factory settings
Last week, I had a three day film shoot at a family-owned electronics factory in Woodstock, IL.1
The film GROUNDHOG DAY, in which a weatherman is stuck living the same day over and over again, was also filmed in Woodstock.2
In general, film sets do have a certain GROUND HOG DAY quality - a déjà vu that comes from running a scene multiple times from different angles. The physical labor that underpins every shoot also has a looping rhythm, a Sisyphean cycle of perpetually setting up and tearing down the worlds you’re building. Whenever you bring a camera and some gear into a space, that space becomes a set, even if moments before it was a humble alley or a living room or a field. If you have enough money you can even pay for the world to accept that this ordinary corner is now (legally) a set - with flyers, permits, PAs blocking off sidewalks, and extras filling in the gaps so nothing is left to chance. The whole idea of being on set comes from those early days of cinema when most things were shot in large studios inside of fully fabricated spaces.
Being able to build and control an entire world like this is usually outside of my budget. Money and control are materially connected3 but more often than not I’m trying to find spaces that are “close enough” and then accept that most elements are simply out of my control. This type of constraint-based-creation feels very at home in Chicago with institutions like The Neo-Futurists working on a scrappy budget of both resources and time (only 60 minutes? For 30 plays??) and artists like Selina Trepp who stopped acquiring new art materials in 2012 and resolved to only work with what she had. It’s also a core part of the DIY Filmmaking class I’m teaching at Lillstreet and the upcoming workshop on Improvisational Directing I’m cooking up at Mainstage!
I’ve worked on projects where I filmed my friends from the backseat of a car for zero dollars and I’ve also been a much smaller cog for productions where tens of thousands of dollars were spent to shut down a three lane highway. Having that kind of control isn’t always better; you don’t always need an ocean liner4 for a job better suited to a jet-ski.
In the electronics factory, everyone had a fixed role. They were building hundreds of different physical widgets which requires repeating the same task over and over again to create an object that can perform the same task over and over again, becoming a machine to make the machines. Filming this process also becomes mechanical, especially when we transitioned from documentary style shooting to product photography; cranking out 3-4 still images for every item the company sells, basically transforming the set into a twelve-hour game of Bop-It5.
As I started to work my way through the mountains of pictures of slightly different buttons, toggles, and circuits, I found myself finally listening to Hanif Abudurriqib’s amazing book THEY CAN’T KILL US UNTIL THEY KILL US. I strongly recommend a truly random pairing whenever you can manage it. Don’t think too hard, just smush things together until some random combination resonates. I’m late to this particular book party, but I’m so glad I’m here. I’ve been a fan of Hanif’s poetry and just general vibe on Instagram for years now, and hearing his poetic musings on music and culture totally shifted my internal landscape as I slogged my way between products. Even if my physical setting was locked into a repetitive clicking, scrolling, and sorting loop, my body was successfully transported to the hot basements of the Columbus punk scene or Prince’s half-time show or anywhere else I was lucky enough to hear Hanif describe.
I’m realizing now that, at the factory, nearly every worker wore headphones. All in their own worlds, shaping their own internal spaces even as their hands fell into a familiar groove.
Is the difference between a routine, a rut, and a ritual all a matter of perspective?
Yes and no and maybe. I reckon the truth isn’t a 1 or a 0, an OPEN or CLOSED circuit, but somewhere in between the gaps.
My brain jumps (always jumping!) to the book SAVING TIME, in which Jenny Odell makes the connection between our relationship to productivity and time and the role of work/labor in our society.
While industrial capitalism spawned many machines that saved time and labor, it seemed only to take up more and more of workers' time. But unlike the Ancient Greeks, who imagined that, someday, machines might replace slave labor so that everyone might enjoy some free time, capital only "frees time in order to appropriate it for itself." […] Thus the paradox: The factory is efficient, but it also produces "the drive toward the consumption of the person's time up to its outermost, physical limit." Or, as the workplace adage would have it, "The only reward for working faster is more work." - Jenny Odell, SAVING TIME
As I watched the wave of switches, toggles, and chips slide past me I also thought of Jenny quoting a time management book from the 90s that complains that "the computer chip didn't free us. It coerced us to produce at its speed."
Professional artists — who are paid completely arbitrary but potentially significant sums to do the thing they most want to do, by entities that range from nefarious to worthy — are in some ways well situated to examine the contradictions of class. In other ways, though, people “compelled” to make art (as Biss says she is) don’t know much about reality at all; they are the rare, lucky individuals whose professional lives approach the ideal […].
- a quote from the NYT review of Eula Biss’s book “Having and Being Had”
I’m a full time freelancer these days which can sometimes feel like I’m the foreman and the worker and the product all rolled into a Rube-Goldbergian-factory of one. But of course, a factory isn’t the only model for the invisible architecture of how I’m envisioning my time and place in the world of work. I can also be a gardener or gatherer or, in many cases, just a guy who wears a lot of different hats.
Lately, when people ask me what’s new and exciting in my life, I keep talking about biking to therapy is if it’s a wild discovery! CHICAGO IN SPRING, ever heard of it??! The bike ride in question is nine miles there and a nine miles back, another time-loop that leaves me right back where I started…but, as is often the case, a little bit different.
SOME FRESH INPUTS
I’ve been thinking about the Parable of the Raft ever since my bud
of fame sent this podcast about secular Buddhism my wayI watched CHALLENGERS and ate a churro. Both were amazing.
per a recommendation from my mom, I started reading the kid’s book ELF DOG AND OWL HEAD and am loving it. Makes me want to drop everything and just write weird worlds for 3rd - 5th graders!
SOME FRESH OUTPUTS
I’m going to invent a little robot that’s sole function is giving you a little pat on the bat after you send your little emails
A designed a t-shirt for my brother’s running club that reimagined him and his friends as goofy super heros.
I’m running a one day directing workshop if you’re curious and in Chicago on May 30th
And that’s the fort! Thanks for reading and see ya at the next one.
plugging away,
Will
I didn’t know this at the time and did ZERO sight seeing, dear reader.
DISCUSS: https://www.ohwitchplease.ca/all-episodes/materialgirls-avatarxhypermediacy
I mean, have you ever watched them try to park a yacht on the show BELOW DECKS?
Place it, snap it, twist it, snap it, turn it, snap it, flip it, snap it, du-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh!