind of anticipation will be a throughway to the looming media industries, where some of these agents will work together, by chance or choice. The elevators doors closed: embeddedness, but also buzz and bustle that is agentive qua posturing, that is thoroughgoing and deafening qua tacit. 268 Conversation with the Literature At this point, I will converse with a small yet influential portion of the literature on production studies and media industries, in order to challenge and draw out how and why I think it is “tacit anticipation” that my subjects are doing as their final moment on the “dialectic of professionalization,” and how I think of their embeddedness in LAFilm as organization and the media industries as field, as agentive. Part of the difficulty lies in figuring out how to frame and where to enter the conversation. Holt and Perren (2009) note that the study of media industries is a “varied, diverse project” with academics having to deal with different topics and research objects (texts, markets, technologies, policies, business models, and artistic traditions). And yet, a “field” and a media industries “approach” have emerged, which view culture and cultural production as “sites of struggle, contestation, and negotiation between a broad range of stakeholders.” (pp. 1-2) The emphasis on cultural production “has helped foreground the role of individual agents within larger media structures and further challenged notions of a monolithic industry.” (p. 8) According to Mayer, Banks, and Caldwell (2009), “production studies” is a relatively recent area within the interdisciplinary field of media industries, and its scholars “draw their intellectual impetus from cultural studies to look at ways their culture both constitutes and reflects the relationships of power” (p. 2) They portray its scholars as interested in the “lived realities” of media production workers, how they “make culture” while also representing themselves, thereby becoming “particular kinds of workers in modern, mediated societies.” They claim that “the paradox of the media worker is that the promise of autonomy, creativity, fame or wealth still oversupplies the 269 labor market, allowing media industries to control the mise-en-scene of production narratives.” (ibid, pp. 1-4) So, production studies takes power in industries as its governing lens of analysis, and is focused on how media industry workers contest and wield power while making media. Clearly, my research, as evidenced by this chapter, fits into the field of production studies and the larger field of media industries research. Film schools are embedded in media industry dynamics and lore. LAFilm faculty members teach production based on the “way it is done in the industry.” Both LAFilm faculty and students constantly reference films and TV shows produced by the Los Angeles-based industry (Hollywood). Watching “reference” films and TV suggested by the director is a “routine” undertaken by members of a crew (e.g., Ben made Yasha watch the pilot of the popular AMC zombie drama The Walking Dead so that Yasha knew the feel Ben was going for); PC faculty members gave examples of movies they had worked in or how current shows approached production (e.g., DF defended the acting in Guffaw by drawing on Matthew Perry’s performance in Fools Rush In); and everyone talked about famous success stories (e.g., Spielberg, James Cameron). Further, student crewmembers are arguably makers of culture, or at least think of themselves as making movies that might “blow up” in festivals, or get them a meeting with a studio. At the same time, they know how the “promise of autonomy [and] creativity oversupplies the market.” Ben, who fell into the more pessimistic camp of LAFilm students, said that very few students out of LAFilm will “make it.” He gave the example of his “buddy” whose feature not just got into but won the top prize at the Sundance Festival. “99% of people will never get what [he] has right now… You know 270 how many feature films are out there? There’s thousands.” I asked how that made him feel. He said, “Incredibly scared. Terrified.” Ben came out of LAFilm anticipating a harsh industry and constant struggle if he wanted to continue to make films. However, other scholars of media industries do not necessarily view power as the governing lens to illuminate media industries. What Mayer, Banks, and Caldwell call “production studies,” Hesmondhalgh (2010) recognizes as just one of four theoretical approaches, “two established and aging, perhaps in decline, [and] two striding confidently, even arrogantly, into the arena” (p. 6). The aging approaches are the “mainstream organizational sociology of culture” and “political economy;” whereas the new ones include the “intertwined areas of management studies, business studies, and organizational studies,” which unlike the other new field, production studies, or as Hesmondhalgh call it, the “US” camp of cultural studies, is “notably uninterested in questions of power and the political ramifications of culture.” (ibid; emphasis added) It is the organizational studies camp that I conversed with in Chapter 3, when I discussed the research on film crews as temporary organizations. In this chapter, I’ll converse with production studies, as well as Hesmondhalgh & Baker’s (2011) own quite different way of staking out media industries, with their emphasis on “normativity,” “creative autonomy” and “quality of work,” rather than just power and exploitation. Thus, “struggle” and “power” are not the only lenses; we also have the issue of “normativity,” as well as from organizational and management scholars, the idea that “the creativity/commerce” tension is more akin to “technical problems” (opposed to “struggles”) resolved by “rational” “management strategy.” (Hesmondhalgh, 2010, pp. 9, 11; emphasis in original). Implicitly, he conveys that these camps somewhat talk past 271 each other. 80 I don’t aim to be the messiah mediator in this dissertation. Instead, to keep matters bounded, I’ll focus on the notion of “creative labor,” or at least “labor,” 81 and I’ll elicit my understanding of “tacit anticipation” by conversing mainly with Caldwell (2008; 2013; 2014) from the “cultural studies” / “production studies” camp, and also briefly with Hesmondhalgh and Baker’s (2011) work on creative labor, autonomy, and normativity. Importantly, my data will constrain the extent to which I can be influenced by these accounts, but I will also take seriously their cogent understandings of the media industries. Critical Conceptions & “Industrial Self-Reflexivity” John T. Caldwell’s work is challenging to summarize, not only because it is penetratingly dense in its stabs as well as tremendous and insightful in its sweep, but also because he seems to have become more critical in his later work. Caldwell’s writing fits squarely into what Havens, Lotz, and Tinic (2009) call the “critical perspective,” wherein theorists are trained to read micro-interactions as ultimately power-ridden, revealing “media as symbol-generating, ideological, and economic institutions” (p. 242). Caldwell (2013) takes this a step further and asks us to be wary about “the industry,” which is not a “clean, evident sphere,” i.e., not monolithic, and insists that “even rudimentary contact with the industry shows how central socio-professional communities, craft self- 80 In fact, Caldwell (2013) agrees, saying, “what Hesmondhalgh calls mainstream organizational sociology of culture” misses the “critical imperative that underpins a great deal of work in media industries studies.” (p. 146) 81 The reason I shy away from focusing on “creative” is because I did not find much direct reference by my subjects about their work being “creative.” Chapter 3 included a section on “hierarchy and creativity,” but the findings therein were mainly from interviews rather than the ethnographic field. I get the distinct sense that LAFilm students think of themselves as “filmmakers” and “storytellers,” but I do not have evidence suggesting they think this work as “creative.” I found more instances of students talking about film as a “collaborative” medium rather than as an “art” or as “creative.” Thus, in order to converse with the literature, I’ll conceive professionalization with regard to the tension between “work” and “labor,” and media industries as sites of “struggle” and “good/bad work.” 272 theorization, and collective rituals are to the core economic activities of media corporations… If you are not critical… you are missing out on half of the research object that you want to study.” (p. 157) The latter is indeed a strong claim, and I’m not sure if I fit Caldwell’s bill. I could get away with saying that I have been examining film school as institution and been immersed in its socio-professional communities. I could also claim that with regard to “artistic discourse as authoring” and as “self-reflexive,” I came to see how students theorize the craft of filmmaking as an avoidably “too film school” form of storytelling. But I can’t say that my research has led to an understanding of the economic underpinnings and obligations of film schools as institution. What I found is that faculty talk about the “business” as it were somewhat “clean, evident” and singular, and for the most part, students appropriated that view or didn’t depart far. For instance, Melbourne thought the “real world” consisted of the world of independent film or the world of studios – that’s all. Ben considered winning at Sundance as the gold standard. Sid idolized art cinema of the style he thought LAFilm did not produce. Tanya sought meetings with mainstream studio executives. So mainly, students aligned themselves more with the “studio” route or the “indie” route. And yet, I didn’t find reason to think that students were doing themselves a disservice by not knowing the “true” nature of the industry. 82 I’ll pause here to make two counteracting points. First, I need to adequately summarize Caldwell’s rich argumentation in order to converse with him. That is what I do next. Second, the exercise seems partly moot, though, because I already know 82 I’ll expound on Caldwell’s concept of “para-industry” below, which he thinks is the “true” nature of the industry. 273 Caldwell’s objection. He’d say that my methodology leads me to leave out a good part of my research object. To reiterate, in this dissertation, I have been interested in uncovering meanings that are important to my subjects, and to interpret them on their behalf, or as anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1983) would say, “figure out what the devil they think they are up to.” (p. 58) With regard to the media industries in whose backyard my subjects have been making short films, I might agree with Caldwell that they have a narrow view, but I can’t say that for them, it is narrow. Surely, their anticipation of the industry is vague, unclear, guarded, but I also think that like hustling, their anticipation is both postured and posturing, shape-shifting, and knowledgeable: it is steely to the extent that it has emerged from of having lived through the moments of the dialectic of professionalization. That is my sense. However, Caldwell (2013) would consider my methodology “naïve,” in that it is not overtly critical. (p. 157) He states: Even as I acknowledge the importance of valuing indigenous or lay theorizing, I resist deferring entirely to the local categories… of producers, at least as final guarantors of authenticity or meaning. Interviews with and statements by producers and craftspeople can be conceptually rich, theoretically suggestive, and culturally revealing, yet we should never lose sight of the fact that such statements are almost always offered from some perspective of self-interest, promotion and spin… Going to the industry to “get it right” is valuable to a certain point. (Caldwell, 2008, p. 14) 274 My immediate response: I don’t believe “resocialization,” “tacit knowing”, and “tacit anticipation” are entirely “local categories.” They exist on the plane between “experience-near” and “experience-distant” concepts that Geertz (1983) urged anthropologists persevere through, so as to not produce “an ethnography of witchcraft as written by a witch” nor as “written by a geometer.” (p. 57) Next, I found my subjects also act out of self-interest: resocialization and tacit knowing are definitely out of self-interest; the factors of individuality are never entirely out of the picture, but just end up more mediated and intricately woven in; that, again, is the nature of dialectic. And finally, after all, my research site is a film school and subjects are students, not yet usurped under the shadow of the industry even as it looms in their backyard. They are still prior to and merely anticipating it; they are still not professional beyond proclamations of “too film school.” So maybe they are not yet the more fully formed “producers” and “craftspeople” that Caldwell refers to. But I will stop here. Let me first provide a picture of Caldwell’s arguments. Caldwell (2008) characterizes the discourses of above-the-line (roughly corresponding to the “creative sector” and/or those in power; e.g., directors, writers, producers, DPs) and below-the-line (roughly corresponding to those with technical skills; e.g., camera operators, editors, production designers) Los Angeles-based film and TV industry workers as a form of “industrial self-reflexivity” or “self-theorizing.” He considers these communities as “cultural productions” who use “all the symbolic processes and collective practices… to gain and reinforce identity, (and) to perpetuate themselves and their interests.” (p. 2) In other words, they critically theorize about themselves and “out” production knowledge through differentially “embedded” texts: the 275 three types include (1) “fully embedded,” “intra-group” exchanges that occur, e.g., in demo tapes, pitch sessions, trade anecdotes; (2) “semi-embedded,” “inter-group” exchanges with “ancillary public viewing” that occur, e.g., in trade shows, trade publications, and electronic press kits; and (3) “publicly-disclosed,” “extra-group” exchanges that occur, e.g., in DVD director tracks, websites, making-of documentaries, viral videos, and screening Q&As. The more “fully embedded” and “higher up the “industrial food chain” such discursive knowledge is, the more we should be suspect that it is immersed in the “play of power and politics,” that it is managed, and spin-driven. (pp. 2, 346-7). Despite their interpretive opacity, Caldwell argues that it is valuable to study these rich varieties of industrial discourse because they reveal the industry’s vexed “cultural performances” as undergirded by “contradictory and competing impulses.” (p. 18) For instance, self-theorizing industrial discourse is both “intentional” and “effacing”. Many TV series produce so much footage that even celebrated editors don’t claim they are “imposing their will or vision” on the material; rather, Caldwell argues that the opposite is true: they talk about editing as complete rewriting and about filmmaking as “a process of physical problem solving based on the obligatory need to overcome production obstacles.” (pp. 20-1) And yet, Caldwell treads the line in this work between viewing discourse as, on one hand, inherently suspicion-worthy and protective of the “shore[d] up” walls and “carefully guarded portals surrounding the industry’s center,” and on the other, revealing of “the gratifications of human creative resistance.” (pp. 34-6). Towards the latter, he analyzes the “on-set group behavior” of a camera operator as fitting an “against-all-odds” 276 genre of trade narrative. The camera operator relates the importance of being “oblivious to pain,… suffocating heat and sweat” in order to present himself as “truly committed” during the “warlike conditions of location production.” (p. 39) While admitting that the “complaints coded into below-the-line narratives… may also reinforce opportunistic business practices that will ultimately make labor conditions