This would happen. An oily kind of doubt.
“I have often spoken of what I call the inadequate imagery of today’s civilization. I have the impression that the images that surround us today are worn out; they are abused and useless and exhausted. They are limping and dragging themselves behind the rest of our cultural evolution. When I look at the postcards in tourist shops and the images and advertisements that surround us in magazines, or I turn on the television, or if I walk into a travel agency and see those huge posters with that same tedious image of the Grand Canyon on them, I truly feel there is something dangerous emerging here.” – Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog is a big name in film school, despite his own professed skepticism of the value of a such an institution. 5 years since my New German Cinema class and I finally got ‘round to reading Herzog on Herzog, part of a book series where filmmakers discuss their own work and motivation. He discusses his ideal film school:
“…If I did start one up you would only be allowed to fill out an application form after you had travelled alone on foot, let’s say from Madrid to Kiev, a distance of about 5,000 kilometers. While walking, write. Write about your experiences and give me your notebooks. I would be able to tell you who had really walked the distance and who had not. While you are walking you would learn much more about filmmaking than if you were in a classroom. During your voyage you will learn more about what your future holds than in five years at film school. Your experiences would be the very opposite of academic knowledge, for academia is the death of cinema. It is the very opposite of passion.”
I’m finally ready to take this journey – one I should have undertaken 6 years ago in lieu of film school. Perhaps the intervening time was necessary to form the mold and pour the concrete of truth into my foundations. I can act with certainty of purpose today.
Yet I’m beginning to feel like I’m outfitting myself to live in a bubble of my own comforts. I’ve got an excellent Gregory technical pack. I’m getting Nikon’s new top of its category HDSLR. I’m gonna trek my laptop and a pair of drives around in a swanky Pelican case, wearing my Gore-Tex lined Merrels and my microfiber t-shirts. If I’m gonna shoot digital stills and video with the purpose of using them for future work and a portfolio, then the data is sacred. If I lose it, half of the purpose of the trip is lost. So I need redundancy. That tacks on some extra equipment.
Is this an immersive experience? Is this the price of a one-man photo/video travel production team in 2010? Am I going to get the same results as 90% of traveling photo enthusiasts? Or is it not the equipment, but the person, the eye, the brain, that makes value?
The alternative: I’ll grant myself the nice pack. Everything else goes out the window. Maybe what I should do is get a beat up old Hasselblad or Pentax and meet the wilderness. No digital hocus pocus, no laptop, no RAID array. Better yet, I had this wild idea of getting a compact 35mm or 16mm movie camera and using it as though it were a still camera, shooting movies when necessary. That is truly a crazy idea. Just me and a Bolex in the jungle shooting Plus-X. I’d barely get an exposure. Writing becomes a top priority (not that it ever wasn’t).
What do I hope to get out of this trip? Are the tangible results, the work done, as important as the process of doing it?
Circumstances have found me heading to an equatorial country at the start of monsoon season. Am I being completely naive in thinking this shouldn’t be of any concern to my trip?
Discuss.
