“All art is about telling the truth”

Stephen was talking about comedy and extrapolating to art in general. Artifice and manipulation does not prevent art from communicating an underlying truth.

Flaherty was talking about the artifice of the process of filmmaking and editing in particular. But his words are very resonant today for a different reason – with the advent of AI-generated video the necessity to lie in documentary is once more under the spotlight. There is a compact between the documentary maker and viewers that what they see is essentially the truth. That rubs smack into the fact that GenAI is artificial creation.

Stumbled across this today and it struck a chord, perfectly capturing my thinking on the subject.

I need to write things from scratch to understand the underlying structures and dynamics. If I receive it on a plate from AI it takes me as long to unpick it and get to grips with how it fits together as to just write it, probably longer.

Of course there are plenty on functional things AI can usefully serve up in an instant. But arguably not things you need to understand deeply.

“To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.”

There’s nothing like a little pressure to force you to up your game. (But too much pressure can result in the opposite effect.) It’s a fine balance.

“Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.”

This applies to travel (this was written on a train from Sevilla to Cadiz) but also more broadly in life. While you’re in the Too Soon realm you’ve still got options and you can use those actual or metaphorical hours productively. Once you’re in the Too Late zone your options are more limited, or even zero.

Now you don’t even have to get hold of a camera as you have one in your pocket.

SMart: the London International Smartphone Film Festival returns this summer, following its debut online.

The same is true in essence of most art forms. The minute you decide how to frame your photo, you are interpreting reality. Indeed, the minute you look at a scene and decide the angle and scope of your gaze, you are already in a way making art.

Graham Greene said much the same about writing and storytelling generally:

“A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.” (opening line of The End of the Affair (1951))

Of course it’s not arbitrary – it’s the art of the writer and filmmaker.

In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.

It is sometimes good to forget what you know and adopt a ‘beginner’s mind’. To stay open and listen. Listen to understand not to respond. To be curious instead of judging. To be comfortable with not knowing. To recognise that some ideas are seeds not answers. To be playful. To look for evidence that contradicts your own certainty. To keep asking questions…

When you go out with your camera to gather footage that illustrates your ideas or theories, you are a journalist.

When you go out with your camera to see how the world actually is, you are a filmmaker.

“When we are supported, we rise together”

Chaka Khan

Alan Ginsberg is a shining example of Chaka Khan’s philosophy on mentorship and support. He didn’t see other poets as competition. He wanted all boats to rise on the tide of the Beat movement, despite being in the dominant position. He encouraged unlikely types to try their hands at poetry, with varying degrees of success, including Gregory Corso, Peter Orlovsky and Herbert Huncke. He stuck with Jack Kerouac and ‘On The Road’ until that Beat classic was finally published, hawking the manuscript around in a plastic bag to his own publishers. And he even mentored Bob Dylan with regard to the poetic dimension of his songwriting.