the zen of filmmaking: a balance of heart & mind
The Zen of Filmmaking: A Balance of Heart & Mind
by Xuan Vu © 2006
Chapter I: Beginning the Journey
:: Academic Preparation
:: Internship Experience
Where
is God? In the brain? In the mind? In the greater cosmos? These were the
central questions with which I entered the University Professors Program
in the fall of 2004. I joined this interdisciplinary program with the
intention to investigate the concept of God from a psychological and neuroscientific
perspective as well as through cultural phenomena; such as religious rituals,
beliefs, and organizations; so as to provide a comprehensive biological
and cultural explanation for the existence of God in one’s mind.
My vision was to present the discoveries of my inquiry through the visual
medium of educational documentary film.
Academic Preparation
I began my investigation by taking a course in Christian thought as well
as one in cognitive neuroscience. Having been raised a devout Catholic
for 18 years only to renounce my faith after leaving home for college,
I approached these classes with the perspective of an agnostic seeking
to find a scientific understanding of the biological and psychological
underpinnings of religion. My long-term goal was to make educational documentary
programs, such as those on the Discovery Channel, that reveal to the mass
public the discrepancies between the beliefs that Catholics claim they
possess and the actual extent of their devotion to their tradition.
The pessimism and insignificance of such an endeavor dawned on me the
next semester when I took three classes that changed my outlook on religion
and spirituality. The first of these, “Magic, Science, and Religion,”
taught me that these three categories, which those living in modern society
tend to separate so distinctly, had only become differentiated after the
Enlightenment period. Before this period, the three realms of magic, science,
and religion were considered compatible worldviews. In fact, they were
not distinguished as different ways of understanding, but rather worked
together in harmony to provide individuals with a comprehensive wealth
of knowledge. Therefore, in our modern age, these three only represent
different epistemologies; they all have the same goal: understanding ourselves
as human beings and the universe at large.
The second class was a seminar on modernity, which I took as part of my
core curriculum requirements. Far from feeling like a mandatory course
for fulfilling UNI credits, this class enabled me to delve into a topic
with which I had always been fascinated: the origins of Greek philosophy.
Through extensive library research on the history of the first Greek philosopher,
Thales, and the relations that Greece had with other countries; particularly
with Persia, India, Babylonia, and Assyria; I found that the revolutionary
significance of Thales’ theory that water is the fundamental element
of the universe was most likely derived from either Indian or Babylonian
monistic influences. The following is an excerpt about the Indian influences
on Thales from my essay:
| …Thales’ identity as the first Greek philosopher stems
from his landmark proposal that the primary element of the universe
is water, qualifying him as a materialistic monist. In this sense,
Thales was “asserting that everything is One because everything
is made of the same kind of underlying matter, which somehow has the
ability to change its surface qualities and appear variously.”(1) Thales’ philosophy has been shown to parallel Indian thought in striking ways. His departure from the traditional mythological conceptions of the world, which relied upon concrete explanatory stories of the origins of different things, served to elevate his system to a more symbolic realm: “Thales has, in effect, taken two mythological motifs—the primal ocean and the livingness of nature—and broken them loose from their mythological contexts, leaving them in a state of isolation that serves to make them semiabstract.”(2) According to Dr. Thomas McEvilley, Professor of Greek and Indian Culture as well as History of Religion and Philosophy at Rice University, this abstract quality of Thales’ theory lends itself to the argument that ancient Indian thought was a major influence on Thales. One similarity that McEvilley draws between the two philosophies centers on the Rig Veda, which is the oldest text of the sacred Vedas. In it is presented the earliest form of monism in the history of Indian religion, “involv[ing] the elevation to a universal stature of single deities who corresponded to the material substances that would later be defined as the elements.”(3) In one of its hymns, the Indian god of fire, Agni, is extolled as the ultimate being, equivalent to all of the other gods combined: “You, O Agni, are Indra, you are Visnu…You, O Agni, are King Varuna...”(4) McEvilley contends that the transcendent quality of the god of fire that encompasses all of the other gods is comparable to the abstraction of Thales’ worldview. Another source of comparison in the Rig Veda is based on one of the late singers of the hymns, by the name of Prajapati Paramestin, whose idea of the origin of the universe is the same as that of Thales: “In the beginning…an undistinguished ocean was this all…The mighty waters moved, pregnant with the world as embryo.”(5) The designation of water as the primary element of the universe is also expressed in the “Chandogya Upanishad,” in which is written, “It is just water…that assumes different forms of this earth, this atmosphere, this sky…Water is indeed all these forms.”(6) The monistic elements in these passages are indistinguishable from that of Thales, lending further credence to McEvilley’s argument for an influential effect of the ancient Indians on Thales.(7) |
Thales’ belief in a universal essence distinguished him from any
previous Greek thinker and instigated the longstanding tradition of Greek
philosophy. It is ironic to think that the foundation of Western philosophy
may lie in an ancient concept from the East.
