John Thornton Caldwell is Professor and Chair of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Televisuality: Style, Crisis, and Authority in American Television; editor of Electronic Media and Technoculture; and coeditor of New Media: Theories and Practices of Digitextuality. He is the producer and director of the award-winning documentaries Rancho California (por favor) and Freak Street to Goa: Immigrants on the Rajpath.

PRODUCTION CULTURE

Industrial Reflexivity and Critical Practice in Film and TelevisionBy JOHN THORNTON CALDWELL

Duke University Press

Copyright © 2008 Duke University Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8223-4092-8

Contents

Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………………………………………..1Introduction Industrial Reflexivity and Common Sense………………………………………………………………………37Chapter 1 Trade Stories and Career Capital……………………………………………………………………………….69Chapter 2 Trade Rituals and Turf Marking…………………………………………………………………………………110Chapter 3 Trade Images and Imagined Communities (Below the Line)……………………………………………………………150Chapter 4 Trade Machines and Manufactured Identities (Below the Line)……………………………………………………….197Chapter 5 Industrial Auteur Theory (Above the Line / Creative)……………………………………………………………..232Chapter 6 Industrial Identity Theory (Above the Line / Business)……………………………………………………………274Chapter 7 Industrial Reflexivity as Viral Marketing……………………………………………………………………….316Conclusion Shoot-Outs, Bake-Offs, and Speed Dating (Manic Disclosure/Non-Disclosure)………………………………………….345Appendix 1 Method: Artifacts and Cultural Practices in Production Studies……………………………………………………362Appendix 2 A Taxonomy of DVD Bonus Track Strategies and Functions…………………………………………………………..368Appendix 3 Practitioner Avowal/Disavowal (Industrial Doublespeak)…………………………………………………………..370Appendix 4 Corporate Reflexivity vs. Worker Reflexivity (The Two Warring Flipsides of IndustrialSelf-Disclosure)…………………373Notes…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………433Works Cited……………………………………………………………………………………………………………445

Chapter One

Trade Stories and Career Capital

Film studies as a field matured in part by embracing narrative theory as one of its defining methods. An impressive body of theoretical books, written over the course of many decades, has focused on the narrative analysis of film and television. Yet little or no attention has been paid to the trade stories that practitioners tell among themselves within the work worlds that produce films and series. In this chapter I look at the ways the production culture in Los Angeles makes sense of itself, to itself, through trade narratives and practitioner storytelling rituals. Trade stories have long been a source of knowledge and a form of pedagogy intended to help assistants and trainees master their specialized crafts in unions and guilds. Various narrative trade genres (making-it sagas, coming-of-age tales, against-all-odds technical anecdotes, and cautionary tales) also help practitioner communities weather change in the face of technological flux and economic instability. In this chapter I describe some of the formal characteristics of trade stories (who tells them, using what forms of plot and character development) and then place trade storytelling within specific labor sectors and working contexts. Finally, I suggest possible cultural functions for the trade groups that tell and hear trade stories. This chapter is organized around a provisional list of popular trade genres, their contexts, and their functions, as noted in table 1.

The breakdown of genres as delineated in table 1 should not be taken as a set of firm categories or as a necessary or complete list of trade genres, contexts, and functions. Rather, the genres listed there can be usefully examined as recurring tendencies, while the relationships to sectors and cultural functions can be viewed as symptomatic rather than as definitive or determining. In the pages that follow I will demonstrate how practitioners employ these symptomatic trade stories to make sense of their specific work worlds and their creative or managerial task at hand.

WAR STORIES (BELOW-THE-LINE TECHNICAL CRAFTS)

Audiences attending even a few talks or public appearances by production personnel will likely introduce them to one of the standby trade narrative conventions: the production war story. In person and in print film/video practitioners commonly tell their personal and professional stories via anecdotes and allegories that connect film/video creation to military struggle and war footing. Although producers and directors will sometimes slip into this mode, the tendency is most pronounced in the trade storytelling practices of below-the-line workers in the technical crafts (camera operators, sound recordists, editors, grips, and gaffers). Consider the following story, which is employed as both a pedagogical lesson and a fairly transparent allegory of the work done by members of the American Society of Cinematographers:

Cronenweth was executing a handheld shot that tracked the Japanese soldier (played by Toshiro Mifune) as he struggled through the jungle on the island location. The island was littered with debris, making it very difficult for Cronenweth to move smoothly. Hall recalls, “Jordan was handholding a Panavision camera, probably with a 1000-foot mag. It was hot, 90 degrees or more, and the humidity was 95. We were all drenched in sweat, wearing swimsuits, tee shirts, and sandals made of rubber thongs. Mifune went over a hillock full of vines. As Jordan followed him, shooting wide-angle, he stepped on a wooden board. It was a rotten board with a rusty nail sticking out of it, and the nail went right through Jordan’s thongs, through the sole and out of the top of his foot. But Jordan was so into the shot that he didn’t even feel it! He kept right on shooting. He lifted his foot to take a sideways step, and up went this six-foot board attached to his foot. Jordan was trying to shake the thing o as he kept doing the shot! Finally, mercifully, someone yelled ‘Cut!’ That was Jordan. He was so deeply into cinema that pain came second.”