worse,” 83 (pp. 46-7) what Caldwell emphasizes is the “resilience” of below-the-line workers and their learning to exploit the industry’s “nomadic labor system” to increase the scope for “interpersonal creative influence” (pp. 114-15), and how such reflexivity functions not just as a “corporate macrostrategy” but as a “human microstrategy,” one that “operates as a creative process involving human agency and critical competence at the local cultural level as much as a discursive process establishing power at a broader social level.” (p. 34) Response: “Resilience” and “reputation work” at LAFilm. I’d agree with Caldwell that my subjects showed plenty of resilience, not just on set, which occasionally 83 On the topic of poor labor conditions, Mayer (2011) worries about television workers’ paradoxical identification with their work given the television industry’s rendering it “invisible. Mayer’s project and examples are a bit too removed and macro to consider conversing with; they are valuable to those studying media industries from political economy and laborist perspectives. I mention her here because of her provocative definition of “labor” as “the structural arrangements that extract value from work.” (p. 17) Caldwell would accept her worries about the exploitation of invisible, over-identifying labor, but at least in his 2008 work concedes occasionally that below-the-line (not above-the-line as much) laborers and craftspeople demonstrate “resilience” that at a local level functions as agency. Meanwhile, nothing about what I saw on student productions and in Production Class makes me construe the work students are doing, the work they are getting done, and films they are “authoring,” as labor. If anything, their hustling, reputation-posturing, and tacit knowing are their “arrangements” that they generally firmly believe infuse “value” into their future work and help build their future reputations. Many gain great satisfaction from it, even as resocialization and organizational cacophony frustrate them. They do not leave film school completely hopeless. They hustle further to make their work visible. To claim, as Mayer does, (1) either that their identities as emergent filmmakers might “create surplus value for the [film and] television industries” (especially festivals, who always seek more content); or (2) that political economies (how does one ethnographically capture those?) are “framing” students’ “subjectivities [so as to] produc[e] capital for industries and contradictions for workers identifying with profitable identities” (ibid, p. 17); is, I’d argue, (a) too early to say for these not-yet media industries workers, and also (b) as with Caldwell, not within the methodological purview of this dissertation. The dialectic of professionalization as explicated in my field site occurs at the gateway of media industries. In sum, I simply don’t have reason to conceive of my subjects’ resocialization, tacit knowing, and authoring as “labor” in the way Mayer understands it. 277 did feel like “war” (but when it did, it also felt like what I called “synergy”) but also in resisting and wading through the cacophony of film school discourse. I don’t know if I found many instances of self-theorizing in situ, and it’s entirely possible that I was not present during those moments. Mostly, I found evidence that the students were busy trying to resocialize, tacitly know, and hustle. That’s what “we do,” because “we’re crazy, man,” as Mikhail said. I would not even go as far as to say that their asking the “is this too film school” question is self-theorizing. It is a moment of self-reflexivity asserting itself, but I don’t locate it as Caldwell does “self-reflexivity” with his examples in the suspicion-worthy, spin-driven play of power and politics. I argued that “is this too film school” is a re- centering of students away from the institutional pedagogy and cacophony. By contrast, when it comes to hustling, I would agree that students tenaciously, intentionally, tactically, and discursively present and posture themselves towards industry institutions. Zafirau (2008) would say that like his subjects in the talent agency he was interning in, film students also engage in “reputation work,” which he defines as “the intentional activities that participants perform in order to create the perception that they are legitimate, according to institutionalized expectations.” (p. 101) I am more in line with Zafirau here. Hustling, like reputation work, is a showcase of “micro-level interactional efforts [that are] guided by larger rules emanating from the organizational fields in which interactional dramas play out.” (ibid, p. 122; emphasis added) But LAFilm students are still figuring out these larger rules. They are not yet caught up in or bound by them. To reiterate, I submit that my subjects are students who are engaged in the dialectic of professionalization, and not yet “fully embedded” in the media industries 278 discourse that Caldwell’s subjects are. And I would agree that most don’t have grandiose expectations of the industry, and that they expect the going to be very tough once they are out of film school; some like Ben, Lavos and Cate do think that LAFilm has made them “pluckier,” more tenacious, and more resourceful. But their anticipation of the industry is more along the lines of Zafirau’s notion of micro-level interactions being “guided by” perceptions of the “larger rules of organizational fields” than by Caldwell’s inbred cultural resistance to “perpetuate” themselves and their interests.” Some examples will clarify the distinction. LAFilm students expect the industry to be tough but they also expect that things will work out, that they will not be miserable. My first conversation in my first Guffaw production meeting was with Kim, who wondered why I even wanted to study them because “this is an evil business.” Later, when the heat was raised high in the crew’s production meetings, Dade, referring indirectly to Juan’s “attitude” problems, said, “That shit don’t fly when we get out of here,” implying that the industry is tough and no- nonsense (and implying that not resocializing was not an option in the real world). When Maurice and I were walking to the location of the bar scene, he complimented me by saying that I was missed the previous day, that I was good at being a 2 nd AD because I was “very organized and have a nice energy.” I thanked him and said that I had to take a break because I “collapse at the end of each [production] day.” He agreed, “We’re all running on reserve.” At that moment, I felt just like them (and not as a researcher) so I said, “It’s not worth it to do this to your body and soul.” Maurice agreed immediately and said, “I agree. I’ve talked about this to too many people.” (We were going to talk more, 279 but someone in his camera crew interrupted us; work had to get done, a movie had to get made.) Talking about “energy” as well, but slightly differently, Abe told me in our interview about his and Juan’s observation that each Hollywood studio has a different energy: “At Universal, everyone is in a grumpy mood. Everyone,… the security guards, the people who wore costumes, everyone is an asshole. Then, at Paramount, the valet guy and everybody is so chill… There’s just an energy in spaces, you know?” But Abe went on to echo others’ mixed feelings about the industry. This is Hollywood. This is a very soulless world we live in. It’s like no one believes in God in LA. People are very shallow and materialistic… Everyone knows that the two biggest exports in LA are pot and porn. So what does that tell you? I mean, [it’s not] just that. The truth of the matter is that film can be very spiritual, because it’s how you use it – it’s a super powerful medium. But it has a dark side… Like, if I’m going to try to be a writer and director in this industry and I can’t get in, if it’s just too hard after [film school]… I am going to try and make an indie film maybe three times. Three strikes and I’m out, it’s kind of my philosophy in life. At a certain point you realize when you know it’s not working… If it doesn’t pay off at that point, I will either go to work in a studio or use my MFA to be a teacher. - Excerpt from interview So, LAFilm students, especially by the time they are in the second half of their careers in film school—which roughly maps on to the part of the dialectic of professionalization when they understand the importance of resocialization and have 280 engaged in tacit knowing (more on this in Chapter 5)—form tacit anticipations about the industry. I call them “tacit” because they don’t always articulate them, because they internalize them, because they work through them in relative silence. The particular posture of their anticipation manifests during the hustle; it’s even a joy to watch them sift through and practice their proto-industrial selves. But that’s my point. Their selves, their professionalization, is proto-industry; they are prototypes who have not yet been greenlit by industry. They are merely in fluid anticipation of it. They have not yet sold their souls. They have not yet given themselves up. They want to, many desperately, some more irreverently, but they lie in wait, in armed, muscular vigil. Some, like Duane and Cate feel the irony of having gone to “one of the best film programs” and still come out starting out “probably equivalent to somebody who had never gone to school” (unlike, as both Duane and Cate separately pointed out, students in the medical field who have a guarantee of some kind of job, somewhere). So they believe they need to have “realistic expectations.” Cate observed that it’s difficult to get a job in any field, so film/TV is not exceptional. She hoped, like many others, to pay her bills by cashing in on her editing skills (others bank on DP or especially, sound, since LAFilm is known to be a great program for sound). But she anticipated that people get jobs for “all sorts of reasons” other than “skill.” So ideal employment was not entirely under her control. Others, like Abe, have definite, bounded plans to deal with the “soulless,” godless world of LA. Still others, like Maya, think that “it’s nice” to come out of school with a network of “a hundred people you know you’re going to be able to work with later.” 281 Don agreed here: “A lot of people want to move up with their network because they know them and they know how they work… People may want to make the jump outside the network if it’s to something bigger and you have an important position on the crew… [But] a lot of people at some point have come to know really established people that are actually not that talented or that they have been doing it so long that they do it by the book.” Don, along with Yasha and some of the more experienced LAFilm folk who are a year or two senior to the Guffaw crew, have a more pragmatic view about their prospects. Yasha additionally opined there were a lot of “holes” in his film school education because a lot of teachers have not been “filmmakers for a long time.” He gave the example of one of the faculty members not being in the current about the industry’s way of putting a tripod head on a tripod. So Yasha thought that some faculty incorrectly professed the “way it’s done in the industry.” In other words, Yasha and Don didn’t put their education on pedestals and were open to the best opportunity as and when it came up, be it with a contact from school or something outside their network. Even though they had just begun working, they were still cautious. They had not still decided that they had no choice but to succumb to the talk that it’s all hard. They dreamt but didn’t wake up yet feeling disappointed. Overall, then, LAFilm students come to have good enough knowledge of the industry, know it’s a tough mecca, and know they can tap into their backup plans and their networks. Their posturing of their expectations—i.e., their proto-industrialness— shows them to be not yet cut from the mold of Caldwell’s below-the-line craftspeople with their “against-all-odds” stories. My subjects are not lining up to be heroes, nor do they expect that “pluck” will translate into success. They are determined, especially folk 282 like Ben, Sid, Gail and Cate, yet cautious and not confident. Their anticipation is self- interested in a different way than Caldwell’s industry workers’ self-theorizing spin is self-interested. These students are not “there” yet both literally and figuratively. Their micro-level interactions and anticipations are industry-facing. The dialectic of professionalization is proto-industrial, not industry in res. More similar to Zafirau, they are loosely aware of the rules of the larger field/industry outside of LAFilm doors. They do reputation work, resiliently lie in wait, and tacitly anticipate. More Critical Conceptions: “Para-industry” The most recent Caldwell (2013; 2014), however, presents a persuasive picture of a much more darker, irreducibly complex, “rhizomatic” industry. He suggests that film schools are enmeshed in a “para-industrial” network, that the industry’s “centers” (e.g., studios, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences) are mythological. There is no central industry, he argues; the only industry is the “para-industry.” Below, I illustrate his concept and converse with it to see its implications for the future creative labor of budding LAFilm filmmakers and for the concept of “tacit anticipation.” I mentioned above that Caldwell (2013) thinks that “the industry” is not “clean, self-evident sphere.” This is because industry cannot be studied without attending to “the vagaries of human subjects and culture’s thick complexities.” (p. 157) I am in agreement; I too have been interested in the vagaries of my subjects. He goes on to present ten propositions that “underscore the need to keep culture and aesthetics as fundamentals,” so as to not miss “half” the object media industries scholars claim to research. (ibid) In what follows, I discuss the three most relevant to this conversation, two of which can be 283 grouped together, and then expand on the one that directly leads to Caldwell’s central hypothesis of industry as “para-industry”. Caldwell thinks industry is “disciplined” and “aesthetically salaried.” Drawing on Foucault, he argues, “His frameworks convincingly explain how institutions engineer the small-scale psychic conditions through which vast pools of freelance production professionals self-manage in order to serve corporations… Industry surveillance systematically disciplines workers through a series of long-sanctioned rituals—giving notes, on-set rewrites, entry-level self-sacrificing,... and so on… Whether or not [institutions] are actually monitoring your every move, everyone learns to quickly act like they are.” (2013, pp. 160-1) Based on my observations, I reiterate, in face of this over- determining appraisal of industry’s influence, that LAFilm’s production practices and discourses are not always monitoring or being monitored. Students are given considerable leeway, especially those making thesis films. I already showed instances of covert and overt resistance to faculty and colleagues’ notes on dailies. Gail and Juan said aloud that the crew should at a point stop listening to faculty. Sid performed an act of outright rebellion against another faculty member. In terms of the dialectic of artistic discourse, I found the opposite of what Caldwell suggests. The only explanation I can arrive at is that these students (if not LAFilm) are not yet “industrial.” They don’t feel the eye(s) of Bentham’s Panopticon that Caldwell claims Hollywood “reincarnates.” (p. 160) Yet, these students are facing—“en face de”—industry even if they don’t yet feel “surveilled” by it. They want to go there, and as I suggested above, view it either as mainstream studio or alternative indie (a distinction that is simplistic; see Ortner [2013]). Here Caldwell’s proposition that the “industry is aesthetically salaried” is provocative. 