Now That You Know How To Code, Become A Filmmaker
I know it sounds insane.
A programmer is sent to the supermarket with instructions to “buy butter and if they have eggs then buy a dozen.”
Returning with 12 butters, the programmer says, “they had eggs”.
I’m a computer scientist and a filmmaker, and here’s the deal with programming: it’s really not that hard. It’s just that looking at code when you’re 20 years old can be humongously daunting, just like looking at a square root at 11 can.
Why Would I Learn How To Code In The First Place?
Because Will-I-Am said so, if you need a simple reason. I don't know, that's from another article.
There's been quite the buzz about coding and how everyone in the world should have access to developer tools and an opportunity to prove themselves.
Learning to code is cool because it delivers a different mindset, not because you’ll be able to code your own website. Programmers solve —computer— problems with logic and pragmatism, not with emotional intelligence and motivational pep talks. We do this not because we're cold and dead inside, but because you can't emotionally manipulate code and crying on top of your keyboard will only make matters worse.
Sure, my kid should know how to code. At least the basics, just as everyone should know how to write, a little bit of math and a lot of physics. Yet I don't think everyone should be an author nor a rocket scientists. A world so jacked up in technology should be under the command of people that understand technology. Our gadgets don't need to be magical artifacts we barely understand and can't take full advantage of. And now as technology gets cheaper and permeates to our clothes, our cars and our coffee machines —aw, the future is here— we need the knowledge to communicate without third parties as much as possible.
We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.
—Carl Sagan
I get that. Once you learn how to code, do as I did: become a filmmaker.
Because here's the deal with filmmaking: it's not that fucking obvious.
Try to make a movie. I dare you, I double dare you, motherfucker. Try to record your friend's next birthday party, or just blog about it. Record what you think you need to record and edit that. Do you know what's going to happen if you do? It won't work.
No, your film won't crash like your computer does. It'll just play like any other movie and something will be off. Everything will be off. It'll be 2 hours long, have a terrible pop song on top, or your friends that were there will have no idea what you recorded and they'll doze off after ten minutes. Because film —on the complete opposite of computers— works at a subliminal level of our perception with a defined set of subjective rules you have to balance.
What am I talking about? I know —as a filmmaker— your birthday video sucks because cross-fades indicate passage of time, not a cut to a different shot in a wider angle. Among other things.
Most programmers can't even write a proper email
I've worked with programmers my whole life. I am a programmer. Most of them can't make you laugh, keep you interested or even awake to listen what's going on inside their code or their lives. Not only that, we have these horrible communication skills and dry language that usually gets things rubbed in the wrong way.
The story goes like this:
- Engineer writes an awful condescend email.
- Someone takes it personal because they think it sounds patronizing.
- It is patronizing, and now it's up to the rest of the team to smooth things out.
My point is that some guys can solve problems, but no one gives a shit. Meanwhile, we have people like James Cameron using those very same computers to create a story where computers travel in time to kill John Connor with Guns N’ Roses playing in the background and it works.
And that's a tragedy, because programming is fun and the results are simply espectacular and disruptive. Take for example a product like the iPad. By itself the iPad is a great product, now look at this ad.
This is overwhelming. Apple takes a minute and a half and encapsulates the identity of human life in the functionalities of a 700$ device.
Programers know how to talk to computers, filmmakers how to talk to people. And you should know both.
Why Filmmaking?
100% of the problems you need to fix have a structure. They have initial conditions, a set of rules that define the transitions to new states and a set of states that represent a solution. This is the basic overview of the mindset that learning to code delivers. Well, the way you transfer information can be structured, and in doing so you can optimize the information exchange: you can learn how not to be boring. This is what being a filmmaker is all about.
We know how to write
Filmmakers tell a story, and there's a story everywhere. Your emails should be engaging and fun to read. They should start strong to keep us interested and close with strong arguments.
We know how to take pictures
Each day Facebook users upload over half a billion photos, how many of them are good photos? How many of these photos are unique, different and tell a story?
Your photos should be well-lit, balanced, have a nice composition and texture. Instead we have social networks full of awkward selfies, an endless stream of boring images and profile pictures that should require the user to register as a sex offender. We say we hate Facebook, but we don't hate places like Facebook, we hate people.
In case you missed it, I'm not talking about pictures here. I'm talking about having a filter of quality and purpose in our every day lives and the way we communicate.
We can tell a story
Most people are boring not because they don't have something to say, but because they don't know how to say it. Think of your last meeting and how it ended. It likely ended in one of these scenarios:
- A: Awkward silence until someone got up and left with a shy goodbye between the lips.
- B: An obvious ending rounding up the strong points of the conversation and actions to take.
Option A is rarely the case with filmmakers. We know what we're saying and how to say it and the good ones think of each extra word as a wasted breath we could've spent on their next project.
You can be the CEO of Stark Enterprises, but Iron Man gets laid because he's Robert Downey Junior. Having a conversation is all about pace and tone, about how you deliver each piece of information at the right time.
You want people to listen to you? You need to tell them a story.
We know how to talk to people
Filmmakers have to coordinate dozens, even hundreds, of artists, technicians, business men in the direction of their vision. All of it just to crunch months of work across miles and miles into a couple of hours in a bidimensional space.
You need to be able to explain to the director of photography what you want light to represent. You need to tell your actor how he's supposed to feel in a given scene and you need to adapt to budgets, timeframes and weather constrains without losing your mind and still leave space for everyone to be creative and participate.
Sure, there are filmmakers that suck at these things and might just be self-centric assholes, but these skills need to be there for a story to work.
Have I Gone Insane?
No, I just believe in world where people know how to say things, understand that time is a resource and grasp the fact that the way we say things matters.
I don't want you to study for 10 years just to read your emails and fix my computer, but learning film and coding as a hobby is a nice piece of advice that surely will help you be a better professional whether you're a police officer or the guy that wraps bags in plastic foil at the airport.
Both programming and filmmaking are skills. They are means to an end. The important thing is the program, the movie, these skills are just what gets the job done. Whether is solving an issue or communicating it.
If you give structure to things around you, you'll get better results as you ask for help or sit down to deal with those pesky problems you can solve with your recently acquired programming skills.