At the same time, I took an independent study with my academic advisor,
Professor Anthony Barrand, as a more personalized version of his course
entitled “The Psychology of Extrasensory Perception and Psychic
Phenomena.” Throughout this course, I kept a weekly journal of my
thoughts on the reading material and information presented during my meetings
with Professor Barrand. The following passages clearly trace my gradual
change in perspective over the course of the semester:
January 18, 2004 …That was how my worldview was shaped and that’s
how I approached everything that came my way: with my eyes set on
the future, knowing that every little decision that I made in the
present would affect my future in very dramatic ways. I became obsessed
with time, thinking that there was so little time to do all the
things necessary to ensure the future that I had envisioned for
myself based on what I thought my parents expected of me. I knew
I had to be rich, educated, successful—pretty much an exceptional
human being—in order to fulfill these expectations. As a result,
I was not the most pleasant person to be around… February 9, 2004 …in order to convince a “scientific-minded” person that this dowsing method actually worked, the “streambed” that was supposedly found should be verified, either from one’s own efforts to dig up the earth or from building plans that showed where water could be found…I should’ve asked for more conclusive evidence than simply the fact that the rods had moved for me. After much thought, I think…that there should be some kind of proof to show that my dowsing did actually locate a source of water… I’ve seen the rods move for me. I know that I myself am not willingly moving the rods. I know that I feel the rods moving themselves, almost as though there’s some magnetic force in between them, pulling them towards each other. I know all this, yet there is still something inside of me saying that in order to truly believe that it works, it has to prove that it works. How am I to use a method that is supposed to help me locate something without having actually located the thing itself?(9) February 17, 2004 …I understand that the point of these exercises is to get me to realize that there are other ways of knowing or perceiving the world around us besides the scientific method or through experience, but I don’t see the point of dowsing for things that I already know, such as the gender of a person. When I did try to dowse for things I don’t know, such as whether or not I will get an A on my paper or on the two upcoming exams that I have, and got a “yes” answer, I was/am skeptical about this result. Even if this does end up to be true (which I hope it does!), I think I will remain skeptical of the actual effectiveness of this way of knowing.(10) March 12, 2004 …Even though I am a scientific-minded person
(who can help it, growing up in a scientific-oriented society such
as ours?), I do consider myself a rather spiritual person. I spend
much of my time and energy contemplating the significance of the
transcendent and its manifestations in my life in my efforts to
define what I actually believe and don’t believe. For this
reason, I took to [Joseph Chilton] Pearce’s very biological,
natural concept of the spiritual developmental process immediately
[in Magical Child Matures] because it offered a scientific approach
to explaining something so beyond the grasp of Western science and
society. The more I discover about Eastern philosophy and thought,
the less inclined I am towards Western ways of dealing with the
transcendent. [Also] I am beginning to relate to Pearce’s
anti-American cultural attitude more and more. I see what he means
by our reliance on technology as a way of keeping us in the physical
realm and preventing us from attaining autonomy, personal power,
and integrity… March 28, 2004 …my suspicion that there is more to the universe
than what the long tradition of Newtonian mechanics admits is becoming
ever more validated. The parallels that I find between my own educational
development and that of mankind’s are, in my opinion, kind
of bazaar. By this, I mean that only a year ago, I strictly adhered
to Newtonian mechanics. I believed in biological determinism: that
our genetics define who we are, the way we behave, how we interact
with the things around us (and the social/physical environment only
played about a 5% role in allowing for variations of these). I remember
feeling sure and on top of the world with this kind of mentality,
knowing that everything about humans could be explained by physical
qualities, that the mind was just a by-product of the influences
of nature vs. nurture elements on the brain. Hence my interest in
how religion, a cultural phenomenon, affects the brain, and [consequently]
mind, and how it came about as a result of biological, evolutionary
forces acting on our brains to make us gravitate towards thinking
in terms of religion/philosophy. To think of religion, or the theory
of a transcendent reality, as a mere by-product of biological and
