Just Start: The power of prep

Hey all,

This week, I was reading about the artist David Hockney: specifically, how his style relies on really looking at things properly. Frequently, his paintings aren’t of specific subjects and specific places: they’re composites made from multiple sources, distilled into a single image.

“He would use a camera to take dozens of photographs of the same person or object from every conceivable angle,” writes Will Gompertz in the excellent book See What You’re Missing. “He would scale ladders and crawl along the ground to make sure that he had seen everything. Only when he was satisfied he had fully interrogated his subject would he begin to piece together a fragmented artwork made up from the multiple images.”

Hockney’s pictures seem simple, but they’re powerful: that’s one of the reasons people like them. They somehow seem to capture feelings and memories more evocatively than more obviously laboured-over pictures: and maybe that’s because a lot of the work got done before the painting started.

Something that doesn’t seem simple is the choreography of John Wick’s fight scenes: elegant ballets of violence that often take place over long, uninterrupted single takes. But reading about Hockney reminded me of a video I like about John Wick, because the stunt team that made that film also understand the value of prep. Director Chad Stahelski explains:

"Cameramen are usually brought in the same week you start shooting … I bring in my camera guys four weeks out, and they go to every stun rehearsal. The [director of photography] goes to every stunt rehearsal, the wardrobe people go to stunt rehearsals.

So I spend probably twice as much money in prep as everybody else, not just training the actors but training, the crews. But when we walk on set, everybody knows what they're doing instead of everybody seeing the set and seeing the fight for the first time. The best fight scene in the world is great, but if you have a camera guy with a 75 pound piece of metal on his shoulder, you got a guy pushing a dolly on a track and and he's never seen the fight scene before, how do you expect him to keep up?”

How indeed? I think this is the value of doing the prep: it saves time, but it also makes the results better. I script pretty much every word of every YouTube video I make: it takes a while, but I’ve tried riffing from notes before, and that takes much longer (and the results aren’t as good). When I’m writing features, I gather up everything I can, do all the interviews I can, and read through it all before I start writing: then I write, and that happens pretty fast. To be clear, these aren’t the only ways to work — another option with videos, for instance, might be to script less, but spend more time understanding or rehearsing — but doing the prep, in one way or another, works.

How do you filter prep from procrastination? I’m still working on that: we’ll talk about it in another newsletter. In the meantime, I’d love to hear your ideas in the comments.

Have a great weekend!

Joel

Stuff I like

📖 Book - What art is by Arthur C. Danto

This is a philosophy book about the nature of art — and in places, I’ll be honest, it gets a bit dense. But it’s full of interesting little anecdotes about the history and practice of art that I haven’t read anywhere else, with interesting interpretations of artists ranging from Michaelangelo to Warhol. Yes, I’m back to trying to ‘get’ art at the moment.

🎶 Hype Music - Good luck, babe! by Chappell Roan

I don’t really know what to say about this except that it makes me feel jaunty every time I play it — something about the combination of thumpy beat and delightful falsetto. Perfect fizzy-drinks-in-the-sun music.

🧐 This week I learned

That Hanma Yujiro and Heihachi Mishima throwing their kids off cliffs (in Grappler Baki and Tekken respectively) isn’t just some weird coincidence: it’s probably inspired by the kabuki dance Renjinshi, in which a father tryingto test the power and courage of his son, throws him into an abyss. The son survives, and even celebrates with a dance, but I don’t recommend this style of parenting.

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