u/TheoGelernter

I am and always have been an avid consumer of director interviews, bts, masterclasses etc. But trying to apply the same survivorship bias lens that the productivity guru sphere is now starting to apply, I think over half of the advice you learn consciously or unconsciously from consuming all the 'advice' content from famous directors can be actually quite harmful and potentially damaging to both your career and sanity.

One particular area is the 'auteur' visionary, and how the mantra is all about holding steadfast to your vision no matter the cost. But this simply does not work in the wider world of filmmaking, collaborating, clients etc.

I tried to break it down a bit more and explain it in the video I'll link below, but I wanted to know what everyone else thinks in terms of balancing defending your creative vision so it isn't butchered or watered down to the point you might as well be redundant, vs fighting tooth and nail for every last ounce of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zfBfXNQbOs

There's a UK show called The Assembly where celebrities get interviewed by a group of autistic and neurodivergent people. No pre-agreed questions, no research, no professional interviewer performance. And they have some of the most honest celebrity interview footage I've ever seen — far better than anything comparable on Netflix.

I've been trying to work out exactly why, not just the obvious fact of the audience being neurodivergent. It's that the interviewers don't perform the interviewer role — so the subject has nothing professional to mirror.

There's a psychological mechanism called communication accommodation that explains this: we match each other's register below conscious awareness. When a professional interviewer sits down, they set a register, and the subject matches it. They perform "documentary subject." They're not being deliberately dishonest — they're being accurate about what kind of interaction this is.

Curious how other doc filmmakers think about this — whether anyone has found a way to maintain enough technical control while genuinely stripping back the professional register. Particularly on non-observational shoots where you're still sitting across from someone in a formal setup. Full video here if it's useful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_S8ckaU6Cxo

Last week, I almost bought a Small HD monitor for my FX6. The justification I gave myself was the EL zone tool — more accurate exposure, the usual. But in the spirit of complete honesty, I didn't want other crew on a set looking at my non-Small HD monitor and judging me/thinking that I wasn't a 'proper filmmaker'.

Ended up getting the 5.5 and 7 inch Hollyland monitors with internal pairing, at a fraction of the cost of a single SmallHD monitor, and they are fantastic. Far more benefits overall than if I had gone the other way.

I think a fair amount of equipment lust, mine certainly and I suspect not just mine, is structurally that. Armour against the much harder, much less buyable question of whether you're any good. The uncertainty about your work doesn't actually go away on its own, but spending money on a product gives you a brief, convincing answer to it. Then the answer fades, you're back where you started, just slightly poorer and with a new box.

I worked through the longer version of this argument in a video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0I9So2bWNI but the question I'd genuinely like to put to people who've been doing this longer than me:

Do you still have this feeling too? Are there things you bought/own that were emotional rather than practical purchases?

Question for anyone who works both solo and team-collaborative.

I spent a long stretch as a self-shooting doc editor on smaller pieces — improvised folder structure, all in my head, never had to explain it. Worked fine for what it was.

A few years back I got pulled in to edit a doc series for the Gates Foundation. Hundreds of hours, dozens of interviews, 5 countries, 8 weeks of production, with assistants and a second editor at points. The volume was a problem, but the actual problem was that other people had to navigate the system. The bits of my logic that were just intuition for me became real obstacles for everyone else. The gaps cost time.

I rebuilt the whole thing — half-stolen from post houses I'd worked at, half-rationalised from what kept breaking — and have used the same logic on every project since, solo or team. Walkthrough here if useful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAPrSg3NeLQ&t=48s

The thing I'd actually like to hear senior editors on:

• where do you draw the line between "system" and "show-specific house style" — the bits that are universal vs the bits you reinvent per project
• how do you onboard a second editor or assistant without writing a 20-page wiki
• multi-shooter dumps — do you rename on ingest, rely on metadata, or just attach a sidecar log

Genuinely curious whether anyone here runs a structure they'd defend in front of a different post house, or whether the honest answer across most rooms is "every show invents its own and we survive."