social conditions is like saying that such a transcendent reality
isn’t “real,” [that] it isn’t actually a
part of the external physical universe that is separate from us…empirical
and knowable. That’s like saying that our minds aren’t
real. April 19, 2004 …I think that a lot of the flaws of Western
scientists come from their tendency to completely disregard any
kind of practice that cannot supply them with a technical explanation
of how it works. Just because you don’t know how something
works doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work, and that doesn’t
mean that you shouldn’t use it for practical purposes and
the benefit of yourself or others. It seems as though such scientists
don’t want to continue the pursuit of knowledge for the benefit
of humankind but only to show off how knowledgeable they are about
certain minute details that don’t necessarily get us anywhere
and in which most people aren’t even interested. April 23, 2004 …I always knew that meditation was a good way
to relax and help in clearing the mind as well as resulting in the
ability to focus more during one’s daily life. But I didn’t
know that it could relieve stress so permanently, allow for such
a sensual experience, enhance creativity…and lead to ultimate
enlightenment. I always thought that enlightenment would come only
after strenuous mental thought processes, after which one would
arrive at a realization of the meaning of life. Who knew that the
meaning of life was to experience the wonders that we humans have
always been capable of through simply “being in the moment”?… |
In two semesters, I had transformed my scientific Western mindset, which
had been fixated on finding a physiological correlate to the human compulsion
to believe in the transcendent, into a more open-minded, holistic Eastern
approach to viewing the world. I realized that the existence of God or
anything spiritual did not necessarily have to be proven on a physical
level in order to be valid; experiential knowledge of the transcendent
served just as well to convince me of the reality of the spiritual dimension.
Ironically, as I learned in my “Magic, Science, and Religion”
class, such emphasis on experience is actually in the spirit of the scientific
endeavor that emerged during the Scientific Revolution in the late medieval
period. Contrary to popular belief, the Scientific Revolution did not
see a development of secularism based upon scientific values. Instead,
it saw the decline of reliance solely upon ancient Greek authority and
a move away from Aristotelian cosmological philosophy, leading to greater
emphasis on individualism and empirical methodology or experience—the
Scientific Revolution’s most significant legacies. Therefore, the
interest and engagement in Eastern practices occurring in modern Western
societies is in keeping with the essence of the discipline of science
handed down to us from the Scientific Revolution.
As I finished the spring semester of that year, I decided that I would
begin my spiritual journey into discovering for myself the nature of the
ultimate through the knowledge that I would gain both experientially and
academically. That summer, I had two opportunities to gain experiential
knowledge: a family trip to Vietnam with my uncle and cousin and an internship
in documentary filmmaking in Costa Rica.
The trip to Vietnam was my first visit to my motherland and proved to
be a culturally invigorating and informative experience. The following
is a reflection on the eye-opening encounters that Vietnam offered me:
June 21, 2004 …Ever since I’ve gotten here, I’ve seen women
with burns and sores and all kinds of diseases imaginable. I’ve
seen one woman whose neck is no longer existent because her skin
has been so eaten away by disease. I’ve seen men without arms
and legs. One man had legs that were so deformed and tiny as to
have been mistaken for a two-year-old’s; he got around with
sandals on his hands. I’ve seen little children begging for
money. I’ve seen Cambodian kids no more than three years old
following tourists around, continuing the tradition of the trade
their parents have handed down to them, with explicit training for
child labor. I’ve seen older kids carrying around their infant
brothers and sisters in slings, with their necks bent backwards,
just so people could feel bad for them and give them money. I’ve
seen a little girl and a little boy, no more than five years old,
sleeping on the sidewalk by themselves, with little hats for collecting
money in their hands. I’ve seen men lounging around on their
motorcycles or cyclos (xich lo’s), asking anyone who passes
by if they need a lift, but no one ever says yes. I’ve seen
women carrying around baskets attached to poles on their backs trying
to sell fruit to whomever walks by. I’ve seen little old ladies
trailing tourists trying to get them to buy cheap postcards. I’ve
seen little boys and girls trying to sell scratch tickets. How do
any of these people make any money when everyone they approach just
shoos them away? How could they possibly earn a living that way?
