Summations Only

You're killing me. KILLING MEEEEE!!! [dronester grasps his chest/heart, keels over the keyboard, and with his last breath manages to type one more emoticon . . . ]

No I wouldn't. Because its you, and this is what you do, I avoided talking about it and tried to stear the discussion back to the topic of the thread. Message 79I didn't even quote your misrepresentation of my example, because I knew it would turn into this.

It can't be what I do because I've never done it. It's what you guys do, when I've made a compelling argument against your position, and rather than even appear to admit that I'm right, here come these charges that "oh, I was misunderstood, you've been arguing against something I never said!"It's a lie, CS; it was a goddamn lie when PD did it, it was a goddamn lie when dronester did it - that's why he's gibbering like an idiot about it now - and it's a goddamn lie when you're doing it, now. All because you people, for no reason at all, think I'm such an asshole that admitting I might be right about even one goddamn thing is just too much.This is the problem that comes up because you all make it so personal. You can't talk about ideas, you have to talk about Crashfrog. It's turned into this because, like PD and Dronester, you think that lying will prevent you from having to admit I was right about something. I don't understand why it's so personal for you. Have I really, even once, been up somebody's ass for admitting they were wrong? I have to do it so often I don't see how I ever could. I'm only up people's asses when they're such chicken-shits they won't ever admit to an error.

You've gained experience from the tip. Not everything winds up on a resume.When I worked as an electrician, my resume didn't say:"Experience: I know to leave wires out in the sun for a bit because it makes it easier to strip the coating off"But it is something of value I gained from talking with other electricians. And YES I did it for free, plenty, every fucking summer with my dad as his helper since I was 11 years old. By the time I got on an actual job I worked circles around all the 1st year apprentices with all the experience I gained. But my resume didn't say "Helper for my dad for 8 years." There's a lot of experience to be gained by assiting a photographer or a film director (which I have experience in) for free. Hell I've ONLY worked on films for free, all indie films. I've been production assistant, carried cameras, set up lighting, blocked out shots for directors - and I've gained a lot of experience from that. All for free.My resume includes all of that. There is a shitload of information to be learned just by sitting on set for 8 hours, let alone be the right-hand to the director. You have no fucking clue what you're talking about.My resume includes all that free work I did. I mean, you know how quickly you'd get hired as a SAG production assiatant if say you were Judd Apatow's helper on ANY film? Yeah dude, CS meant you'd be getting coffee non-stop for 8 hours straight. The photographer demands 200 cups a day. You didn't know that about photographers? Oh dude, you should spend a day with them.- Oni

"for no reason at all"?Wow, just wow. You know Crash, I shouldn't laugh at you, and I apologize for my recent posts. It seems you DO have some type of mental impairment/disability/delusion. Seriously, there's no shame in finding a good therapist and working it out.Seriously.

And you stating that my position is that you can learn photography by fetching coffee is a misrepresentation. As I said, that's not my claim its your strange interpretation of my claim. My claim was that spending time with a photographer affords you the opportunity to learn the ropes from someone who knows the vagaries of the business. And that some people believe that this opportunity is worth selling their labour to run a few errands for the person who is helping them out. The source also says that one way to help you make it as a professional is to learn from the professionals. Exactly as I have been saying all along. And we both agree it would be a foolish exchange to agree to so much work that there is no time spent learning from a pro. Where the lines are drawn probably depends on your estimation of the value of learning from said pro. If they've made millions, you might tolerate more grunt work to gain their inside knowledge. But it is an experience, and one experiences it. One experiences seeing someone setting up a shoot the way a seasoned pro only knows how. You experience receiving answers to your questions. You experience learning stuff.You said:

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Can you pick up some helpful tips from watching the pros work? Absolutely.

