Why Do We Read So Much?

You know, when I first got into filmmaking, I was one of those guys who just has to read loads. I had to get my hands on everything, and just read and read everything! And I did.

Or watch DVD courses. Or audio courses.

As you probably know, this isn’t a great use of our time.

I still like books. I’m not doing a bonfire of the manuals. I’m trying to be honest about what reading did for me versus what I told myself it was doing. There’s a difference between studying and hiding, and I spent a long time on the hiding side with a highlighter in my hand.

So Why Do We Read So Much And Amass So Much Information?

I think consuming filmmaking material is comforting. We think that if we’re reading something we’re engrossed in the goal and we’re actively moving towards our outcome.

This is true to an extent, but we’re fooling ourselves if we think it’s anywhere near as powerful as getting out in the field and practising this stuff!

Maybe it’s because we’re trained by school and academics in general that if we read loads, then we’ll get good at something.

Yes, this is true in a field like History or English Literature. But in the field of filmmaking, the field of life, we need to get out and take action – try the techniques, the new processes, learn from our failures and grow.

So there’s a lot of new people who come in and they must have the perfect approach already planned and calculated before they make their first attempts at practice. They have to have read everything and know everycontingency.

This is no way to play the game.

A Read/Shoot Ratio (Before You Drown)

If I could go back and give early-me one rule, it wouldn’t be “never read.” It would be: for every hour you spend consuming, you owe the camera more hours than that.

Call it a read/shoot ratio. I don’t need it to be a religion. I need it to stop the week where I read three chapters on coverage and shoot nothing.

A simple version that actually fits a life: if you read for an evening, you shoot or cut the next day, even if it’s ugly. If you watch a DVD course at the weekend, you go out with the camera before the next weekend. If you buy another book, you finish one piece of work first. The book is the dessert. The work is the meal.

This is the same energy as starting now instead of waiting until you “know enough.” You will never know enough. The pile of unread PDFs on your desktop is not a career. It’s a comfort blanket with page numbers.

What counts as “shoot” in the ratio:

Time with a camera in your hands. Time in the edit. Time on a call pitching a real job. Time on set, even if you’re holding a boom and not calling the shots. Time writing pages if the thing you’re trying to get good at is writing — but then you still have to get those pages in front of a camera eventually, or you’re just a reader who outlines.

What does not count:

Rewatching the same tutorial. Highlighting. Arguing about cameras on a forum. Researching gear you are not going to buy this month. Building the perfect folder structure for projects you haven’t shot.

I’m not anti-learning. I’m anti-cosplay. Filmmaking-as-identity is very easy to perform from a sofa.

So What’s The Solution?

You’ve got to get out there and make the mistakes…then make sure you learn from them.

There’s a big risk that if you go out trying to amass everything you can about a subject that you’ll just hit Information Overload. Information Overload is a situation where you’ve consumed so much information that you just don’t know what your next (or even first!) move is.

Sometimes you are just buried under so much information that you don’t even get started. This can lead to other difficulties like Paralysis By Analysis.

So don’t get stuck in the Consuming Everything myth.

I did for a long time.

Information Overload, In Practice

Let me make that overload less abstract, because “information overload” can sound like a poster in a classroom.

It looks like this. You read one book that says cover every scene with a master and then go in. You read another that says masters are death and you should shoot the moment. You watch a course that swears by natural light. You watch another that says you’re unprofessional if you haven’t got three lights in the boot. You bookmark a piece on letting the writing flow and another on structure and now you can’t write a scene because both voices are talking at once.

Then you go to a shoot — if you go at all — and you’re not seeing the room. You’re seeing a committee in your head. That’s overload. The next move isn’t “one more chapter.” The next move is one constraint. One camera. One scene. One interview. Make it. Live with it.

Overload also shows up as shopping. New people treat equipment lists like syllabi. You have a bag. The bag does not make the film. Put the book down and go film a real person in a real room.

When Books Actually Help (Usually After A Failed Shoot)

Here’s the bit I wish someone had said to me, because the opposite of “read everything” is not “read nothing.”

Books help after you’ve got a bruise.

You shoot an interview and the sound is a disaster. Then you read the chapter on mics and rooms. It sticks. You cut a scene and it dies in the middle. Then you go and look at three-act structure or whatever model you use, and you can finally see the sag because you’ve felt the sag. You freeze in front of actors. Then a page on directing is useful, because you have a specific failure to map it onto.

Before the bruise, the same page is trivia. After the bruise, it’s a tool.

So the loop I like is: attempt, fail in a specific way, read for that specific hole, attempt again. Not: read a stack, feel prepared, postpone the attempt.

Failed shoot, then book. Not book, then maybe shoot if the weather is nice. Pick one source, read the bit that matches the wound, close it, go back out. That’s study. The endless amassing is a hobby that looks like ambition.

Screenwriting Study Is A Slightly Different Animal

I want to contrast this with screenwriting, because I know a bunch of you are here for scripts as much as cameras, and I’m not going to pretend they’re the same sport.

Shooting is a body skill. You can only fake it for so long. The camera will tell on you.

Writing is also a practice, but reading is closer to the work. If you want to write, you should read scripts and good screenwriting books — not instead of writing pages, but as part of learning the language. You wouldn’t try to write novels without reading novels. Fair.

The trap is still the same shape. You can read every structure book on the shelf and produce zero pages. You can know the beats and never sit down. You can use “I’m studying” as a way to avoid the terrifying bit where a scene is bad and has your name on it.

So even for writers: read, then write more than you read. Watch a film with a notebook, then write a scene that uses one thing you noticed. Don’t collect theories of story like stamps.

Filmmaking eats both. The page has to become pictures eventually. If your reading never leaves the desk, you’re a student of cinema, which is a fine thing to be — just don’t confuse it with being a filmmaker.

Wrapping Up

You can get immersed in theory and still be no better than the next person…especially if that person’s out there practising in the field week in and week out!

It’s a myth of false comfort and it won’t benefit you in the long run.

Get out there, take your hits in the field. Then come back, read and learn what you need to in order to progress.

Hits first. Reading second. Books are sharper when they have something real to cut into.

I know this post was a little short, but I hope this was beneficial. Thanks for reading!

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