SLANDER NOT! | THE 11TH COMMANDMENT
People are not idiots! People are wonderful, intuitive being with great things to contribute.
Years ago I called a very talented filmmaker for their services. I wasn’t five minutes into the call before he told me how incompetent every other filmmaker in the valley was and how his style, direction and abilities far exceeded those of everyone else’s. Don’t get me wrong I believe in confidence, but I absolutely abhor (yeah, I’ll talk Biblical wrath terms) the slandering of other filmmakers. I don’t know why this happens so prevalently, but I’ve watched a lot of people come out of school believing themselves to be so genius that no other human being could possibly be worthy of their collaboration.
I don’t know exactly where this demeanor comes from, but I would attribute it to one of two things. 1 | Insecurity, or 2 | Narcissism.
1 | INSECURITY
I think that people tend to believe that they can only get work by cutting someone else down.
I would love for everyone to adopt the mentality that my Good Friend and Mentor, Travis Babcock over at Kineto Pictures taught me years ago. He said, “there’s plenty of work for everybody.” I don’t know exactly how much what a person thinks and says correlates with what the universe gives them, but Travis and his crew have been at a dead sprint with work as long as I can remember.
Travis and his group have never had to get a client based on slandering another group. In fact, if you ever ask Travis about someone else he’ll always tell you their strengths. Just understand that you are not stranded in this universe in a kill or be killed situation to survive.
There’s plenty of work for everybody.
2 | NARCISSISM
This appears to be one of the saddest and most destructive personality traits I’ve ever witnessed. It has a cancerous ripple effect on a set. This personality reduces the level of trust, reduces the improvement of ideas, slows down production, inhibits creativity and generally takes the focus off of a story and focuses it directly on the creator.
The good news is that I’ve seen that time and experience appears to wear this mentality down. In television anyway, there are too many departments to rub wrong with an egoistic mindset that this mentality can only survive so long. I’ve had the misfortune of watching people fired, stripped down, blatantly ignored and hated for an egoistic demeanor.
CONCLUSION
I think a lot of people could vouch for me when I say that I’m not the most gifted human being alive. Don’t get me wrong I didn’t exactly fall off of the stupid truck either. But I think that having weaknesses and realizing that they exist is one of my strengths. Because it has forced me to value other filmmakers and the strengths that they all bring to the table.
Utah and our surrounding states have amazing, talented filmmakers. Please don’t create a negative ripple effect by slandering those wonderful people who are working just as hard as you are to better their craft, their businesses and create amazing productions.
So Chill out, Keep Calm and Create On.