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That's what we're talking about! We're talking about picking up helpful tips from watching a pro. Something that you said you could do. It's strange to see you arguing against this position.You gain the experience of watching a pro, from which you can pick up helpful tips. Some people might regard this is an invaluable experience.It is not experience taking pictures. It is not gaining experience being a photographer. It is gaining the experience of seeing a pro do it, and grilling them as much as you can. And you pick up tips via the experience of watching a pro work. Exactly as you said. No. You are getting terribly confused over experience. CS actually said

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invaluable experience of watching how they do their job

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The experience here is not 'being a photographer' but 'watching how they do their job'. The former is essential to being a pro photographer and we're not denying that just because we are trying to show there is value in the latter experience too.Which you have agreed with at least once. My position is that you've done a lot of completely misunderstanding what I am saying where others are finding it clear. You may be coming round to the idea that I'm not taking the positions you say I have been and this causes you to think that I'm changing my mind. As I said originally:

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But sensible people will observe setting up shots, trade tips for quick colour balancing, will ask questions about exposure settings and learning the justifications for each. They'll learn how to approach clients and drum up business, how to sell their work, what work sells quick, what work sells high.

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I've not been talking about gaining experience as a photographer. I've been talking about gaining the experience of learning from a photographer the various ins and outs of the trade. Fine, so do you agree that in some cases there may be enough value to justify doing some labour to get it? There's no need to pretend, as quoted above from my second post in this thread - I've been of that position from the outset.Heres more from my third post:

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Some people do better by talking out their questions with an expert, watching them work and instead of stumbling on trade secrets, acquire them directly.

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Here I am talking about learning trade secrets, watching them work. Still not claiming that this gives you direct work experience as a photographer. Really just saying that it is a potentially valuable experience.I dropped it for a little while and then came back with Still talking about the experience of acquiring knowledge from a pro in exchange for errands.I think it might be worth you taking another look at things. I'm away for the weekend, so you can take your time.

I just find crash's entire position to be almost childishly stubborn. I mean, film students would KILL at the chance of being a big directors assistant.He's hung up on "experience" being solely knowing how to pull the trigger on the camera, and not focusing on ALL the knowledge one gains from just watching the masters work. You can take a thousand photos and never learn how to take a proper picture, just look at any girl on faceook's picture library. Experience is usually gained the most when you shut the fuck up and just watch someone who knows what they're doing do it right.Anyway it is quite entertaining. - Oni

Foreveryoung?- Oni

But that's literally what we've been talking about this whole time - marketable experience. Experience you can put on a resume. Experience that will help you get a job. So if it doesn't wind up on a resume it's irrelevant to what we're talking about because how are you going to use it to get a job? Yeah, it's a tip. It's going to help you do the job. But what's going to help you get the job is when you say"Experience: Did the wiring for a home addition. Certified as completed to code."because that's experience. So you have a job in the movies now, right?

Sure. And maybe one out of ten thousand of them will get a job as a director.Maybe that "free experience" isn't working out too well for them. Maybe they should re-think the value of the so-called "experience" they're getting for free; maybe they should be out there making movies and actually getting experience as a director, instead.I mean, if you're trying to portray show business as a place where working for free gets you the experience you need to get a desirable job, you really have to deal with the fact that almost nobody in show business is getting the desirable jobs. But you don't. In your mind, the fact that all these film students and comedy writers think the way to get ahead is to work for free somehow proves that it works, but in my mind, the fact that almost none of these film students and comedy writers are actually getting ahead proves that it doesn't.

"Almost"?CS's, yours, and especially Mod's patience-of-a-saint replies have been so complete and clear I could not possibly add anything more to your arguments except . . .When I was in NYC a few weeks ago, I went to the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria. I got to meet my boyhood-idol, special effects artist Rick Baker. I would have loved to have been his UNPAID assistant as a teen or in my 20s. My life, surely, would have turned out much different from that valuable experience.Rick Baker - WikipediaHOME – Museum of the Moving ImageEdited by dronester, : clarity