How could they possibly feed themselves consistently, never mind
their families? I guess every member of the family has to work if
they expect any income whatsoever. How can the kids get an education
this way? |
Witnessing such seeming contentment in individuals whose lives were filled
with such poverty and pain inspired me to view life with the same optimistic
approach. These encounters were a prime motivator for me to start my practice
of meditation and mindfulness in my everyday activities during the trip.
I began to recognize that the small, mundane, and seemingly meaningless
actions in life; such as breathing, taking showers, and eating; were all
infused with profound wonder and beauty if simply taken notice of in the
moment that I am fully engaged and participating in the activity. The
beautiful scenic boat trips and guided nature tours of Vietnam´s
numerous natural wonders encouraged the development of my practice even
more. Supplementing the practice were inspirational passages from Thich
Nhat Hanh´s Peace is Every Step, a book that my academic advisor
had suggested to me before I left for my trip.
Within the five weeks that I spent in Vietnam, I had immersed myself in
the beauty of the present moment and discovered my natural inclination
towards the philosophy and practice of Buddhism, particularly Zen. My
interest in Zen meditation would later culminate in the final product
of this thesis project: a short ethnographic documentary film on Zen practitioners
living in Cambridge, MA.
Internship
Experience
Following my trip to Vietnam, I went to Samara, Costa Rica, a small beach
town off the coast of the Pacific for a five-weeklong internship in digital
journalism and documentary filmmaking, called Global Media Adventures.
From this internship, I learned basic digital video camera skills, including
composition, lighting, building sequences and location audio recording.
I also learned how to edit digital video footage using Final Cut Pro,
a MAC-based industry-standard editing program. I was given the opportunity
to direct, shoot, write, edit and produce my own five-minute documentary
and collaborated with a team of four on directing, shooting, writing,
editing and producing a five-minute promotional video.
Despite these necessary skills, perhaps the most valuable thing that I
gained from this hands-on experience is the appreciation for the importance
of human relationships, particularly networking in the television industry.
Through this internship, I made connections with several filmmaking professionals,
the most important of which is a director of photography, Mike Parker,
whose credits include Rescue 911, CNN, Discovery Channel, and The History
Channel. In general, my experience in Costa Rica yielded some necessary
training, an indispensable contact, and some lifelong friends.
Though I learned and gained much, this internship also taught me that
with every good experience, one may expect a bad one, and the entirety
of the program was not without its shortcomings. Since the program was
running for the first time, the nine of us students were subject to the
whims and lack of organization and preparation of the staff; particularly
of the director, who proved to be rather irresponsible and short-tempered.
Within the first week of the program, he had grounded all of the student
participants with a 10:00PM curfew due to his suspicion concerning the
drug use of two students, with no cause or evidence. The students´
relations with him from then on grew hostile and the atmosphere surrounding
the program became acrid and stale.
For me, personally, another downside to the program was its focus on the
commercial and journalistic nature of television documentaries. Here,
the emphasis was on the careful preparation of a documentary script, arrived
at through preliminary research and interviews, and then the recording
of “b-roll,” or the appropriate visual material used to illustrate
and accompany the information appearing in the script, as provided by
a host or by interview subjects. This approach relegated the visuals to
a secondary realm of importance, placing more importance on the conveyance
of information through verbal material. Such an emphasis caused me to
question the discrepancy between the use of visuals and audio in the audiovisual
medium of television, a discrepancy that will later be discussed in more
depth.
In the fall semester of my fourth year, I obtained two more opportunities
for real-world experience: an internship at WGBH’s NOVA Science
Unit and another internship at Documentary Educational Resources. NOVA
is a documentary series within New England’s WGBH Educational Foundation,
which is a network of public television channels and radio stations that
produces most of PBS’ prime-time television shows. The series produces
shows that deal specifically with science-related matters.
As an intern at NOVA, working 16 hours per week, I was able to familiarize
myself with several of the television programs that were at various stages
of development, production and postproduction. In particular, I worked
as a researcher for a relatively new idea that my supervisor, Evan Hadingham,
NOVA’s senior science editor, had for a reality show-style program
featuring famous psychological experiments. I also was a production assistant
for a quarterly magazine-style show, “Science Now,” which
presents highlights of news stories in the science community. My postproduction
experience came from the biographical program called “Percy Julian,”
which traces the story of a black chemist during the Civil Rights movement.
These are three out of the six major projects, not including the regular
NOVA shows, that were in progress during the three months that I worked
there.
