Compromising Your Art
Penguin May 28th, 2008
Over the Memorial Weekend, I was asked by my church to shoot some footage for them. Specifically of two events: a field day and a family night. I also began shooting a bigger piece about the church. I thought it would be a good idea to get some b-roll footage of the worship team playing music and the congregation singing.
Not 3 minutes into the b-roll, Shirley, one of the people in charge came by and told me to stop filming. She was pretty mad. I got a few more shots and then I stopped. I can appreciate her reasoning behind not wanting me to shoot because it might be a distraction to others. Fine. But she could’ve been nicer about it.
On Monday, Shirley gave me a message through one of our pastors to not put any of the family night footage online. It baffled me because it’s not like there was anything risque or compromising in the footage. To the contrary, everyone was really looking forward to watching it. I realized the issue at hand was the censorship.
I’ve become so used to working independently, having final cut, not needing approval for anything, and just producing whatever I wanted. Now I can appreciate what it may be like in a studio system. You have producers and execs and all other sorts of people financing the project who want it done a certain way. Unfortunately, I’m not being paid for my services.
How far do you compromise to get your art made? I’m not even in a position to compromise because the option of dialogue isn’t given to me.
Luminaries in the industry can do whatever they want. But I’m nobody. I’m poor and I can barely afford DV tapes. I’m not even getting reimbursed for the tapes that I used.
I’ll do what I can to fight it, but I don’t have high expectations.
-Penguin
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