284 Puzzled by the question that “If media industries are as alienating, stressful, and exploitative as my fieldwork informants have claimed, then why do vast numbers of the stressed still flock to their gates?” he responds that workers are not “actually” but “symbolically paid… This means considering the complicated forms of nonfinancial, artistic, social, and cultural capital that are exchanged daily to get production work, hire top professionals, close deals, justify overtime,… [and] demand younger ‘workers’ to work for free as interns or assistants… Studios never acknowledge or calculate these symbolic forms of payment.” (p. 162) This challenge is harder to counter. I did find that many students crave the symbolic rewards of industry: getting into Sundance even if it means slaving away for free in the name of being your own boss, is one example. That’s what Ben and Dade aspired to. Jolene even said that she tells potential employers in interviews, “Nothing is beneath me. I will do anything to get any kind of job in this industry,” thus exemplifying Caldwell’s provocation. Ben’s anticipation was more vexed; he wasn’t ready to sell his soul. If there was no stigma attached to it, I would tell everyone I wanted to be a director. But the problem is everybody wants to be a film director. It’s hard to stand out in this world when everybody wants to be a director. And I’ve been on sets where there’s so many directors who don’t have a vision and don’t have a voice… I want to be categorized with the ones who have vision, have something to tell the world… And I think that’s one thing that comes with working in an artistic industry. How do you judge who’s doing good work and who’s doing bad work? There’s no rating system that’s 100 percent foolproof. I’ve seen Sundance 285 films that I didn’t like, and I’ve seen other films that never made it to Sundance that I thought were fucking beautiful. So it’s just a very frustrating industry.” - Excerpt from interview So, Ben has independent standards to judge quality of work that the “aesthetically salaried” industry produces, and finds himself baffled. He wants to do “good work” (a concept I’ll get to below when I discuss normativity) but unlike his producer Jolene, is not ready to get “symbolically paid” by an industry that, as editor Don reflected, would not readily greenlight a “project of ambiguity” such as Ingrates. Don was of the opinion that LAFilm is not industrial in Caldwell’s sense because “film school is idealized…. You’re making the film you want to make, and very few people have that kind of sway.” All things considered, I find Caldwell’s second proposition harder to dismiss: there were some LAFilm students who seemed ready to do whatever it took, although these seemed to be in a minority; many tended to be cautious. Mikhail credited LAFilm with forcing him to think about the story, talk with the actor, for going into “really emotional type stuff,” which prior to enrolling he didn’t want to do, nor did he know why he liked the movies he liked. Yasha was also cautious. “Job-wise, people see me as a DP because if I told them I want to be a director, they won’t take me seriously.” Cate disagreed with the rest of her Guffaw crew about the criteria for a good comedy, and Sid strikingly disagreed and could articulate why Guffaw and other Production Class films weren’t great, weren’t ready for industry. Therefore, even as LAFilm students want to “author” good stories, it’s not clear whether they will tell stories that the industry will reward with symbolic and/or actual forms of remuneration, and further, whether they will 286 work overtime and/or for free to win over industry. In fact, this is a research question for a project that would logically follow this dissertation. Another of Caldwell’s propositions is worth dwelling on, especially since it directly leads to his concept of “para-industry.” Borrowing from Deleuze and Guattari, Caldwell claims that “industry is rhizomatic” in that it is “not a monolith controlled by five or six giant conglomerates but rather a series of dense, rhizomatic networks of subcompanies, held at a safe distance, loosely structured to flexibly adapt,… briefly aligned by contract in fleeting, opportunistic postures that quickly evaporate when revenues do.” He asks, “If one’s objects of research [say a film or a director] are only nodes that make sense as part of larger multidimensional networks, then how can we rethink research design to follow this logic?” (p. 161) Intermediate response: “Parallel domains.” My intermediate response is: There are several parallel networks and domains, not just those of media industries. Certainly, Caldwell’s picture of the rhizomatic “para-industry” is compelling, and many media industry scholars have already done research on just these “nodes,” thereby dispelling the myth of industrial “centers.” At my end, I have followed film crews and directors through a dialectic of professionalization. While admittedly the final moment of this dialectic is “tacit anticipation” of media industries, I tied earlier moments to the literature on socialization and careers (“resocialization”) and to the literature on knowing in organizational forms and small groups (“tacit knowing”). This is because I found that students are not just hustling for reputation. Students are also socializing to professional life, in general; students are also learning how to perform knowing in small groups, in general. 287 And further, I found evidence—admittedly, not sufficient evidence—that students love films and TV for their own sake. Many of these film students, especially Sid and Don, think about movies as though it existed in its own domain. They might ultimately “author” them for rhizomatic industries, but they uphold notions of story as a “poetics” (Bordwell, 2008), notions that, I argue, can be momentarily abstracted from industrial criteria for stories that will make revenues. As such, this is a question for further research. But when I heard Ben and Don especially, or Cate and Sid occasionally, talk about story and characters, I heard artistic discourse that was momentarily divorced from rhizomatic criteria of ‘sell-self-sell’ and from the sheen of symbolic salaries. I saw them inhabit domains that exist parallel to industry. I cannot deny that what was ultimately driving the momentum to get work done was industrial, or at least proto-industrial if not “para-industrial” That’s the peril of such research: you can’t observe what goes on inside a person’s head nor can you take interview answers at face value. The thing I do know for certain is that I was transported too. My reflexivity as a cinephile helped me follow these students’ tacit knowing about stories and characters. When talk just became about the movie, there was passion, not fear or cynicism. Thus, I have initial reason to proffer that students do draw agency from parallel domains, not merely from the domain of rhizomatic para-industries. Para-industry as “paramilitary.” But let me not throw out Caldwell’s baby since I have insufficient bathwater. I did find evidence that credits his notion of “para- industry.” My own vacillation regarding his critical interrogation goes to show how vexed a category “tacit anticipation” really is. First, I’ll reproduce his definition and connect it to his definition of “media texts.” 288 Para-industry… describes the ubiquitous industrial, cultural and corporate fields that surround, buffer and complicate any access to what we traditionally regard as our primary objects of media research – messages, texts, forms, institutions... Rather than all of the printed or filmed secondary textual material (previews, trailers, titles, epigraphs, directors commentaries and making offs) that viewers have to ‘pass through to get to’ the primary text (the novel or feature film), I frame para-industry as a more complex phenomenon, with extra-textual dimensions. Specifically, an economic and cultural-industrial interface woven together by socio-professional media communities, through trade narratives, ritualized interactions and conventionalized self-representations that viewers and scholars must wade through before they can find a primary text or featured on- screen content. Thus, para-texts are indeed a part – but only a subset – of a broader cultural-industrial interface, a para-industry that bounds and embeds within itself most commercial media texts, [which in turn are] not merely… on- screen content… but… dynamic sites of intrinsically negotiated interactions by industry. (Caldwell, 2014, p. 721) So, Caldwell departs from Gray’s (2010) and Genette’s (1997) definition of “paratext,” likening “para-industry” to the “paramilitary,” since Hollywood closely “mirrors the production ‘outsourcing’ and critical analysis of the Iraq invasion to Blackwater-type subcontractors.” (2013, p. 159) First, I am awestruck by the visionary aspect of Caldwell’s conception: it’s dark, provocative, rich, intense, and innovative. We are shown how the “para-industry” is rhizomatic through-and-through, sans center, replete with nodes, and the sweeping claim 289 that I am not convinced by, akin to paramilitary operations. When I think about the occasional joy with which students worked together to make movies, hustled in courtyards, resocialized in corridors, and found their artistic authorialness in edit suites, I don’t think of paramilitary operations. I recognize, though, that that’s not exactly what Caldwell is saying. He is discussing how when one researches the industry, one needs to “wade through” and “negotiate” complex, ritualistic interfaces of self-theorization and self-representation, before one can arrive at or interpret a “media text.” It’s not a trailer that brings you to the movies; rather, it’s a stubborn, para-militaristic veneer of sell and spin from outsourced labor that you have to wade through to get to a movie. Breathtaking. But I can’t quite catch my breath. Below, I’ll present an example I think somewhat maps on to Caldwell’s argument, although it’s possible I might be committing a bit of the straw man fallacy. However, I want to complicate his provocation: Does Caldwell mean that filmmakers can’t access their own texts without wading through para-militaristic, para-industrial waters? If so, then I’ll suggest how that’s counterproductive, and how it in fact strengthens my earlier suggestion about industrial products existing simultaneously in “parallel domains.” Back to the Field: “Wading Through” LAFilm’s Public Screenings I attended the public screenings of the completed Ingrates and Guffaw. I’ll focus on the latter because it was a grander event, befitting the “reputation” of Production Class within LAFilm, but also to an extent, in the (para)industry. A month prior, the crew was discussing whether the screening order indicated faculty favorites, given the informal rule that the best film is screened last (Guffaw was being screened second, and Tropos last). In the email chain, they decided that it made 290 sense to just think of it as a comedy being screened between two dramas. On the day of the screening, I arrived early to help with set up. The location was a large theater in the same university as LAFilm. One of the most striking images was one of the producers of Tropos dressed up in a suit with his family and friends behind in elbow lock, gliding slowly towards the theater. It looked like a wedding entourage. In fact, compared to everyone else, I felt underdressed: people had cleaned up and were majorly dressed up. There was an air of nobility almost, and people who I had seen backbiting and disagreeing were on their best behavior. As people began to settle down, PC’s Head Faculty member (HF) took the mike and said, “Welcome to the world premieres of…” Again, I was a bit dazzled, not expecting such a big event. The auditorium was full, with crewmembers’ families having flown in from the East Coast, and in one case, from the Philippines! Each film was screened, followed by the crew coming up and launching into seven to ten minutes of introductions and thank you speeches. As a huge fan of the Oscars, I felt that the speech ceremony was very Hollywood-style. Crewmembers were monitoring the amount of applause and the timing of the applause (e.g., which Guffaw one-liners drew the most laughs); Duane, who as producer was the first to speak (as with the Best Picture Oscar), began by saying, “Thank you for laughing.” All three directors gave eloquent and elaborate speeches, which again, were very awards show-like, with long thank you lists, a hyperbolic mixture of gush and solemnity, and “trying not to break down.” Dade thanked everyone on the crew, but given what I had seen and heard behind-the scenes, I could tell which statements of gratitude were exaggerated. 291 Outside, over cocktails, everyone was networking and complimenting. In the atmosphere of free flowing wine, there was a sense of ebullience. Guffaw’s background actors came up to me (since I was the 2 nd AD and had sent them the call sheets) and said how grateful they were for the experience and how much they loved the film. Dade relayed to me later how strangers came up to tell him how much they had laughed, and how hearing that calmed his nerves. But Sid was “depressed.” In our interview, he showed me texts exchanged between him and Maya: “such a waste of an audience,” went one. He did not care for the quality of one of the movies and had spent the next day “wallowing in misery in my house… I felt all these people came and they sat on these chairs, and as a filmmaker, that’s like your dream, right? That you make something and someone will actually watch it. And I saw all these people and I felt they were dying for the screen to give them something to respond to, any moment of real emotion.” Others were also less enthused. Abe, who arrived late and attended the second set of screenings, reported that the applause for Guffaw was muted. Tina and Cate, although dressed up in fancy gowns, seemed detached from the crew. Non-PC students I ran into who knew of my involvement in Guffaw abstained from talking about the movie entirely, making me recall Cate’s warning about false compliments after screenings. The main cast who was present were also curiously distant. Juxtaposing Caldwell’s notion of para-industry and of wading through industrial- cultural buffers to arrive at media texts, it was clear that the crew was quite sensitive to the response, applause, and discourse during and right after the public screening. It was its own kind of “cacophony.” The event itself was slightly reminiscent of old-fashioned Hollywood events: there was no red carpet or paparazzi, but the same crewmembers who 292 I had seen lift sandbags and have heated discussions, appeared glamorous, important, and grateful. This much of Caldwell’s argument I can admit: the public screening was a “para-industrial” event in that it could be likened to an “economic-cultural interface woven together by socio-professional media communities, through trade narratives, ritualized interactions and conventionalized self-representations that viewers and scholars must wade through before they can find a primary text.” That evening, the primary text, Guffaw, was constructed by the executive-like hosting performance of HF, by ritual exchanges of gratefulness, by constant photography, by the attire and the speeches, and by self-presentations of student filmmakers as their doppelgangers (those they wanted to emulate) higher up in the industrial food chain. However, I am not convinced that the puff of the public screening is the only way to access Guffaw as “media text,” especially for its crewmembers. It’s reductive to think of Guffaw just in terms of its history of negotiations and interactions among crew and faculty. I hark back to exchanges at the level of story, plot, and emotion had by the crewmembers; to the balcony where the crew had an afternoon of fun brainstorming about characters they wanted to understand and relate to; to the debates in the edit room about the most trivial camera angles, color