Benjamin Bergery, who in this passage is quoting DP Conrad Hall, ASC, here introduces his ostensibly definitive primer on camera operation and lighting by underscoring the obliviousness to pain required by a truly committed camera operator when bogged down in the warlike conditions of location production. Note the care with which the storyteller emphasizes images of suffocating heat and sweat, skewered sinew, and lost blood as almost natural extensions of the camera operator’s task. Note the concern with tactility and texture as well as the need for a strapping physique in order to haul around successfully a heavy and burdensome Panavision camera. More interesting still is the storyteller’s ability to efficiently bring this trade story to a successful narrative resolution or denouement (“someone mercifully yelled ‘Cut!'”). This dramatic arc, furthermore, is made complete when a “moral lesson” to be learned from the tale (working “so deeply into cinema [means] that pain came second”) is tagged onto the parable by the narrator. The below-the-line and working-class assumption that production is a form of war is a notion shared by others-including some screenwriters who are handsomely paid for rewrites and script consulting even though many who do this never achieve the required on-screen writing credit needed for above-the-line status.

Closely related to the war-story mythos of production is what I term the “against-all-odds” allegory. This story form serves as a useful means to establish a set of ideal character traits: lowly origins, physical perseverance, and tenacity. Trade stories in the technical crafts-that is, tales told by editors, camera operators, and production workers-frequently emphasize modest or lowly personal origins, even though the practitioner may be creating film/video for mainstream media companies or prestige studios. For these workers, locating their genesis on the professional peripheries establishes four assumptions in public discussions. First, it underscores the humble, unexceptional origins needed to create the rising action and dramatic arc of the classical myth of heroism. The cinematographer Daryn Okada, ASC, underscores this narrative premise. When he was asked where he studied or trained, Okada replied: “Unfortunately, film school was beyond my financial grasp, so I focused my time on reading about art, photography, and film history. I also read American Cinematographer when I could get my hands on a copy. To gain practical experience, I donated time on student films, shorts, documentaries and low budget features in any job that was open.” Second, the against-all-odds genre works to highlight the pluck, persistence, and tenacity of the worker in finally achieving his or her now well-earned success. For example, when Okada was asked who were his early teachers and mentors, he stated: “I tried to get on the union roster but it was closed to me. I wish I could have worked in the studio system, learning from other cinematographers.” This response by Okada is an interesting rhetorical gambit: namely, he is explaining to one honorary labor organization (the ASC) his exclusion as an “outsider” by another interrelated but supposedly more closed-rank labor organization (the IATSE camera union local).

The third function of the against-all-odds mythos occurs when accounts of outsider discrimination and industrial exclusion suggest that the craftsman has the related ability to make art or creatively innovate with few temporal or financial resources and support. The manufacturer Eastman Kodak exploits this common trope in a series of biographical stories that make up its “On Film” marketing campaign. In one segment, the cinematographer Sam Bayer states: “One of the things I learned in art school is that you don’t need twenty-five years of training to create a great painting. You have to dig inside of yourself and create something that comes from your heart and soul. MTV was like an experimental film school for me…. It’s a combination of intuition and experience. Stanley Kubrick was one of my heroes. I had a zoom lens he had developed for Barry Lyndon pulled out of mothballs for a commercial where I wanted a particular effect. I can’t explain the technology, but I knew what I wanted it to do. I also know that if I use a certain film and push it two stops on a dark city street, I’m going to create an emotional experience.”

Note the emphasis that the “untutored” cinematographer Bayer places on creating something out of nothing, and of using forgotten, dust-covered technology to create even in the commercial sphere of advertising a work of “heart and soul.” Remarkably, Kodak’s promotional biographical tale explicitly links this artistic capacity not to the multimillion dollar Hollywood projects that keep the corporation’s stockholders afloat, but to Bayer’s lone and scrappy “bohemian” origins in New York. Kodak draws out the allegory’s moral lesson by noting that Bayer “was a ‘starving’ painter before he directed and shot his first music video, Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit, in 1991.” Such character traits also make the practitioner featured here ideally suited for future work in an industry that pays increasingly less for more work. This basic narrative premise-that low budgets are the mother of invention-circulates broadly among production personnel, where a couple of key nonmainstream work worlds usually serve to reference the artist’s “boot camp” experience. The Spartan-like conditions of these worlds allowed for experimentation and the time needed to learn and master the rigorous skills of the craft. Many camera operators and editors talk of disciplining their craft in the largely nonunion and nonlucrative world of documentaries, as noted below in a passage from my interview with Scott Willingham:

CALDWELL: What were the driving objectives or concerns behind your choices in the editing room early in your career?

