We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Don Starnes a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Don, thank you so much for opening up with us about some important, but sometimes personal topics. One that really matters to us is overcoming Imposter Syndrome because we’ve seen how so many people are held back in life because of this and so we’d really appreciate hearing about how you overcame Imposter Syndrome.
I try to avoid pretense: it’s hard to be an imposter if you’re not pretending. Be yourself and lean into your strengths.
I try to focus on the task at hand: to do the simple job I’ve been given to the best of my abilities. I stay open to learning, try to be honest, and focus on creativity and service.
Fine, you may say, but what if it’s not a simple job? Every job is made up of simple (if sometimes difficult), discrete tasks. If you feel like an imposter, try to ignore all of the other factors, such as your self-doubt and other people’s judgements, and get to work on the first essential task.
I somehow grew up to be self-confident, creative and capable: these have led me to jump into the deep end of the pool, on a regular basis, and be able to swim there. So: one way to avoid imposter syndrome is to put in the considerable time and effort to become very good at what you do. I’ve been a professional filmmaker, well trained by experts, for a long time: this helps.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
I’m a motion picture Director of Photography and occasional Director. The movie business is fun, cinematography is its own reward and I enjoy the craft. I doubt that any one lives long enough to learn everything about it, mostly because filmmaking is deeply involved with human culture, human nature, time and reality, both in the making of movies and in the stories that we tell with them.
I began by making my own films in high school and college. I supported this by working as a still photographer, typesetter (which used to be a thing), graphic designer and stringer (journalist)— skills that I had developed in school (and that used to pay well). Soon, I began to work in the motion picture business: at a rental house, a film lab, in post-production, camera assisting and lighting. It soon became clear that I had to choose between my own filmmaking and professional film work, because both are all consuming and, therefore, mutually exclusive. I chose to go pro— and worked my way up from film loader to Director of Photography.
I photograph short and feature films, commercials, documentaries, music videos, digital content and other things. I sometimes work as a camera operator on TV shows. I have very reasonable career goals: to do the best work that I can and to earn a living. However, I have very high standards for cinema, justified by the many astonishing works of art that I’ve seen and the many terrible movies that make the great ones more valuable. I’m always looking for good filmmakers to work with.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
These days, a lot of people starting out as a Director of Photography would guess that the three most impactful things in their work would be cameras, lenses and lights. Nope— these aren’t even in the top five. In general, anything that you can buy is less important than who you have to be and what you have to know to do the job well.
Here are three of the things that I had to learn to become a good filmmaker:
Courageous curiosity
I have always observed people, their relationships, causes and effects, and change through time. But to advance in my filmmaking career and make better films, I had to learn to go beyond observation and ask people questions. This meant that I had to overcome shyness, challenge my own conclusions, learn who to ask and how to ask them, show sincere gratitude and combine self-confidence with humility. Essentially, I had to better learn how to learn.
There is rarely a day in filmmaking where I don’t learn something, because the job is multifaceted and because I’m actively curious. Sometimes it’s about how some aspect of acting works in a movie, or how to get along with a person, or how a new piece of lighting equipment’s colors behave in a flag’s penumbra, or how long a gimbal’s battery lasts, or any of a seemingly infinite number of things. Experiencing them is one thing, learning from them is another. Learning requires curiosity and, often, asking questions of people who know more than you do.
Generosity
Movies are better when you make them for other people: to move, enlighten or entertain them. They are best when you do all three. These movies are like a gift to the audience from the people making them. Bad movies, though, are more like an invoice: pay attention to me and/or give me money in exchange for very little. In my experience, the difference is usually in the intent of the filmmakers: whether they are generous artists or stingy grifters.
Early in my career, I photographed a documentary about women who had been abused by men. The director and I thought that the filming went well and that the interviews looked beautiful. Watching the movie at its film festival premiere, with an audience for the first time, my pride dissolved into shame and regret as I realized that the beautiful look of the movie was completely at odds with the story that we were trying to tell: that it was difficult to hear what these women were saying, to feel the impact of the abuse that they had endured, while they looked like movie stars in a glossy movie. I realized that I had undermined their story in a particularly ironic way; that the photography was more of a request (look at my beautiful pictures) than a gift.
I think of this and many other hard lessons often when making movies now.
I recommend that film workers focus hard on serving the audience, your co-workers and your employers. Yes, you have to protect yourself from abuse in the movie business, but you also have to make the whole enterprise worthwhile for everybody. This requires simultaneously watching out for your safety and getting over yourself. It’s a practice that improves with experience.
Cooperatiion
Filmmaking is normally a group effort, because it takes a lot of time and many particular skills to make a movie. There is a hierarchy, in which nearly everyone manages people, works with peers and is managed by others. Often, we don’t know these people very well, but have to work well with them anyway. The same insight and empathy that we use to create the story and characters of the movie is required to work with the people making the movie. This includes learning what the other people do, what their concerns are, how they think, how to earn their respect and cooperation, and so on. Cooperation requires creativity: to find opportunity in problems and common cause in apparent conflicts.
One thing I learned is to speak to people in the language that they can hear. Once I was shooting a horror film with a producer / director. During pre-production, we talked about story and character: things went pretty well. On the first few days of the shoot, though, I was getting nowhere with him. Then I realized that he was acting more like a producer (concerned about money and that the shots would sell the movie in the trailer) than a director (following the character arc that we’d designed in pre-production). I switched from talking with the director about story and character to talking with him about marketability and efficiency— and we got along fine.
I recommend valuing cooperation above most things in filmmaking, because it’s nearly impossible to create something good with people you can’t work with. Developing people skills is at least as important as learning the technology of filmmaking. Team contact sports are probably a good place to learn and practice some of this; in-person negotiation training is another good opportunity.
Okay, so before we go we always love to ask if you are looking for folks to partner or collaborate with?
I look constantly, literally every day, for filmmakers to work with who • have insight into humans
• are serious about filmmaking
• have a good story to tell
• have the means to tell it
• have a solid plan for showing their movie to other people
• are making their movies for other people’s benefit
• are likely to make another one
These people are surprisingly hard to find. I have a lot of coffees with people, hoping to determine if we’re a good fit. Once I’ve found filmmakers like this, I try to stay very close to them and work with them as often as possible.
Are you this filmmaker? Hit me up on Instagram: @donstarnes
Contact Info:
- Website: https://donstarnes.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/donstarnes/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/donstarnes
- Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/dstarnes/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/donstarnes
- Other: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0823415/