correction, and sequences of shots. I looked at the fun poster created for Guffaw, which, to my surprise, emphasized a character who was not the lead couple getting married. The poster is a traditional “paratext” (Gray, 2010) that helps us “enter” and consider the film, but more relevant, I’d argue the above- mentioned examples of artistic discourse are, for the student filmmakers, an ongoing paratext that creates and survives the ultimate text. They know their film differently because they lived with it through the politics and para-industrial buffers (e.g., table 293 screenings, dailies screenings), and continue to live with it on the separate domain of story, character and genre that movies live in. As far as the filmmaking that I witnessed, I think Caldwell’s otherwise compelling definition is but one filter to explicate the goings- on. Students know the film lives on separately, outside of media industries and para- industry. Sid said way back in a production meeting, “Think of the Quicktime file” that all crew deliberations would ultimately lead to, advising the crew to “make all decisions on the basis of that Quicktime file,” the separate domain in which that Guffaw would exist. That separate domain is not governed by para-industry economics, let alone paramilitary strategy. I realize that I am not providing nearly sufficient ammunition to engage with Caldwell’s broader idea that para-industries, especially their economics, bind up everyone’s (including worldwide audiences) experience of films. All I aimed to do is cast doubt on the claim that the para-industrial experience of media texts is all-encompassing. I submit that however para-industrial my subjects’ performances were on the eve of their screenings, they did not have to “wade through” just the audience’s response to think about their film, either before or after. That is why their tacit anticipation of media industries or para-industry is just still anticipation. They are testing the waters by performing mini-rituals in public screenings. They can still draw agency from other domains. For them, media texts, films they watch or help create, aren’t only accessed or arrived at just by wading through para-industry buffers and negotiations. They are tethered to industry, but the noose is not yet around their necks. They don’t yet incessantly self-theorize in order to not asphyxiate. Tacit anticipation means maintaining 294 a healthy distance from para-industry, whose rituals, rhizomes, panopticons and symbolic payrolls beckon seductively. My subjects hadn’t decided they were handing over their fates. At the same time, they had learned enough about filmmaking, especially via tacit knowing in crews and artistic discourse despite classrooms, that they had forged an appreciation and understanding of film/TV that existed on a separate domain. I proffer they have begun to understand narrative, genre, affect, and other principles, and can relate them to their own lives. I proffer that they have a tacit relationship to a craft or art form. Normative Considerations: “Good/Bad Work,” “Autonomy” and “Self-Realization” My hunch—for that’s all it is right now—that my subjects think of and live with their movies in domains other than the industrial is given more lift by authors like Hesmondhalgh and Baker (2011) (hereafter, HB). As I outlined earlier, scholars like HB have a quite different take than Caldwell and the “cultural studies” camp on what questions should be asked of media industries. I will briefly go over the theoretical premises argued for by authors. Although their book is titled Creative labor: Media work in three cultural industries, what immediately distinguishes HB from scholars such as Caldwell is that their study is of “work and occupations,” and that their emphasis is on normativity alongside subjective experience of work. They ask, what should work feel like? In the paragraphs that open the book, authors extend their politics, which is not, as Havens, Lotz and Tinic (2009) would say, “critical.” HB state upfront, “The quality of working life matters, and so does the relationship of work to well being.” (p. 1) They connect “well- being” to Raymond Williams’ idea of “creative”: even though the word is overused and 295 abused, the “values potentially bound up in [it] include the idea that, when done well, such products might enrich our lives and make the world a better place. This is not romanticism or mysticism: nor is it elitism... [We are] motivated by the commitment to equality, social justice, well-being and the democratization of creativity that motivated Williams.” (p. 2; emphasis added). Thus, HB are interested in what makes the experience and output of work good or bad. They phrase their research problem as, “To what extent is it possible to do good work in the cultural industries?”; and their research question as, “What kinds of experiences do jobs and occupations in the cultural industries offer their workers?” (ibid) Caldwell and others, by contrast, begin from the perspective that cultural industries cannot offer workers a good life, and para-industry without fail exploits their labor; in a sense, the critical humanists don’t even consider quality of working life because, according to HB these “critical pessimists [are] influenced by neo-Foucauldian governmentality theory,” and subsume the positive, celebrated aspects of cultural work under the concepts of “alienation” and “self-exploitation.” At the same time HB are aware that some of its celebrants are “deeply complacent about the conditions of such work and the reality of labor markets involved.” But mostly, HB want to address the gap of normativity: “Neither the celebrants… nor the critical pessimists have been sufficiently clear of what constitutes good and bad work, and this has inhibited debate and understanding about the meaning of contemporary creative labor.” (p. 7) In the model they put forth, HB argue that the “process” of “good work” involves “autonomy, interest and involvement, sociality, self-esteem, self-realization, work-life balance, and security” (and the converse for “bad work”). Importantly, they emphasize 296 “products” as well: good work involves goods and services that are “excellent” and promotes aspects of the “common good.” (p. 36) By contrast, Caldwell’s understanding of products is bound up in the “disciplined,” “rhizomatic” nature of para-industries, wherein “media texts” are not merely on-screen content but the industrial negotiations surrounding and leading up to it. Additionally, Caldwell, while an advocate of social justice (Caldwell, 2003), comes across as hopeless about it. Most strikingly, HB argue for the two types of “autonomy” as a feature of “good work”: (1) workplace autonomy,” which they define in terms of an individual’s or group’s “degree of self-determination” in a situation; and (2) “creative autonomy,’ which is the “degree to which ‘art,’ knowledge,… and so on can and/or should operate independent of the influence of other determinants.” (p. 40) By the same token, Caldwell (2008) showcases workers’ “industrial self-reflexivity” and “self-theorizing” to be almost unavoidable, and bound up in a discursive system of “industrial churn.” So Caldwell does not think there is a place for self-realization, self-determination, or knowledgeable activity independent of other determinants. Even whatever place he had set aside for “resilience” of workers such as his camera operator, appears to be subsumed under the more critical conception of industry as paramilitary in his later work. I propose that my understanding of how student filmmakers in LAFilm approach stories as inhabiting separate domains other than para-industry gains some traction from HB’s insistence on good work having the autonomy of self-determination and self- existence. Students do occasionally instantiate these qualities in the way they work together, especially in the way they exhibit tacit knowing. Ben and Don’s initially stuttered but gradually collaborative tacit knowing during the post-production period of 297 Ingrates is an example of both types of autonomy outlined above, as well as features of “good work” such as sociality, self-esteem, and work-life balance (towards the latter, Don commended Ben for giving him time and space to work on the cut, and not rushing him as he wrapped up another project). Additionally, I found that some student filmmakers channel these types of autonomy to be inspired by the “excellence” of good products, and particularly, motivated by work done well. Personally, I have immense sympathy for this aspect of good work: that the products themselves be good. I commenced upon this dissertation because of my deep curiosity about how the movies and TV I loved, which made my world a “better place,” were made. So when I saw Ben and Don slowly work together to make a great product (or heard Melbourne talk about how he was overall quite satisfied with the quality of Tropos), I was able to see (as I showcased in Chapter 3) that not only does tacit knowing get the work done, but can result in artistic discourse that gets the work done well. Besides, I know Ben himself was particularly interested and sensitive to the response during Ingrates’ public screening. He said he generally would not believe if people told him that they liked his film “because people in this industry tend to lie a lot,” and he had a few friends such as Yasha who he could trust to be honest. But what would convince him—and he wanted to convinced; he wanted his film to touch at least one person—would be organic reactions in the audience. During the Ingrates screening, he was seated at the back of the auditorium. “The last shot pulls out and it cuts to black and it is dead silent in the theater. Then all of a sudden somebody said, “Oh Jesus.” But it was so quiet in the theater you could hear that. And after that, everyone burst into applause. 298 And I thought it was so cool that this guy was so involved in the film at that moment that he blurted out something he didn’t mean to blurt out.” That’s when Ben knew that he had produced “good work” (and additionally, people came up to him afterwards). Contra Dade, Ben wanted to be the independent decider of the reception of his film, and it mattered to him greatly that he also thought he produced good work. At the same time, Ben is savvy when it comes to presenting his films as “industrial.” Ben tacitly anticipates industry workings, but he is not ready to give up on his self-determination about his vision for a film or how it’s received. Tacit anticipation thus contains seeds of both Caldwell’s critical worries and HB’s concern for normativity regarding subjectivity. I showed throughout the first half of this chapter that these agents are embedded in organizations and institutions whose pedagogy and cacophony they have to selectively appropriate and greatly resist in order to be authorial. I also showed how the ritual of hustling as well as performances during public screenings showcase these aspiring filmmakers to be very aware of industry structures. Caldwell’s para-industry is where many say they want to make their careers. Who is to say that once they are completely “on the other side,” as one student remarked casually, they won’t incessantly self- theorize, constantly negotiate “media texts” as industry churn that goes well beyond being mere “on-screen content” and “stylistic product”? Only future research will show that. The dialectic of professionalization extends to para-industry, surely, but in this dissertation, I follow it until the gateway between film school and film industry. Where I bound it, I only found evidence of tacit anticipation, which, because it shows qualities of both Caldwell’s and HB’s theorization of creative work and creative labor, is indeed a 299 vexed category. I will conclude this chapter in a manner similar to how I ended Chapter 2 on “resocialization” and Chapter 3 “tacit knowing” in Chapter 3. That is, I will pull together my theorizing of tacit anticipation disparately strewn across this Chapter into a robust working definition of “tacit anticipation” (and by extension, “agentive embeddedness”). Therein concludes the “substantive” presentation of the moments of the “dialectic of professionalization.” In the final Chapter 5, I revisit the dialectic with the fresh eyes of “formal theory.” (Strauss, 1987) Working Definition of “Tacit Anticipation” Here is a working understanding of tacit anticipation. “Tacit anticipation” is a moment; it is a moment of arrival; and it is the final moment of arrival on the dialectic of professionalization, that in this dissertation begun with resocialization of individual students in film crews and proceeded to the moment of tacit knowing within film crews. Tacit anticipation is seeded in corresponding moments on parallel dialectics. On the dialectic of artistic discourse, tacit anticipation comes closest to the moment of “artistic discourse as self-reflexivity; i.e., when students ask the question, “Is this too film school,” they have bypassed its influence and are in the mode of industry. On the dialectic of reputation, tacit anticipation comes closest to the moment of “hustling as reputation-posturing,” in that all discourse surrounding self-presentation involves students taking postures and being postured by the ritual structures of film school, be they competitions to get into classes or public screenings of films. In both cases, students’ industrial work lies in anticipation of them. In that sense, tacit anticipation is merely where I bound and artificially cut off the dialectic of professionalization for this dissertation. There are surely several moments between 300 students leaving film school, hustling on and finally getting their first jobs, gigs, etc., and then getting “experienced” in the ways of the industry. It’s not clear whether the “industrial”-ness they will take on in the future will be in the Caldwell-style of para- industry, in Hesmondhalgh and Baker’s emphasis on the normativity of creative autonomy, or in some other mode. It’s too early to tell. Tacit anticipation is still anticipation. It’s a long, drawn out moment that was reached, and it’s a long, drawn out moment as it continues to unfurl. It’s a way station, an embeddedness, a posturing, a shape of artistic and reputable self with good or bad work, a shape able to shift. That’s an important point, then. Tacit anticipation is agentive. By “agentive,” I mean the following. To reiterate, students’ futures are uncertain, their knowledge and desires with regard to industry, “en face de” industry, “proto”- industry, are still inchoate (some less than others). They are still playing the game. They have learned what they need to learn in order to talk the talk and walk the walk. They know how to remain vigilant. They are steely. After all, they have resocialized, gotten to tacitly know, and have filtered through cacophonous, organizational discourse. They are armed, they are muscular, they have legs. They are knowledgeable. They have a quiver of tactics. They have a hunch about how to “go on” (Giddens, 1984; Banks & Riley, 1993). But it’s all tacit. It’s not yet articulated fully to themselves, let alone industry. They are still maintaining a healthy distance; they haven’t decided whether they want to become embedded in a dynamics they know can be “para-industrial.” They are additionally armed with their personal or authorial, but always social and tacit, relationship to their craft, to storytelling, to the world as it can be storied, affect-ed, made into genre. They have something to say that could be a “good product.” 