WILLINGHAM: As I moved up, I found myself working on a lot of documentaries, and a lot of very low budget ones at that, where the footage was so minimal-what we had to create sequences from was so minimal-that we had to break a lot of rules just to make the scene work. And I think … it was good training for what I’m doing now. We had to scrape and scratch to make things happen. And because of that … you try a lot of things … and the rules go out the window.

Innovation comes by breaking the rules, and breaking the rules is an almost obligatory part of most documentaries. This is especially the case when directors fail to film from enough different angles and provide enough traditional shot “coverage” to enable the editor to cover over technical problems and continuity errors. The DP Scott Palazzo admits that the aura retrospectively assigned by mid-career filmmakers to these “boot camp” experiences may be suspect in their aspirations. Palazzo describes his genesis in music video production as quintessentially chaotic and without any form of systematic intention.

CALDWELL: What personal influences did you draw on in your editing styles [in music videos in the 1980s]?

PALAZZO: I don’t think my experience was quite so noble. Eight or ten years ago I was a camera operator/DP. And I think because of the tightness of budgets that were handed to us we were more innovative, trying to do a TV show with no preproduction, no scripting, no blocking, so the camera movement and crossing the line and not shooting traditionally really lent well to the need to get the work done and in the time frame that we were asked to do it in. They gave us plenty of creativity and license and … it was hard to do something wrong.

Although these retrospective tactics paint a picture of managed sloppiness, the posture of the allegories also enables workers to “dig-in” rhetorically and to legitimize their craft’s advancement institutionally. Staged storytelling by below-the-line and creative communities revalues cooperation and struggle. The survival of the crafts, guilds, and worker communities depends on collective reimagining, since solidarity is regularly threatened by displacement and obsolescence.

Consider the following account by director Spike Jones Jr., who shows considerably more anxiety about the creative possibilities of Spartan resources than did Willingham and Palazzo:

CALDWELL: Has the quickened pace of these shows affected shooting days? Budgets? Time allocated for postproduction? … What you are up against timewise on these shows?

JONES: There’s good news and bad news. The good news is “all bets are off.” The bad news is … “all bets are off.” There are no rules. You can use polaroids, you can use anything…. I just went in and did a pitch, and the amount of money is ridiculous, and what they are accepting to shoot on, is almost Scotch tape. I’m serious. I’m not lying. So we ordered a case of Scotch tape. Because we wanted the job.

In this account, the glow of the “happy accident” archetype has worn thin. Dynamic low-budget creativity is no longer worn as a badge of accomplishment by this filmmaker. Jones is numbed and dispirited by the low production values, low budgets, and low-end technologies that define production aesthetics in the cost-conscious age of reality television. What somehow survives this feeling of resignation is the sense that the filmmaker can still somehow pull o an effective show with few or no resources. A sense of ever-increasing budgetary and production-value scarcity pervades these variants of the trade story.

Fourth, and finally, the against-all-odds allegory commonly serves as a form of cooperative griping about working conditions and lack of respect. In some ways these narrative practices appear Zen-like in their studied avowals of deference and self-deprecation. But they are also implicitly tales of woe and evidence of battle scarring-that is, griping tactics that may seem benign to bosses but score points against those at the top nevertheless. One of the best examples demonstrating the trade story as cooperative griping is the current “12 On/12 Off” job safety campaign being waged throughout the industry. 12 On/12 Off is a grassroots practitioner movement aimed at compelling studios, producers, and unit production managers (UPM’S) to limit workdays to twelve hours maximum, with twelve hours o for turnaround and no more than six hours of work before or between meals. The goal of the campaign is to reduce workplace dangers that come from unrealistic managerial and scheduling demands intended as production “shortcuts.” The campaign involves wearing cautionary T-shirts with the “12 On/12 Off” message, where workers are urged to consult a Web site with instructions about how and how not to wear and use the shirts on sets and locations. The Web site also offers compilations of stories to underscore the hostile conditions that workers face across the industry. Sobering tales of production worker deaths set the stage: “The length of … production days has been a hot topic … since the March 6, 1997 death of assistant cameraman (AC) Brent Hershman. Hershman (35) was killed when he fell asleep at the wheel and hit a utility pole driving home after a 19-hour work day on “Pleasantville” a New Line Film…. (Hershman started out as a camera loader in 1991 and was working up the ac ladder.)”

But while posted anecdotes of death like these circulate among below-the-line workers, the campaign ratchets down this posture in suggestions about how to deal with network and studio executives and wayward producers. The following instructions and recommendations for deployment of the shirts and slogans on the set suggest that the campaign is also formally gun shy. Notice how this helpful “users manual” also buffers and dulls the potential teeth of the project:

1 We do not encourage an ‘us vs. them’ mentality.

2 We don’t recommend that you wear these on day 1 of a production (unless your cousin is the Director!).

3 In fact, click on instructions for Use, for more innovative ways of using the shirt; and

4 We are not a union or affiliated with any unions or other entities. Welcome to 12 On/12 Off!

(Continues…)

Excerpted from PRODUCTION CULTUREby JOHN THORNTON CALDWELL Copyright © 2008 by Duke University Press. Excerpted by permission.
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