Kent’s Official Blog

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Julie had a good observation about my NBC post:

Kent’s 12-step program to creative frustration was amusingly stereotypical and as with many stereotypes, bashfully true. … What bothered me most about his list was how it breezed by two of the traditional model’s most valuable aspects: apprentice/mentorship and a paycheck.

Yes old media does provide a paycheck, and I never bemoan anyone in showbiz that takes a job to put food on the table, and there are lot of rank and file that are firmly invested in the status quo of paychecks and not willing or able to gamble on new media.

But what I really want to talk about is apprenticeship in new media.

When I was in college, I worked and performed at a place called the Blue Room Theater. It was awesome. Run by a couple of brothers and a motley crew of underpaid dedicated craftspeople.

Not artists, no.

That was our leader’s motto. We’re not artists, we’re craftspeople. We are crafting entertainment.

We weren’t like the well-heeled theater department across the street. We had to pay our rent, build the sets and get people in the seats all from the money that we made from the tickets and the beers we sold.

There were the effete snobs that sniffed at us for not presenting theatre correctly, about our challenging selection of works (Neil Simon, F**K YOU!), our pandering to the college crowd (late night, beer-soaked rendering of Twilight Zone scripts complete with commercials from local businesses). But you know what? we did it, we made mistakes, we learned, we got better.

This was a learning process through doing. We had a some principles to guide us (keep the doors open, produce plays that we liked), but mostly it was all put together with spit and shoelaces. I helped form the first marketing/public relations plan, as well as, act in over a dozen productions in a two-year span.

There was a lot of experimentation and a lot of room to fail (and we failed a lot). That taught us how to reach audiences and get them in the door and get them coming back.

When I moved back to LA after college, I threw myself into studying improv comedy and learning how to make better films with my iMac and iMovie. I applied what I learned from the Blue Room to my studies, namely learn through actually doing the work. I made so many crappy short films. Showed them to everyone. Watched with them in awkward silence and I knew I had to get better.

Better at everything: editing, writing, directing, you name it. It all sucked. But again I had freedom to fail.

You get three things working your way up from writer’s assistant:

1. Paycheck
2. Friends/commiserators
3. Learning how to survive/thrive in the system

The first two items are invaluable, friends become collaborators and confidants (and occasionally arch enemies and/or lovers), and you’re getting paid to be in the industry.

But learning how to survive the system is only valuable inside the system. Too often the mentorship you find in the system is not about becoming a better craftsperson, but it’s about how to work the system better.

The system also doesn’t reward failure.  With each success comes higher stakes for the next one to be a success.

That doesn’t necessarily teach you how to reach an audience more effectively.  You still need to learn that by doing.

That’s the freedom of new media. No one is blocking your access. You put crappy stuff up, no one will watch it. You put good stuff up, they will. Go ahead and watch your stuff sitting next to someone and tell me you can’t sense when they are bored or engaged. Learn from that.

You’ll pick up mentors along the way. I learned a lot from the working writers on the TV shows where I was the lowest person on the totem pole. But if I had stuck with that route, I don’t think I would have ever broken out (I was a horrible assistant, and you have to work insane hours, which cuts into your own projects).
So gather up your friends and collaborators and start learning what the audience really wants by doing the work.