301 They have begun to know their weaknesses and strengths. They know whether it suits them to be taking meetings, or just staying the course, alone in a room in front of screenwriting software. They have their tentacles out: with Quicktime files sent to film festivals, and with editing, sound, cinematography or directors’ reels being constantly modified. They are trying to figure out if they want to be, in their immediate futures, below- or above-the-line. They have the inherent agency to shape-shift, even if just for that one time when it can make a difference. They have the inherent agency to think through film and TV principles irrespective of saleablility, negotiations, and other commercial, political-economic posturing. They are embedded between worlds, organizations, careers, between temporariness and permanence of forms. They are not yet “too professional.” Their fluidity may or may not be greenlit. They still are able to think about their own worth. LAFilm students tacitly anticipate, but they have already been through a mini- industrial ride of precarity. Once again, their work and labor lie in waiting, in vulnerability. Much is silent. Much is tacit. Alive are the throbs of a yet-liquid industrial cement called “anticipate.” 302 CHAPTER FIVE: THE “DIALECTIC OF PROFESSIONALIZATION” AS “DIALECTIC” & AS “PROFESSIONALIZATION” – CONTRIBUTIONS, THEORY, AND REFLEXIVITY The previous three chapters showcased the empirical presentation of my ethnographic inquiry into the world of student filmmaking in LAFilm. I introduced evidence from field notes and interviews as well as did interpretive work in order to present my core grounded categories of “resocialization” (Chapter 2), “tacit knowing” (Chapter 3), and “tacit anticipation” (Chapter 4), along with their sub-categories, properties, and dimensions. See Appendix 2 for a handy visual. Consistent with the grounded theory methodology from Strauss and Corbin (1998) and Strauss (1987), I engaged in a conversation with the literature I thought to be the most relevant to the chapter’s core category (namely, socialization of individuals into groups (Chapter 2), knowing in temporary groups (Chapter 3), and agency of media industries labor (Chapter 4)), and explained how the category was a theoretical contribution to that “substantive” area. The aim of this concluding chapter, then, is to move from “substantive theory” to “formal theory.” In a sense, though, the core categories I have laid out already are what Strauss might call “formal,” because I straddle the line between empirical and conceptual in my definitions of each. Moreover, I appropriate Strauss’ (1987) “formal theory” to mean not just what he meant, i.e., generalizations to other substantive areas, but also show how each area converses with and pushes against received views in other areas; and engage with even more “formal,” i.e., higher-level theories and concepts. In all these ways, formal theory is a contribution of this dissertation. 303 This chapter’s structure is thus as follows. I begin by explaining what is “dialectical” about my presentation of the dialectic of professionalization (in conjunction with the dialectics of “reputation” and “artistic discourse”). That is, I show how I have been influenced by philosopher G. W. F. Hegel’s highly conceptual and formal understanding of “dialectic.” I owe this explanation since I bring, in a grounded manner, Hegel’s theory of “dialectic” as the overarching analytic in this work. Alongside explaining Hegel’s use of dialectic, I summarize the “dialectic of professionalization” as a movement across the core categories, and suggest how the dialectical movement itself forces conversation among above-mentioned “substantive areas.” That is, I suggest how student filmmakers’ resocialization, tacit knowing, and tacit anticipation imply that slices of the socialization literature, the organizational literature on “knowing” and temporary groups, and the media industries literature on “creative labor,” are necessarily pushed out of their comfort zones. Finally, I briefly connect my ethnographic snapshot of “professionalization” in film school to other studies in the professional socialization literature—most prominently, of medical school students (Becker et al., 1961). I conclude by reflecting on my positionality as a researcher, and showcasing avenues for future research. Contribution #1 – “Dialectic”: A Meta-Structural Concept via Hegel 84 “Making Productive” as Connecting “Dialectic” and “Professionalization” Communication scholars know Hegel’s philosophy typically through their familiarity with Marx. Hegel conceived of the world as thought (“idealism”) and Marx appropriated Hegel’s “dialectic” towards the material world of labor and capital. Both 84 Future readers of this document: “#” does not refer to “hashtag.” It means “number.” As in, ‘Contribution number 1.’ #collisionsoftemporality (now, that was a hashtag.) 304 philosophers however understood history as progressing through moments whose sequence has been “famously simplified” (Stone, 2014, p. 1118) as “thesis-antithesis- synthesis.” This, however, is not an inaccurate summary of their dialectical approach to understanding—and many would say, predicting—socio-historical change, but it is a bit reductive, given the immense variation and contestation in the academic interpretation of their work in the more than two centuries since they were written (Redding, 2014). And yet, the “central subject matter of dialectics,” quite simply, is the “nature of change.” (Morgan, 2013, p. 5). Although Hegel is a great influence on my thought, and his work is one of the ‘prior influences’ I bring to the grounded theory ‘not-a-blank-slate’ methodology (Chapter 1), I appropriate only certain aspects of his dialectic. I definitely don’t read into Hegel a deterministic or teleological outcome (no “unity” or “revolution,” for that matter, is realized, as should be clear from my description of “tacit anticipation” as a “vexed” category). Plus, my subject matter is much more modest than depicting socio-historical change. Rather, I felt compelled to return to Hegel when I came across the lived experience of my subjects at LAFilm as rife with contradiction, negation, and eventually, their subsumption or sublation. I deemed it appropriate to borrow from Hegel the spirit if not the letter of his term “dialectic,” and I found it useful to think of the changes undergone by individual students in their journeys to, through, and away from film school as embodying aspects of Hegel’s dialectical movement. In sum, I argue that Hegelian “dialectic” does a great job explaining transitions and changes in students’ outlook to careers and industries, their ways of working together, their interaction with faculty, and their relationship with films themselves. 305 Specifically, I argue that in order to understand (1) how individual students’ “factors of individuality” and “directorialness” are subsumed, diverted, and made productive by their “resocialization” into members of film crews [Chapter 2]; (2) how their “tacit knowing” subsumes their knowing of “roles,” “routines,” and “hierarchy,” and how “tacit knowing” is further made productive via the “emergence” of “artistic discourse;” (3) how students and crews confront, contend with, filter, resist, negate, and sublate “cacophony” and “contradiction” in film school discourse, by eventually making productive or producing discourse as “artistic,” as “authoring” of a film; and (4) how students “hustle” in order to make themselves productively agentive during the relentless vigil of “tacit anticipation;” that is, in order to show how all these “moments” of contestation, negation, appropriation, and contradiction are ultimately made productive, ultimately furthered, ultimately made more mediated, I resort to the movement in “dialectic.” I resort to the movement in “dialectic” to explain how what I have “is a case of” (Ragin & Becker, 1992) students’ getting ready for industry. I argue that the way students dialectically become more than what they were when they started film school is via their resocializing, tacit knowing, hustling and eventual flirtation with and embodiment of tacit anticipation. Those are their moments. This denouement is not deterministic, not teleological, but contingent upon LAFilm’s being in the backyard of the looming Los Angeles-based media industries. In sum, I proffer the conceptual and tactical moves in Hegel’s argumentation of dialectic as a robust mechanism by which to understand the social monde of gradual transformation in film school. This microcosm of change 85 can be handily—but not 85 Based on Chapter 4, we can see that film school is a microcosm, a haven, not completely usurped by and rendered asymptomatically “hyperreal” (Baudrillard, 1981) by Caldwell’s “para-industry.” (2014) 306 dogmatically—described as professionalization. Crucially, I substitute the dialectical “making productive of” referred to above with “professionalization.” To be professional is to be, to be made to be, and to become a particular kind of “productive.” Further, one moment of being “made productive” itself produces the conditions for successive moments. That is, to be dialectical is to work through (alternatively, “come to know”) moments of being made productive, moments of professionalization. Therefore, this dissertation is about the “dialectic of professionalization.” Some Hegelian Vocabulary So, how can we understand the series of “making productive” moments? A point of entry is the idea that “Hegel begins his logic with “being.” “Being” is the simplest and most inescapable category, necessarily presupposed in any thought or existence: anything that is must participate in being.” (Stone, 2014, p. 1122; emphasis added) Next, let’s consider this extended passage which encapsulates the operations of “being” in the initial pages of his two masterworks, Phenomenology of Spirit and Science of Logic. Reading into the first chapter of Book 1, “Being,” it is quickly seen that the Logic repeats the movements of the first chapters of the Phenomenology, now, however, at the level of “thought” rather than conscious experience. Thus, “being” is the thought determination with which the work commences because it at first seems to be the most “immediate,” fundamental determination characterizing any possible thought content at all. It apparently has no internal structure (in contrast to the way that “bachelor,” say, has a structure containing the further concepts “male” and “unmarried”). Again parallel to the Phenomenology, it is the effort of thought to make such contents explicit that both undermines them and brings 307 about new contents. “Being” seems to be both “immediate” and simple, but reflection reveals that it itself is, in fact, only meaningful in opposition to another concept, “nothing.” In fact, the attempt to think “being” as immediate, and so as not mediated by its opposing concept “nothing,” has so deprived it of any determinacy or meaning at all that it effectively becomes nothing. That is, on reflection it is grasped as having passed over into its “negation.” Thus, while “being” and “nothing” seem both absolutely distinct and opposed, from another point of view they appear the same as no criterion can be invoked which differentiates them. The only way out of this paradox is to posit a third category, “becoming,” which seems to save thinking from paralysis because it accommodates both concepts: “becoming” contains “being” and “nothing” since when something “becomes” it passes, as it were, from nothingness to being. That is, when something becomes it seems to possess aspects of both being and nothingness, and it is in this sense that the third category of such triads can be understood as containing the first two as sublated “moments.” (Redding, 2014; emphases in original) Two points ensue. First, to reiterate, for Hegel, thought is reality, which is why he is considered to be an idealist philosopher (Stone, 2014), but that need not prevent us—as it did not prevent Marx with regard to Hegel—from applying him to the study of material production in film school. 86 And second, the key assumption underlying Redding’s 86 To this end, a quick note on Hegel’s use of the word “phenomenology”: It is quite different from the modern usage of “phenomenology” that began with Edmund Husserl, and later applied by his student Alfred Schutz to the social world. In Chapter 3, when I talked about Schutz’s (1967) understanding of “practice” to mean the world of “daily life,” I was referring to the meanings (including structures such as routines) held by students during their “knowledgeable” enactment of those meanings as “mundane,” as “taken-for-granted” by them. They work together coming to know, I argued. My appropriation of phenomenology in the data collection aspect of my methodology made me alert to those meanings. It is a 308 description of how the dialectic begins for Hegel is that “any concept or structure that is ‘posited’ as independently subsisting necessarily undergoes a transformation into its opposite: that is the movement of dialectic.” 87 (Stone, 2014, p. 1119) Put differently, we come to become conscious of the non-immediate, i.e., mediated nature, of our being. We are not as unfettered as we start out thinking; we are never fully agentive. Hegel shows this in the dialectical opposition between “being” and “nothingness” in their being similar and different from each other and thereby propelled to resolve or synthesize the tension by “becoming” something else. 88 I will now delineate the conceptual, tactical, Hegelian moves across the core categories of the “dialectic of professionalization.” way of being open during seeing. I would argue that it even made me alert to dialectical changes Hegel refers to as “phenomenology” (especially the moment when Merle asked Ben if the Ingrates rough cut was “too much like a student film”). However, it was during coding, categorizing, memo writing, and the “discovery” potential of grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), that I settled on my meta-grounded theory argument that something like the structure of dialectic best explains students’ different moments of change in being “made productive.” Put more directly, I don’t want us to be confused by the two terms. Hegel’s usage of “phenomenology” is outdated, and he wrote more than a century before Husserl did. If it helps simplify, we can use a mental shortcut and pretend Hegel’s works are called “Dialectic of Spirit” and “Science of Dialectic” (since his usage of “logic” is also deeply contested if not dated [McGovern, 2014, p. 27]). In any case, as a researcher, it helped me to enter the anthropological field—which I think of as Geertz’s (1973) “other valleys” in which my subjects were guarding their “other sheep’ (p. 30)—and see it initially as unstructured, as merely the “world of daily life,” before I slowly came to see it as structured, and in particular, as moving dialectically. This says something meta about the dialectic itself, because like Hegel’s “being,” I was initially seeking “immediacy” before I began to theorize “mediacy,” since after all, theorizing is always mediating among or within literatures. It’s probably a typo that my last name is Mehta J Jokes aside, I think it’s methodologically sound to be open to the field as much as possible in order to “jot,” and slowly but surely narrow down, mediate among, and theorize our subjects’ jotted meanings via the process of constant comparison, memo-ing, coding, and relating categories. 