How Not To Critique Your Fellow Filmmakers | by Lee Bishop
by guest columnist Lee Bishop. Follow her on Twitter.
I’ve learned a lot of things over the past couple of years of being a filmmaker, not the least of which are things to avoid when critiquing your colleagues. Whether you are talking to one filmmaker about another filmmaker you do not know personally, or speaking directly to the director of the film you are discussing, here are a few truths to bear in mind, which I can back up with unpleasant personal experiences…
1. Don’t take a stranger’s negative comment and run with it.
At my first film festival screening, I was green and high on excitement. Add to that the fact that everyone else there was drunk (the screening was held in a bar), and you have a pretty big case of foot-in-mouth. I was having a very nice talk with a film professor I had just met when one of his students’ shorts came on the screen. It was a comedy that started out funny but left its timing behind when it beat the same joke over and over. (By the way, this is a great example of how not to critique a colleague’s film, but I give myself writer’s license for the purpose of illustration here.) My conversational companion made a brief, mildly deprecating comment about the funny not staying funny, and feeling a vicarious buzz, I felt free to agree, which would have been fine. But I had to run with it in that enthusiastic way that I have even at the best of times. I didn’t mean any harm, but just because the guy I was talking to didn’t make the film and was not quite sober, I was incorrect and rude to think I could say anything that came into my head.
2. Don’t assume you know everything about an artist’s work from viewing only one piece.
A short time after this festival, the shoe was on the other foot when I received some misplaced criticism about my work from a film student I had met at the event. Now admittedly I never was a film student, and that is a whole article in itself, but I’ve been around enough to not judge a clear division between good and bad regarding who has a film degree and who does not. Oh, I do have my opinions on that subject, but let’s stick to the point at hand. At this time I received some very specific criticism that was academic in nature about one of my short films. When I say it was academic, I mean that it sounded like it came out of a text book. Words were bandied around that I had not heard of or had never heard used in a sentence. All that is fine. The problem was that this person was giving me direct suggestions for techniques to try in my work when I had used those very techniques in one of my other films already. But she had not seen my other films. So I nicely explained this to the person and directed her to the film in which I had used her suggestions. What a coincidence! One time would have been kind of cute and funny. But this person came back with a criticism of the film I had just sent her to with new technical suggestions. And what do you know, I had tried those things out, too, in yet ANOTHER piece. And so on. You know what happens when you assume.
3. Don’t tell someone “it would be so much better if you had just done it my way.”
Oh no, how could this be? But yes, it happened to me! And on Twitter, no less. I had posted a link to my latest short film at the time and had a pretty good response. It’s always so nice to hear from a person or two that they enjoyed something you made. But I also had one follower reply that he didn’t like that I had left the piece silent, with no music. I made a face in the privacy of my home office, and wondered how to respond in public Twitter-land. Within the character limit, I explained the reason I had made the film that way–it was an intentional choice so as not to distract from the visuals of the simple, experimental photography effects. Now here is what I would recommend you do not do, especially on Twitter: he replied saying that he still thought I should have done it the way he would have liked it best. I know I’m a sensitive artist type, but that is just not good form.
I know I’m not alone in learning these lessons…what are some experiences that you have had with bad critiquing on either side of the fence?
Lee Bishop was trained in fine arts and music all through her youth, but then left home to explore life and left art behind for 20 years. In her 40s she has discovered that filmmaking is her calling. Her interest is in no-budget experimentation, artistic self-expression, and inspiring others. She has screened five short films in nine festivals in four countries in her first two years of filmmaking, and she continues to support herself and her production company as a self-employed businesswoman.
