read the fine print

I'm so stupid. Today, I was applying for Berlinale Talents (a networking event that happens during the Berlin International Film Festival) and while filling out the application questionnaire, a thought materialised, "Whoa, 750 words is quite a lot of words for a maximum word count, it's so cool that the festival allows for such long answers. I can have pacing, anecdotes, anything I want. I'm loving this... extra... legroom - No. Nah. It can't be... I need to check the website."

I did, and it was indeed 750 characters. Obviously. Imagine what an absurd world we would be living in if someone had to read through 750 words, per question, for nine questions. Now multiply that amount of words (6750) by the amount of arts-graduate applicants - imagine the amount of pretentious semi-colons and oxford commas that would be; a lot. How mind-bogglingly asinine would it be for anyone to believe that? I would have noticed immediately.

The thought occurred at 627 words into the first question.

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Please describe your style of work and how you collaborate with others in your working environment.

When I was younger, I struggled to work in collaboration. Whenever a teacher would assign some sort of long-term science project or group history presentation, I would always take control of the assignment. Then, I would follow my own ideas, my own research and Wikipedia deep-dives; I would write nearly every slide and all the (required) slide notes. My project with three names. In fairness, most of my classmates wanted to be grouped up with me because of it; a group member willing to do all the legwork and still slap your name underneath the Styrofoam bullet train that took them three weeks to make can be a very rewarding opportunity.

I didn’t do it because I wanted to do all the work. Ironically, I felt frustrated that my team weren’t pitching in after I had enlightened them with my idea that was clearly, obviously, and ineffably better than all of theirs. I did it because I wanted to make something that I was happy with, something that was holistically good from proposal to presentation, something united that wasn’t a Frankenstein slideshow changing font and design when the next student in the group got up to do their piece.

As I got older, this strategy was no longer viable. It had a good run, but when I began studying media the projects expanded into films and animations and podcasts and adverts and live broadcasts. It was impossible to do anything single-handedly in a single project, let alone trying to become a jack of all the various trades (and a master of none). Yet I still struggled to relinquish my controlling anality, so I asked myself: why?

I don’t just want my work to be holistic, but I want it to be representative. My work, my style of writing, needs to have character and personality, or more specifically my personality. I want it to be raw but refined, to use simple language and tools in clever and educated ways – as Hemingway put it when Faulkner accused him of never sending a reader to the dictionary, “Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.”

But Rome wasn’t built in a day. I had to learn that creative, practical, academic, informed, uninformed, supportive, and all forms of contribution don’t diminish my own. Rather, my efforts and vision are enhanced as we work together, harmoniously. I had to learn to trust my colleagues instead of obsessively worrying about their input, or constantly believing that my ideas trumped all others. Because, as much as Roger Waters wants to believe he solely made Pink Floyd famous, his setlists still heavily favour the band’s catalogue.

And I did. Now, I have co-written an award-winning script, found life-long creative partners, and am fondest of the projects that I created with others. Instead of instantly taking the helm, I seek roles and areas that I can fully invest myself into as my peers do the same, each of us working in tandem. As cliché as it sounds, the key to figuring it all out was communication: it’s amazing what you can accomplish when you are prepared to talk things out respectfully in the interest of reaching a comprise that wouldn’t have been possible by myself. Who would have thought?

The only exception are my articles. I have yet to write an article with someone else, unsurprising since most (bar one) of my published works are film reviews. I look forward to one day co-writing an article or short story, but I’m happy that my reviews are mine. They are my opinions, my little domain, and to be treated as such. I’m not the final full stop in film criticism because that isn’t a title anyone has. Instead, I can only share my thoughts and make my arguments, consciously, collaboratively, or any other word that begins with 'c' that also fits my point.