87 Critical social philosopher Theodor Adorno also used Hegel’s notion of dialectic in his thoroughgoing critique of enlightenment as “world-historical process of which the eighteenth-century movement was only an advanced phase.” (Stone, 2014, p. 1119) 88 In fact, Stone (2014) says, “For Hegel, the chain of categories obtains in the world as well as in thought: he regards dialectic as an ontological process unfolding everywhere, so that the world is fundamentally structured both by contradictions and the rational process of overcoming them…. Contradictions are built into every level of reality for Hegel, each nested within a higher level that arises from a rational impulse to overcome contradictions yet contains contradictions in turn.” (p. 1124) 309 “Resocialization” as a Denouement of Dialectic In Chapter 2, I showed how the unfettered “ambitions,” “aesthetic subjectivities,” “desires” and “brashness” of individual students cannot but “become” transformed as “resocialization” when students face the quite different properties of the much more mediated structure that is a film crew. If you want to make a film, you have to socialize those aspects of your individual “being” that are unmediated, that are “immediate” and pressing to you; fellow “beings” have to do the same. All beings want to work on a film. To do so, they are confronted with the “temporary organization,” i.e., the film crew, which consists of time-honored, complex, mediated structures such as a “role,” itself mediated within a hierarchy and enacted via routines. Not dissimilar to Giddens’ structuration theory (1984), “agents” are not merely agents or unmediated beings. They learn how to use their inherent capacity to “go on” within the structures of social life by learning how to be less immediate, less merely individual, or to put it colloquially, less full of themselves. They learn how to “become.” Work cannot get done just by being ambitious, aesthetically subjective, restrained and confident. Work gets done when a crew of resocialized individuals tacitly or explicitly enacts their mediated knowledgeability (Chapter 3). In other words, making films necessitates being social (Chapter 2). “Factors of individuality,” and “directorialness” as a symptom of individuality, are “productively” “negated” when they repeatedly face the more mediated structure that is a film crew. Thus, we have resocialization as dialectic. “Hierarchy” as Denouement of Dialectic In Chapter 3, where my focus was on knowing as an organizing principle or movement, I showed how tacit knowing is a “complex” of a variety of types of knowing, 310 and I discussed how “routines,” “roles,” and “hierarchy” are categories crewmembers enact in order to tacitly know, in order to “get the work done.” In the context of Hegel’s dialectic, I would argue that “hierarchy,” to the extent that it commands “roles” in a particular formation, and “routines,” to the extent that they are formations and patterns of organized activity, are themselves denouement of years of media industries dialectic. This argument is most clearly seen in the different ways I described above- and below- the-line positions as understanding their “creativity” with regard to the process: Ignacio and Kelly, as members of the grip department, considered their contributions to be more “creative” than those who they reported to (namely Yasha and Ben) considered them. I am playing a bit loose and fast with Hegel’s idea of dialectic, but I retain the kernel of the idea of “negation passing over into something else.” In this case, the contributions of Ignacio and Kelly, even if they were creative according to them, are negated, absorbed, and channeled by the hierarchy into the “vision” of the DP and the director. So, in a sense, hierarchy is ideological and all-powerful. It represents a “moment” that has been concretized as an ulterior organizing principle in media industries, and is further appropriated if not entirely reproduced in the film school’s socio-material environs. “Tacit Knowing” as Denouement of Dialectic However, from another perspective, hierarchy is but a dialectical moment in “tacit knowing.” This is most conspicuous in the dual role I found students assign to “micropolitics.” I described micropolitics as hierarchical role-based conflict (both “against” and “with” the grain of established hierarchy) as well as the misleading posture of “guarding one’s contribution” when one’s actual interest is in the greater good, that of the “story.” 311 For instance, in Chapter 3, I provided the example of Yasha telling Ben on set, “I know what you want but I think I think that’s not what you want.” Yasha clearly displays tacit knowing of Ben’s craft. Yasha also goes slightly against the grain of hierarchy in that as a DP he claims to realize the director’s vision for him. I argue that Yasha felt compelled to do that because as a resocialized member of their dyad, he knew what mattered the most to both Ben and him was the story itself. 89 His utterance might have come across as contradictory, both in a logical and a situational sense. But his intervention was a conceptual, tactical, i.e., dialectical “move.” His “immediate” cognition for his craft (i.e., in his head, like a reflex, a well-honed skill) was “mediated” by his resocialized understanding of his director’s craft as well as their mutual goal for a good story (irrespective of what it implied for either of their individual contributions). In being mediated in this way, Yasha’s “cognition of his craft” “passed over” into its “negation,” which was “knowing what is good for the story.” “Negation” does not mean “negative;” it just means being conscious of and then becoming the next dialectical moment. It means becoming “productive.” It was professional of Yasha to do this (even though in the moment Ben was flabbergasted.) Notice, also, how this moment of tacit knowing contained the previous moment “resocialization,” and is about to anticipate 90 the next moment, “artistic discourse.” This is characteristic of dialectic. It contains its previous moments as well as the seeds of anticipation of future moments. A close dialectical reading of Ben and Don’s “collaboration” during the post- production phase of Ingrates will yield a similar analysis. In Chapter 3, I presented this example under the heading “artistic discourse as emergent.” “Artistic discourse” is a 89 Yasha told me in our interview that he does not think it makes sense for crewmembers to “guard” their contributions. 90 Talk about meta-polysemy – the dialectic itself “tacitly anticipates”! 312 moment on the other side of “mere” tacit knowing, when student filmmakers [ad]venture into the realm of pure story (which in Chapter 4 I suggested exists as a domain separate from that of media industries). Artistic discourse involves a setting aside of roles and hierarchy and of tacit knowing merely due to role-based hierarchical conflict. When that moment of tacit knowing “passes over” into the negation of its elements “role” and “hierarchy,” we have artistic discourse as dialectic. “Artistic Discourse” as Denouement of Dialectic In Chapter 3, I presented artistic discourse as a “negation” of tacit knowing, and as a group-level discursive practice. In Chapter 4, I presented artistic discourse as an organizational-level property in that individual students and crews must undergo a mini- dialectic involving “appropriation,” “respect,” “resistance” of “pedagogy” and “cacophony” in order for the film to “become” in the way of “artistic discourse as authoring.” My presentation of this section was the most inherently dialectical of all three chapters. I showed that students’ experiencing pedagogy as industrial dogma during pre- production; being pushed to the brink of being “turn[ed] away from your material” during screening of dailies; and experiencing the cacophonous contradictions among faculty and students; how all of these moments that crews and individuals experience as increasingly contradictory and cacophonous tip over into “artistic discourse” when they realize, i.e., remember, that they have no option but to “filter.” This is an immense moment of “negation,” “sublation,” and “passing over” into the realm, once again, of the needs of the story, i.e, of “artistic discourse.” 313 Students and crews “become” “authorial” after they work through the “contradictions” and “cacophony” of voices. In doing so, they actually “produce” a film. They make themselves productive once again, gather their resocialized beings (as I glimpsed in the balcony, and later, when Dade worked with the composer to add a score that many agreed lifted Guffaw out of its narrative doldrums), become professional. Organizationally “embedded” “beings” break through the stranglehold of “embeddedness” in the structures of film school by working through, interrogating, and “negating” the cacophony, dogma, and contradictions that characterize “embeddedness.” Agents face structures, but unlike the reproductive moment of structuration theory, we have a new moment, a “becoming,” a “third category,” I call “artistic discourse as authorialness,” and argue is the beginning of a long drawn-out moment of “self- reflexivity” and being “agentive.” Once again, we have artistic discourse as dialectic. I think of the moment of students asking themselves, “Is this too school,” as an extension of the moment of “artistic discourse.” It is further along the dialectic than “artistic discourse as emergent.” Students and crews who find themselves asking this question are not only resocialized, exemplify tacit knowing, and have shown prior moments of “artistic discourse.” They have sustained the self-reflexivity that emerges with “artistic discourse.” They are well-oiled productivity machines. An Aside: “Parallel” Dialectics Above, I showed “artistic discourse” as a dialectical moment of professionalization that can be achieved in two separate ways. In a sense, it is not necessary to think of the dialectic of artistic discourse—or for that matter, the dialectic of reputation—as a “parallel” to the dialectic of professionalization. After all, students have 314 a reputation for being artistic and for being professional: the dialectics interpenetrate. Thus, I don’t dogmatically adhere to the dialectic of professionalization as the series that consists just of “resocialization,” “tacit knowing,” and “tacit anticipation” as successive moments. If I had to parsimonious however, and attempt to represent the dialectical experience of the greatest number of film students, I would say that “artistic discourse” is a parallel dialectic in that it is not necessary. Not all crew members need to experience it, or because of their role or position in the hierarchy, are unable to experience it. For example, an individual like Kelly might believe that “this is an industry of creative decisions” (Chapter 1), and in accordance, might try to imbue the “technical” aspect of his craft, say moving a dolly, with the “creative” aspect of matching the “speed” of the song inside the actor’s head. However, that does not mean he has indulged in “artistic discourse,” at least not in the much more obviously meaningful sense that say Ben and Don did during their extended collaboration. We might say that Kelly enacted tacit knowing well, and his actions were oriented to story; in that sense Kelly’s tacit knowing was imbued with “artistic.” (And it satisfied Kelly because he thinks being “creative” means thinking about story). But “artistic discourse” is a higher-level and more sustained enactment that I have no reason to attribute to Kelly. Similarly, producers, set dressers, wardrobe and makeup artists, gaffers, and even 2 nd ADs (like me) can indulge in what Ben would agree as non-“mediocre” tacit knowing, which showcases them to be professional because they are making themselves “productive” in a dialectical sense, but it is not sufficient to say they participated in the dialectic of artistic discourse. I found that the roles most likely to move in that dialectic 315 are directors, editors, writers, and cinematographers. However, all roles, including Kelly, Ignacio, Lara, Yael or Cate, can and do tacitly anticipate. Likewise, the dialectic of reputation—which involves the movement of individuals across the moments of “individual reputation-preening” (Chapter 2), “social reputation-making” (Chapter 3) and “industrial reputation-posturing” (Chapter 4) (see Appendix 2 for a tabular depiction)—is more conveniently thought of as parallel to the dialectic of professionalization. Unlike artistic discourse, the moments of reputation much more closely follow their corresponding moments of professionalization. Resocialization means that individuals must “preen” away aspects of their individuality that get in the way of “fitting with” a crew and a film’s story; alternatively, other crewmembers preen away your reputation if you don’t resocialize adequately. Tacit knowing, because I conceived of it as occurring at the level of the group, i.e., among crewmembers, means that others see you tacitly know. I associate tacit knowing as a moment of professionalization because it is an “everyday” “practice-based” “skill,” and exhibiting that skill helps crewmembers’ reputations. Crewmembers who tacitly know with each other “socially” “make” each other’s reputations. In this case, we see that tacit knowing is a skill and social reputation-making is not a skill, and thus I have reason to analytically separate the two dialectics. But once we come to “tacit anticipation,” it is difficult to separate it from “hustling” as “industrial reputation-posturing.” If anything, “tacit anticipation” is in a sense more thoroughgoing, more drawn out than the separate instance of hustling, say, for entry into Production Class. In sum, we can see how the dialectics of reputation and professionalization are quite knotted; only in some instances do they unfurl and move along in parallel. 316 “Tacit Anticipation” as Denouement of Dialectic Amidst the fountains and courtyards of film school, in its classrooms, post- production suites, and sound stages, “tacit anticipation” manifests as the final moment of dialectical unfolding that began with “resocialization.” Resocialized individuals who have practiced tacit knowing in crews and may or may not have experienced the moment of artistic discourse are now more ready for industry than before they started film school. They are much more filmmakers now than they are students. Tacit anticipation has absorbed both prior moments. If a student has never learned to resocialize, he or she cannot tacitly anticipate industry norms, opportunities, and whims in a meaningful way; s/he will most certainly be rejected by industry. If a resocialized crewmember has never experienced the elements of tacit knowing (which is practically impossible), he or she cannot know what it means to be efficient while maintaining role-based and hierarchical distance, and cannot embody the flexible posture it takes to tacitly anticipate. Being an “efficient” crewmember is one site where students learn how to “posture” with a clear purpose (of getting work done). In other sites, students hustle, or posture their reputations, in order to secure particular positions on crews and classes. Hustling for specific outcomes gets students armed and knowledgeable for the long drawn out moment of tacit anticipation. Resocialized, hustling students are made productive in that they have taken on the shape of shape-shiftiness. This is the shape of a particular species of professional, but it is professional nonetheless. To return to the terminology of Chapter 1, their future “work” and future “industry” lies in anticipation of them. This embedded agency, this sense of 317 being “agentive,” is their armament for the next moment of professionalization, which is whatever the industry throws at them as they finally make their way into it. What tacit anticipation will “become” is yet to be determined, and is the purview of future research. Until then, student filmmakers—for that’s what they are, a steely permutation of “filmmaker” and “student”— are actively conscious, raring for the next moment. We have tacit anticipation as dialectic. Contribution #2 – Dialectically Catalyzing Conversation Among Literatures (aka, Future Avenues of Research) Having shown how the empirical evidence is categorized and theorized as a dialectic of professionalization, I now show how dialectic also catalyzes conversation among disparate literatures. I do so by connecting the socialization literature with the organizational communication literature; and the organizational communication literature with the production studies literature. 