During the course of the internship, a few problems arose that called
into question my suitability for a career in public broadcasting. These
problems mainly concerned the fact that, for a majority of my time spent
there, I felt as though there was too much pressure in the atmosphere.
This is not to say that I am incapable of multi-tasking or that I was
too slow to keep up with the pace there; I mean that a majority of the
NOVA employees were overly stressed out. I think that part of the reason
for this is that things worked rather inefficiently at NOVA. Everyone
is constantly running around tending to a dozen different tasks at once,
working away at them in increments so that a documentary that started
two-and-half years ago is only in the middle of its post-production stages
now. The work environment there was so unhealthy to the point that I seriously
contemplated instituting a mandatory break every afternoon so that people
could unwind and possibly join in a meditation session if they so chose.
I would have definitely gone through with it had I not been a lowly intern
with no authority to do so.
The other problem I confronted during my time at NOVA was the quality
of the programming. Though WGBH is dedicated to the pursuit of education
and knowledge for viewers, gained through the intermediary medium of video,
the programs dealing with science-related matters were produced in a way
that most elementary school children could understand the complex concepts
conveyed. This approach would have been effective had NOVA´s target
audience been children of this age, but as my supervisor at the time had
mentioned to me once, the majority of NOVA´s viewers were well into
their 50s and 60s. Nor were the producers simply dumbing down the quality
of the programming in an effort to attract a younger audience. Instead,
their reasoning was that they must take into consideration the educational
background and knowledge of the general viewing public, which in some
cases was little to none. Because of this attempt to cater to viewers
of all backgrounds, public broadcasting takes on a style of simplicity
to the point of teaching to grade-schoolers. It was through my experience
at NOVA that I realized I do not want to dedicate my life to a career
in which condescension of mass audiences hampers my filmmaking approach
to a particular subject.
By contrast, my internship at Documentary Educational Resources (DER)
showed me what I actually want to do with my career: work in the production
of independent ethnographic documentary films that are used primarily
in the classroom as teaching tools. DER is a not-for-profit organization
that sells and distributes educational documentaries to schools and teachers
for educational purposes. As an intern, my responsibility was to watch
and write reviews for all of the films that filmmakers submitted to the
organization for distribution. Through this experience, I developed a
critical eye and learned what not to do in filmmaking. I also helped the
organization with some of the content and links on its website and edited
a 20-minute-long segment of some of DER’s best film clips for a
promotional event. I established a resourceful contact with my supervisor,
Cynthia Close, who knows the intricacies and professionals of the independent
filmmaking industry. As in my internship in Costa Rica, I had found a
valuable resource, mentor, and friend through the channels of filmmaking.
Thus was the extent of my internship experience during my time as an undergraduate
student. It only took six months for me to realize to which niche in the
documentary film industry I belonged. Experiencing for myself the nature
of the two different environments in the film business gave me reason
enough to choose one over the other. However, as with most debates, there
are more complexities involved in the functioning and success of both.
In the following chapter, I explore the documentary tradition as it relates
to the division between the two camps, analyze what form and function
that division takes in contemporary films, and discuss what elements from
each make a successful documentary.
>>back to top
(1) McEvilley, Thomas. The
Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies.
NY: Allworth Press, 2002. 28.
(2) Ibid. 29.
(3) Ibid.
(4) Ibid.
(5) Ibid.
(6) It must be noted, however,
that the intention of this passage was not a “concrete material
monism as an exclusive doctrine, but as part of a staged approach to the
concept of brahman, or featureless being, as the substrate.” Ibid.
30.
(7) Please refer to The Institute
for the Advancement of the Social Sciences at Boston University for the
entire published version of this paper. Vu, Xuan. “The Monistic
Foundation of Early Greek Philosophy.” The Institute for the Advancement
of the Social Sciences at Boston University May 2004 <http://www.bu.edu/uni/iass/hellenism/calendar.html>.
(8) Vu, Xuan. Journal entry for
“Psychology of Psychic Phenomena and Extrasensory Perception”
CASHU311 course. Prof. Anthony Barrand. 18 Jan. 2004.
(9) Ibid. 9 Feb. 2004.
(10) Ibid. 17 Feb. 2004.
(11) Ibid. 12 Mar. 2004.
(12) Ibid. 28 Mar. 2004.
(13) Ibid. 19 Apr. 2004.
(14) Ibid. 23 Apr. 2004.
(15)Vu, Xuan. Journal entry.
21 June 2004.