Yes that would be nice. But I'm stipulating facts about a hypothetical world and in that world we're stuck with 100 jobs on average. You were characterising it as essentially firing people (or having them voluntarily leave) when its 'their turn'. But I'm not talking about that.A person's 'turn' comes up naturally when a business sheds some of its positions or the person gets fired or whatever. Like I've been saying all along. And as I've explained already, that's exactly not what I'm talking about. People don't voluntarily become unemployed, they lose their jobs. I know, some people quit with no job lined up, but that serves as a counter example to your argument against a strawman. But what you are tragically failing to understand is the most rudimentary point of all: People lose their jobs. They become unemployed. They seek employment. Hopefully they get it. Later they lose their job again and so the cycle goes.You seem to think I'm proposing mandatory unemployment But I have time and again said that's not what I'm saying.Let's go back to my simple example, in a world where crashfrog doesn't have the solution to unemployment.100 jobs, 10 long term unemployed.
Then suddenly, one business shrinks its workforce
99 jobs, 10 long term unemployed and 1 short term unemployed.
Another business fills the gap left by the shrinking company and opens a new job position. All things being equal (which they are) the short term unemployed gets the job as they have recent work experience in their belt.
100 jobs, 10 long term unemployed.Wouldn't it be more ideal to have 100 jobs, 10 short to medium term unemployed?Now I'm not saying we should start mandating that a company must employ someone whose been out of work for a long time, but if you can find work arounds to the problem: such as getting the long term unemployed some relevant and recent work experience, you might be able to influence the distributions. Bad luck, poor decisions, ill health, I'm sure there are many stories out there Manage it, not promote it. Just like we manage an economy in other areas. There are some who say we shouldn't manage the economy, that we should let the invisible hand do its bidding. But I say the compassionate thing to do is to try and tame or at least steer the hand. The feelings mutual. I'd be keen to see you start attacking my actual argument rather than the strange ideas you are inventing in your mind. If you don't understand, ask me - don't just make stuff up, it's very frustrating.I am going to agree with one thing: The strawman version of me you are fighting with is an idiot that's all over the place. You should try and give me some credit and consider that you are for some reason misunderstanding what I am saying.

I'm not lying, crash, I haven't changed my position and you have interpreted it incorrectly from the beginning. I never meant that you would get experience by getting coffee, honestly. I'm not retreating because of some compelling argument from you, I really never meant that. Mod can see it, others can see it, its really true.The funny part is that I added the getting the coffee part as an afterthought because I figured that if I didn't then you would say that following a photographer around isn't doing any work.And the "this" that I was referring to that you do, is what we're all doing now, discussing the fine details of your interpretation of the analogy rather than the using the analogy to address the topic.Let's get back to the actual discussion here. There's a Jobseekers' Allowance - the government gives unemployed people money. Then there's the Mandatory Work Activity scheme - if the jobseeker remains idle for too long then the government wants them to get out and do some kind of work, even if they're not getting paid for. Can that be a good thing? I think so.

Come on. Now you're playing word games. Obviously anything you do is an "experience" that you experience, by definition. Sitting at home doing nothing is "experience" in the sense that you're experiencing boredom and idleness.We're talking specifically about marketable experience that is going to help you get your next job. You're making the argument that you can get that from proximity to professional photographers, which you receive in exchange for menial labor.But you've not provided any evidence that you can get real, marketable experience from nothing but proximity. And the way I know that you can't is my own common sense, and what I would ask for and look for if I were hiring a photographer.I'd look for experience. Photographic work that they had done. Publications their photographs had appeared in. Challenging environments they had been able to produce good work in. And I literally could not care less what photographers they had followed around and fetched coffee for, so how could that possibly be "experience" that you could use to qualify for a job? No, it's not, Mod. It's never been what we're talking about. We're talking about experience, real, marketable experience you can use to get a job. That's why we're talking about it in "Unpaid work for the Unemployed." That's why we're talking about it in this overall context of getting a job. Jesus Christ, how did you get the context so wrong, here? How do you put that on a resume?"Experience: I learned the various ins and outs of the trade by watching famous photographers work." People would think you were a complete fucking idiot. Because it's not experience. It's like saying you're an "experienced lover" because you watch a ton of porn. Well, maybe CS thinks he is, but everybody knows that's not how it works.

It's not the clarity. I have no trouble understanding them. It's the dishonesty, how they're lying now about what positions they originally took. Look, there's no question that many people think they can get "valuable experience" by working for free. The question is whether or not they actually do. I maintain that you would have gotten more experience - more real, marketable experience you could put on a resume and use to get a job - working as a makeup artist instead of watching Rick Baker work as a makeup artist. And nobody can explain how I'm wrong about that.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.