91 Resocialization : Tacit Knowing :: Socialization Literature : Organizational Literature :: Careers as Work : Knowing as Work In Chapter 2, I argued that resocialization is a continuous, messy, and tentative social process of individuals having to repeatedly embed themselves in groups or organizational forms. This statement implies that the group and organizational form itself has to be ‘open’ to such continuous, tentative embedding. In other words, 91 I connect the socialization literature with the production studies/media industries literature under the separate heading, “Contribution #3.” This is because I am more directly conversing with Becker et al.’s (1961) tour de force, canonical, ethnographic contribution on professional socialization, which has spawned more than a generation’s equivalent of similar studies in different disciplines. Although, in a sense Becker et al. are also talking about the intersection of career and industry, production studies was not really a field back then (except for work such as Powdermaker [1950] or Leo Rosten [1941], both of which fall under “media industries” if anything, since they are not about production.) So, to honor the weight of Becker et al.’s contribution, and because I believe that my work in many ways speaks to theirs, I use the separate heading of “Contribution #3.” 318 “resocialization” and “temporary organizations” go hand-in-hand. Further, I argued that resocialization is necessary for “efficient” group functioning, i.e., for tacit knowing. Therefore, not only do I contribute the concept “resocialization” to the socialization literature, but I force the socialization literature (a chunk of which resides in the discipline of organizational social psychology) to converse with the literature on temporary organizations (a chunk of which resides in the business/management sub- discipline of the organizational studies discipline). This conversation brings out the need for research on how resocialization might operate in other temporary organizational forms, such as emergency response teams (in hospitals, for instance) and disaster management teams (firefighting crews, for instance). Both teams are types of temporary organization, where individuals with diverse special skills congregate for a limited period of time, for a fixed purpose, and then disband. The following are examples of research questions for scholars interested in this confluence: How is resocialization elsewhere different from resocialization into Hollywood film crews? Does the unique cultural nature of the output of media industries make resocialization in the film industry unique? Alternatively, in what way is resocialization different when you factor in ‘life’ (human and ecosystem) at stake during emergency and disaster response? Another avenue of research is suggested when we ask, ‘How do “stable permanent ties” form, outside the context of a project or temporary organization?’ (Ferriani, Corrado, & Boschetti, 2005) Recent research in the film industry has shown that individuals tend to form “semi-permanent” work groups that move around as a unit from project-to-project. This is especially common among camera crews (Blair, 2001; 319 Greenhalgh, 2010), whose members come to know they prefer to work with each other, or are able to market a special craft-related skill they have learned to coordinate. They band together project-to-project in order to hedge the risk of uncertainty and unemployment in media industries (DeFilippi & Arthur, 1998). Thus, a potential research question could be: What does resocialization look like when projects are codified within ‘permanent’ organizations—such as “matrix organizations” (Barley & Kunda, 2006; Kunda, 2006)—and how does that impact career ties and collaborations? Tacit Knowing : Tacit Anticipation :: Organizational Literature : Media Industries Literature :: Knowing as Work : Industry as Labor I am surprised by how little conversation there has been between some of the driving concepts of the business/management slice of the organizational studies literature and the critical cultural studies slice of the media industry studies literature (to say nothing of the normative orientations of scholars such as Nussbaum [2002] and Hesmondhalgh [2010], that I interpret as the middle ground). Take the essence of the idea of “tacit knowing,” for instance: it is agency. The way I describe it—my elucidation of four elements that form the “complex” of tacit knowing is definitely a contribution to the sub-literature addressed by scholars such as Nonaka & van Krogh (2009)—tacit knowing is many kinds of agency. First, it is knowing that one can know in a social setting where there exists multiple types of knowing, about one’s own craft, others’ craft and tasks, hierarchy, and story. Second, it is knowing how and when to act on (make “explicit”) what one tacitly knows. And sometimes, when tacit knowing verges into the moment of artistic discourse, it is knowing that one must act on one’s tacit knowing. Generally, though, I think scholars 320 don’t consider tacit knowing because it is operative already, it is “at work” already. I submit that that few scholars have conceptualized tacit knowing in this manner, at least not without first tying it to an opposition, as Giddens (1984) did when he paired agency (“knowledgeabilty”) with structure. When it comes to other literatures, especially the media industries literature, “agency” is an oft-used term, but surprisingly, scholars don’t connect it with “knowing” and “knowledge.” This is especially true in the laborist strand. Yet management social scientists and critical humanists are very often studying the same phenomenon, e.g., activity in film crews or inside media organizations. I am not saying the blinders are not justified, but it’s almost as though each discipline shrugs, ‘Why converse? Why reconcile? Why limit the power of our scholarship?’ My initial response is, ‘Why not first try?’ My slightly more considered response is as follows. Student filmmakers tacitly know typically because they can; it is ‘natural’ within their daily practice. Management and business studies sieves this phenomenon as prescriptive. They view humans as inherently “knowledgeable,” as “capable,” and that’s a strength, a ‘pro’ for the consulting-oriented domain of business management and strategy. By contrast, Hesmondhalgh & Baker (2011) and others interpret the “can” as a “should;” scholars in this camp might sieve tacit knowing as normative. They ask us to think about the quality standards one should expect—even impose—on media industry products, given that they are cultural products of significant symbolic and ideological value. They ask that we interrogate whether “work” and its output meets the bar of “good.” And pushing back against both, critical humanists such as Mayer (2011) and Caldwell (2014) ask, ‘Who controls the standard of “good”? To whom are human agents 321 and their daily agency ultimately directed?’ Critical humanists are, relatively, conservative. As an ethnographic researcher caught in these formidable cross-currents, I attempted in this dissertation to refrain from any disciplinary commitments when I discovered the question, ‘Why not view media industries work/labor as dialectic?’ A Hollywood studio executive who might end up hiring a bright and shiny “tacitly anticipating” student filmmaker needs their prior experience in tacit knowing and resocialization. Hollywood studio executives, those czars that scrunch ideological products into profit spreadsheets, rely on film schools and students to have undergone a dialectic of professionalization. They rely on “society” in general (Mehta, 2012) to uphold normative values of ‘work’ and ‘career.’ And even less conspicuously, they rely on society in general upholding the value of craft, and the value of formal domains such as film (i.e., audiences know and value the form of story, irrespective of how it’s packaged by industry). Scholars like Mayer might bemoan a student filmmaker’s “identification with [their] labor.” However, as an ethnographer I found that students independently understand and cherish the joy-within-the grime of filmmaking; they tacitly know it as “work.” Students also understand the structure of movies and story, one that they recognize ultimately exists outside the domain of media industries, which is governed by tides other than those of hegemony. (“A good story is a good story is a good story. Period.” I overheard this while waiting in line for coffee at LAFilm.) At the same time, I can also see that scholars like Orlikowksi (2002) or philosophers like Polanyi (1957; 1966) don’t readily admit to the hegemonic influence of larger systems, or don’t acknowledge enough the idea that even though student 322 filmmakers might show robust agency or might be knowledgeable because “practice” means being knowledgeable, ironically, agents are embedded in a particular domain, a primary domain. For student filmmakers, that domain is that of media industries, and their stance towards it is tacit anticipation. They are able to draw agency from separate, parallel domains; those domains have different governing mechanisms. However, in an everyday sense, students’ work, even students’ “good work” and “good products” are directed towards, are for the primary domain of media industries whose currency is neoliberalism (Ortner, 2013). I don’t see an easy overarching resolution except that scholars should consciously acknowledge these larger questions, interrelations, and differences. Disciplines don’t get to hide any more within their comfortable paradigms. After all, these student filmmakers, some of whom might end up as Hollywood executives, don’t get to hide, not from their good or not so good work, not from their knowing about their careers, and definitely not as labor succumbed to industry. A future research avenue is to continue following students as they make their way into the industry. Does their idea of “story” or “craft” change? Do they still exhibit “tacit knowing” on industry crews? Does their “artistic discourse” turn into Caldwell’s “industrial self-theorizing”? Do they consider “good work” as work or labor? What “becomes” of their “tacit anticipation”? (And how can researchers operationalize these questions?) Contribution #3 – “Professionalization” in LAFilm: Conversing with Boys in White Becker, Geer, Hughes, and Strauss (1961) published Boys in White, a landmark ethnographic study of professional socialization among medical students at the University of Kansas Medical School in the mid-1950s. Since then, professional socialization has 323 been studied in what Strauss (1987) would call numerous “substantive” and “empirical” areas, such as law (Erlanger & Klegon, 1978), social work (Barretti, 2004), nursing (Toit, 1995), accounting (Fogarty, 1992), mortuary science (Cahill, 1999), and doctoral student education (Adler & Adler, 2005; Mendoza, 2007; Gardner, 2008). With the exception of Henderson (1990; 1998), I do not know of an empirical study of professional socialization for the film/TV industries, let alone one of film students. Therefore, this dissertation converses with the larger literature on professional socialization, and importantly, contributes an understanding of professional socialization as “dialectic.” In this limited space, I resort to the secondary literature to preview Becker et al.’s findings, and offer some initial thoughts on how, barring the 55-year gap across which we did our fieldwork, my research on film students in LAFilm is similar to and different from their research on medical students in Kansas. In other words, I offer one response to the question, ‘What does professional socialization look like across disciplines?’ Fine and Ducharme (1995) discuss Boys in White (BIW) with clarity and insight. Here is an extended excerpt that overviews BIW’s themes. BIW analyzes organization loyalty and the dynamics of the mass processing of people… The study attempts to address how individuals protect themselves from the demand of the organizations in which they are embedded, and, thus, allows one to sketch similarities between medical school and other agencies of socialization… BIW has three major themes. First, the authors describe medical school as an agent of socialization, a medical “factory” producing physicians as products. But the end result is not always created through the means prescribed by the 324 faculty. This marks the second theme, the conflicting demands and perspectives of faculty and students. The goal is to “get through” with as much interpersonal smoothness as possible: to create space for personal comfort… While the faculty have (high) expectations of what and how students should learn, students collectively arrive at a strategic and economical perspective which allows them to survive medical school. Given time constraints, students develop strategies to “get by,” and bypass the lofty demands of their instructors… Yet in escaping conformity to organizational demands, the students must answer collectively. They have carved out a space for themselves, and this space demands their allegiance. The third theme is related to the notion of idealism. Students arrive at medical school with an idealistic purpose—a medical patriotism—that must soon be abandoned if they are to survive academically and if they are to recognize realistically the underside of medical practice. It is not too far-fetched to suggest that wanting to serve humanity is a luxury in a social system in which time is precious. The instrumental demands take priority over its moral demands… Idealism goes “underground,” only to emerge at the end of the training period in a revised, more “realistic" form… These doctors-to-be are in some sense as much “worked on” as those afflicted with psychoses…: the issue is what is done to them and how they cope with and struggle for control. (pp. 122-3) Immediately, similarities and differences between our studies become evident. Becker et al. also attend to how students’ outlooks are transformed as they go through the many years of graduate school. I submit that I pay closer attention to the dialectical movement 325 in film students’ transformation, but the broader picture is similar in that the initial ‘state’ of film students themselves is “worked on” to a “more realistic form,” which I describe as “tacit anticipation.” However, students at LAFilm do not enter with a homogenous mindset, compared to what Becker at al. found as “idealism” among entering University of Kansas medical students. I found more diverse and more unpredictable (from the point of view of resocialization) combinations of the factors of individuality and directorialness. Also, LAFilm students did not respond to the “conflicting demands” of faculty “collectively,” nor with the desire to ensure “interpersonal smoothness.” As I showed in Chapter 4’s mini-dialectic of vacillation between appropriation and resistance, LAFilm students had to filter through the “cacophony” of industrial and pedagogical discourse, not just of their faculty but even their peers, in order to rediscover their own “authorial” voice. There was no ongoing “patriotism” about the profession; if anything, students had to learn to rediscover their relationship to story, story world, character, and emotion. Thus, their manner of “protecting themselves” from the “demands of the organizations in which they are embedded” differed from that of the boys in white. Finally, as I have discussed, I did not find that LAFilm churned out filmmakers as industry products. Having undergone the dialectical movements of resocialization and tacit knowing, these students were not, as successive cohorts, completely ‘given’ to industry. They were rather tacitly anticipating it. Meanwhile, during their time at school, they came to understand story better and film better. And for them, I suggest, film and story are a different domain of existence than are the industries they tacitly anticipate. 