The Shadow
In the audience, there's another audience, a shadow audience.
(Transcript)
So the other day I was watching an interview with Ryan Coogler about the making of Sinners, and he was asked about what his non-negotiables were. What were the things that he would not budge on when trying to make this movie?
One of those non-negotiables was that the whole thing be shot on film, and the interviewer asked him why he would make something non-negotiable that 95% of the audience probably wouldn't even notice.
And he said something interesting, he said, "Just because they can't articulate why they like something, I think it still affects them." And I've been thinking about that. In 1886. Georges Seurat and Paul Signac kind of went on an impressionism side quest by engaging in something called pointillism.
Rather than brush strokes, they created images through a series of dots. Not unlike pixels in a digital image. I'm sure you've seen it. Through a series of dots of pure color, they trusted the human eye to blend the colors and see things like a scene on a Sunday in the park.
The same thing happens with film.
You see a rapid succession of images, and as you hit 24 images per second, there's a moment when your mind says, I'm going to see one fluid image now. I have this experience making Midnight Burger. Sometimes I can't find the sound I need, so rather than settle for something I don't like, I combine three unrelated sounds and when played in the context of the scene, the audience hears the one sound that I want them to hear.
There's three sounds there, but they hear one sound
In the audience, there's another audience, a shadow audience. There's this thing in everybody's head that watches and takes in your art along with them. This little voice in their head that when you see a movie on film instead of digital, the little voice says, yeah, that's good. We like this.
And then the front of your mind says, this is good. I like this. This invisible art enjoyer, this ghost in the audience, in the end, they are the one running the show. If you can't win over the shadow, you can't win over the person that casts the shadow.
So many times in my life, I've talked to someone who's just seen a thing. They've just seen a movie or a play, or there's a new album that has come out or something like that, and I'll ask how they like it And the response that I've sometimes gotten is what I believe is really the death nail of piece of art, which is the following.
"It was good."
That's it. It was good. It didn't really have an effect. The, "it was good" response is usually for something that's constructed very well and logically. And plays out in a logical and structured way, but there's nothing in it for the shadow, for the Secret audience member, for the person in the back of the audience member's mind.
Apparently the movie Memento, an early Christopher Nolan film. It doesn't make any sense. I can't really remember. It's been years since I've seen it, but apparently, notoriously the film does not add up, plot wise. But the movie got a real cult following and it got a lot of fans, even though in the end it didn't make any sense.
So what is that about? Well, that's about the fact that the front of your mind, is not the one running the show in the end. Things like "Some problems with the plot maybe not all adding up exactly right," can be forgiven as long as the shadow in the audience is really, really loving it.
Which is frustrating because it's much easier to just make something logically work than it is to do this unknowable thing for this unknowable art enjoyer that's out there because you can never talk to them directly. When you ask people how they like something, they'll just respond.
"It was good."
And what that means is there was nothing in it.
It was fine.
It was a painless experience. So there you are with this person that you have to make happy that you can never talk to and is kind of unknowable.
So how do you deal with that? How do you make something that appeals to the viscera of people, that appeals to the part of themselves that they themselves can't articulate?
This is one of the many things about being a creative person that's so frustrating because it is so unknowable.
So for a long time I was asking myself, you know, how do I, how do I deliver this unknowable thing to this unknowable person? But then I kind of realized that, part of being able to appeal to that secret side of people is in forgetting about them altogether.
It's kind of shocking, even though so much of art is about delivering it to some sort of audience, it's shocking how much of making your art has to do with forgetting about those people because that really is one of the ways of addressing this unknowable person in the audience is by forgetting about them entirely. And if you're forgetting about them, you're forgetting about the audience member that they're attached to.
You are forgetting completely about the audience, which by the way is what the whole thing really revolves around. ' cause nobody wants to make art in a vacuum sharing it with people is really kind of the point.
But to make something worth sharing, you have to forget about the sharing part. It's a huge conundrum. It's something that people struggle with their whole lives, and if you're not supposed to follow this, if you're not supposed to think about this audience, whether they be knowable or unknowable, then what do you follow? How do you navigate things? And I think one way of going about this, is to focus on the shadow in yourself, that unknowable part of yourself. Are you doing the logical thing in your art, the thing that makes the most sense?
Or are you following where your interest is taking you? Do you want to do something because it makes sense, or because that's where you're interested in going, because sometimes where you're interested in going with your art is not the most logical place, and the front of your mind will say, what are we going in this direction for?
And you kind of have to say to yourself, I don't know, but I know that's where I want to go. I know that there's something there for me. There is something inside of me that says, go there, even though you can't come up with a reason why.
The more and more I think about art, the more and more I think about how it's not a logical communication. It's not a debate, it's not a philosophical discussion. It's something intrinsic in yourself reaching out to the intrinsic parts of others, those parts that we can't quite know
That is in the end truly a connection.
Because there's all kinds of people out there that you can intellectually agree with and intellectually communicate with. But can you connect to them?
This may shock you to hear, but throughout history, artists have been accused of being notoriously self-interested. Breaking news. Now, sometimes the reason for that is because the artist is a jackass, but I think part of that may be related to the fact that, as someone making art, you look out at an audience full of shadows.
They are unknowable and unnameable, and they are the ones you have to connect with. And the only way to really do that is to listen to, as closely as possible, that shadow in yourself. By connecting with that shadow within yourself, you then connect to theirs.
It is not logical. It is unfortunately very magical.
So you have to stay very still. And very quiet and listen to that part of yourself, because I truly believe if you get in touch with that unknowable part of yourself, it connects you directly to that unknowable part of anyone.
And you don't really know in the end what the reaction will be when that connection is made, but I can guarantee you the reaction will not be:
"It was good."