326 This brings us to the most striking difference between medical and film students: the former, quite literally, operate on life, whereas the latter ‘operate’ on cultural symbols with ideological purchase (Mayer, Banks & Caldwell, 2009). This leads me to posit that something about the pleasures as well as the depravity of professional socialization must owe to the nature of an occupation or a craft (Bechky [2011] indirectly suggests this). Becker et al. found that students are “worked on” as though they themselves were “afflicted with psychoses.” (Fine & Ducharme, 1995) By contrast, LAFilm students are “worked on” not directly by humans but by the human domains of story and industry. Therefore, I tentatively suggest that to be professionally socialized for an occupation that is about saving actual lives means anticipating a differently resistive and agentive posture than for an occupation that is about enhancing cultural and social life (even as it entrenches ideological lifestyle). Student filmmakers and crews that I observed were “afflicted” by the stories they wanted to tell, which experience was contingent upon the particular crew, production class, genre—i.e., industrial structure—they were occupied with. By contrast, it seems to me that the experience of medical students was contingent upon distinctly more pedagogical—and ethical—demands of the occupation in general, and thus faced constraints that potentially had longer term consequences. After all, their “anticipatory socialization” (Harvill, 1981) involved “internalizing” [Becker et al.]) death as a routine, which socialization is a strikingly different human condition 92 than the anticipatory socialization of appropriating and resisting—not the same as “internalizing”—industry structure and ideology as a routine. Therefore, socialization for 92 The move I am making here is considering socialization more generally as a “human condition.” Nothing in the dissertation so far has led me to theorize “human condition.” I found that I was led to positing something new, and since that is expected from the grounded theory methodology, I will hold on to it, even if it raises more questions than answers. 327 the medical field does not seem to have the same tinges and moments of being “made productive” as it does for the filmmaking field. The import for production studies and media industries scholars is that they need to explicitly theorize “occupation” and “career”. What is distinctive about Becker et al.’s medical students is how their actions throughout medical school were oriented towards their relationship to the occupation (everyday tacit knowing) of a doctor; what the industrial (political economic) world of doctors was like was less crucial to their socialization (it seems). Thus, future research on film and TV industrialized workers needs to consider whether and what it means to have a relationship with their work, occupation and craft that is over and above “industry” (e.g., Mayer’s [2011] “identification with labor” or Caldwell’s [2008] “industrial self-theorizing”). Thus, we return to where we started (wonderfully apropos, per T. S. Eliot 93 ): Chapter 1’s “semi-permeable membrane” separating work and industry. Future research, including research on professional socialization, must constantly attend to their osmosis. Concluding Remarks: Reflexivity as a Researcher As grueling as the process of writing this dissertation has been, I have to say that time spent with my LAFilm subjects—on and off set, from elevators to corridors, from classroom through sound stage to edit suite, from long drives home from faraway locations to the stage on public screenings—has been truly memorable and pleasurable. I am very grateful for how things turned out, and consider it my privilege to have participated in the making of two films. Meanwhile, as a researcher, I tried to do justice 93 In Four Quartets, poet T. S. Eliot wrote: “We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.” 328 to interpreting their discourse and practices by being as methodologically rigorous as is feasible. As Geertz (1973) would have it, I have tried to “make available answers that others, guarding other sheep in other valleys, have given, and thus include them in the consultable record of what man has said.” (p. 30) Of course, there were challenges along the way. Even as students welcomed me (once the initial hurdles of access were cleared), they, especially the Guffaw crew, could never fully let go of my status as a researcher. In many situations—especially heated production meetings—my subjects were hyperaware that I was taking notes, and this would add to the awkwardness. Once I realized this, I would consciously stop taking notes and conspicuously close my note pad. This in turn would provoke someone to gesturing me, ‘Why aren’t you taking this down?’ Maya, for instance, passed a comment at the end of a particularly eventful meeting, “I think we just handed Ritesh the Pulitzer.” Others would constantly think on my behalf. Seth alerted me to the shooting of a particularly complex dolly move by saying, “I think you might want to observe the collaboration on this.” Cate told me before the table screening with the faculty, “I think you will get a lot of good stuff today.” Others were more hostile. Once, one of the Production Class crews I was not following, was trying to recall in a breakout session what was discussed in class on an earlier day; one of their crewmembers turned around to me and said, “I bet you know.” I had to reassure people quite frequently that I was not interested in a “journalistic exposé,” but rather in theoretical generalizations I could draw about social activity. Not everyone was appeased. At the end of our interview, Dade told me, “Make me look good, Ritesh. Make me look good, man.” 329 At the same time, I enjoyed people appreciating my presence as crewmember. On my first day on set of Ingrates, I was extremely excited. Finally, after all the years of watching and loving movies, I about to help make one! So eager was I that I began to mess up outfitting myself with the walkie-talkie. I asked Jolene to take a picture, and made a funny face. Both she and Ben burst out laughing. Later, she told me that that moment made her day; everyone was so stressed out because it was the first day of filming, and my joie de vivre helped dissipate that. On Guffaw, Maurice complimented my “nice energy,” and Gail told me that I was a “good worker.” And as much as the Guffaw crew might have been insecure about my status, they made sure to invite me to the stage during Dade and Duane’s acceptance speeches after the public screening. I believe that it helped that I was a student observing other students. This is along the lines of Ortner’s (2010) suggestion of “studying sideways,” i.e., studying subjects from the same socioeconomic background or “knowledge class” as the researcher. Plus, it helped that I was genuinely interested in filmmaking and somewhat of a movie and TV buff. Sid, Ben, Don, and Cate could tell that there were moments I wasn’t simply observing but was actually interested in the craft and the technique. And yet, I have to say that at some point during the process, I felt my love for movies diminish (it’s since been restored, I think). Observing and participating in the throes of filmmaking took away the mystique behind movies. I saw not just the micropolitcs, but also experienced the “labor” and the exhaustion, and realized the poetics behind storytelling. That was a dark period for me personally, because one of my greatest passions, so embroiled with my greatest academic undertaking, was momentarily bereft of its glow. As a subject in the setting I was observing, I became disenchanted with the “sheep” I was “guarding.” 330 Finally, as a doctoral candidate preparing himself for an academic career, and reading the recent articles in avenues such as The Chronicle of Higher Education about the corporatization and industrialization of higher education in the US, I experienced frustrated moments alongside my own “dialectic of professionalization.” First, I was thrilled to realize that I too was on the same formal dialectic as my subjects. Then, I became less thrilled that I too was posturing and “tacitly anticipating” my future. There were days when I could not separate what I was researching from my own experience. Our “lifeworlds” (Schutz, 1967) had merged. Then it struck me: maybe this interpenetration is not a coincidence, or even a reason to think that my research is methodologically invalid. Maybe a characteristic of the modern/postmodern moment is thoroughgoing tacit anticipation. Maybe tacit anticipation is a “disjuncture” among various shifting shapes and “scapes.” (Appadurai, 1990) Maybe that’s what the anthropological “world system” (Marcus, 1995) leads all subjects, including anthropologists, to experience. Maybe tacit anticipation is the current “human condition,” even for those in power, those who hold the “numbered cards” (Newcomb, 2009, p. 270); they just don’t realize it. I should stop my reflection before I turn on myself. I’ll end with the tantalization that this project has made me aware of the possibilities and limitations of me being a filmmaker. Making a film is telling a story about the world that matters to an audience. As academics, we don’t do radically different things. Writing this ethnography is not different from making a documentary. It’s just that researchers, in their “valleys,” theorize rather than narrativize the “imponderabilia” they “guard.” (Malinowski, 1922) And that’s (a) (how they) wrap! 331 BIBLIOGRAPHY Adler, P. 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London, UK: Verson Zafirau, S. (2008). Reputation work in selling film and television: Life in the Hollywood talent industry. Qualitative Sociology, 31(2), 99-127. 343 APPENDIX 1: DEMOGRAPHIC BREAKDOWN PER STUDENT FILM Demographic information of informants (participant observation, interviews, or both) for this study—i.e., student crewmembers of Guffaw, Tropos (both films for Production Class), and Ingrates (a thesis film), as well as the faculty for Production Class—is detailed below. Per IRB requirements, all names except for the researcher’s are changed. All students are enrolled in LAFilm’s MFA Production program, unless indicated. I also indicate whether interviews with subjects were included in the study. Note: If a crew member’s semester is not mentioned, it means that they are not a student at all, not a student at LAFilm, or their status is unknown. Film Role on Crew Gender Ethnicity Semester Int? Guffaw (Made for Production Class) Dade Director (not the writer) M Black 6 th Yes Duane Producer M Black 6 th Yes Gail Producer F Black 6 th Tina 1 st Assistant Director F Asian* 6 th Yes Ritesh 2 nd Assistant Director M Asian* n/a n/a Cate Director of Photography F White 5 th Yes Maurice Director of Photography M White 3 rd Yes Abe Production Designer M White 5 th Yes Juan Production Designer M Hispanic 6 th Sid Editor M Asian 3 rd Yes Maya Editor F Asian 3 rd Yes Kim Sound F Asian 5 th Yes Tropos (Made for Production Class) Melbourne Director (not the writer) M Asian 6 th Yes Tanya Producer F Black 3 rd Yes Mikhail 1 st Assistant Director M White 3 rd Yes Ingrates (Thesis film) Ben Writer-Director M White Post-6 th Yes Jolene Producer F Biracial Post-6 th Yes Merle Co-Producer M Asian Undergrad Richie Co-Producer M White Undergrad Seth 1 st Assistant Director M White Yes Ritesh 2 nd Assistant Director M Asian* n/a n/a Yasha Director of Photography M Asian Post-6 th Yes Kelly Key Grip (under DP) M Asian Yes Elena Gaffer (under DP) F White Wade Grip/Electric (G/E) (ditto) M White Undergrad Ignacio Grip / Electric (ditto) M Hispanic 344 Lara Production Designer F (unknown) Post-6 th Yael Art Director (under PD) F White Post-6 th Don Editor M White Post-6 th Yes Faculty/SA (mentor to) HF [Head Faculty/Lead Instructor] Producers & ADs M White DPF Directors of Photography M White PDF Production Designers F White DF Directors M Asian EDF Editors M White SDF Sound Designers (on set boom operators) M White SMF Sound Mixers (post- production) F White Lavos [Student Assistant] M Hispanic* Yes Legend (Appendix 1) “Under” ‘Reports to, hierarchically’ * International student “Int?” Was the subject interviewed? 345 APPENDIX 2: VISUAL SUMMARY OF DIALECTICS & GROUNDED THEORY Legend (Appendix 2) * Subcategory or property of core/main category => Dialectical movement from subcategory to core/main category (ignore blue line above)

Abstract (if available)

Abstract In this ethnographic study of aspiring filmmakers working together to make movies in film school, in the backyard of the film and television industries, I argue that students undergo a “dialectic of professionalization.” Using participant observation, interviews and grounded theory, I found individuals enter film school with varying “factors of individuality,” such as ambition, restraint, and aesthetic subjectivity. Interfacing with curricular requirements to make films, they undergo a tentative, messy yet social process I term “resocialization”: they need to repeatedly ‘fit with’ film crews considered as temporary organizational structures {Chapter 2}. Once resocialized as crewmembers, they exhibit a variety of “tacit knowing,” not only of filmmaking roles, hierarchies, and routines, but also of story, emotion, and characters, thereby “socially making” their reputations even as they discover “artistic discourse” {Chapter 3}. Simultaneously in the classroom, students find themselves embedded in a “cacophony” of conflicting pedagogical discourse about industrial norms, and vacillate between resistance and appropriation in order to extricate their own “authorial” voice. As they form particular reputations and make particular films, they take on the “posture” of “tacit anticipation,” a perpetually alert ‘shape-shiftiness’ that does not fully embrace but cannot fully ignore the call of industry {Chapter 4}. I theorize these changes as “dialectic,” building on philosopher G. W. F. Hegel’s ontology {Chapter 5}. I submit that student filmmakers are not fully socialized in film school as future labor for media industries. Since they have undergone resocialization, practiced tacit knowing, discovered film as formal story, and “hustled” for work, they leave school having been, in various ways, “made productive.” That is what “professional” finally looks like: the more self-reflexive mode of tacit anticipation. Future media production studies must adequately theorize their subjects’ relationships to “work”, “career,” “knowing” and craft “form,” before they can write them off as mere neoliberal “labor.”

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MATCH CUT: the making of professional screenwriters and a (counter)storytelling movement in film school

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Creator Mehta, Ritesh (author)

Core Title Tacit anticipation among film students: an ethnography of making movies in film school

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Communication

Publication Date 07/23/2017

Defense Date 04/22/2015

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag art school,art worlds,artistic discourse,auteur theory,authorial,authoring,cinema,collaboration,creativity,cultures of production,dialectic,directorialness,embeddedness,ethnography,film crew,film industry,film school,filmmaking,good work,grounded theory,Hegel,hierarchy,Hollywood,hustling,interpretive anthropology,knowledgeability,labor studies,media industries,media industry,micropolitics,OAI-PMH Harvest,other fields other valleys,para-industry,parallel domains,participant observation,practice studies,production cultures,production studies,productivity,Professional socialization,professionalization,resocialization,roles,routines,Second Chicago School,socialization,sociology of careers,sociology of occupations,sociology of work,Storytelling,student filmmaker,tacit anticipation,tacit knowing,tacit knowledge,temporary group,temporary organization

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Advisor Jenkins, Henry (committee chair), Gross, Larry P. (committee member), Lutkehaus, Nancy (committee member), Riley, Patricia (committee member)

Creator Email creativelives@gmail.com,riteshm@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c3-608405

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