The two best jobs.

When I was a young division officer in the Navy, I remember standing on the ship’s bridge with the captain watching the sea pass by. He leaned over from his chair and said, “Tom, the two best jobs in the Navy are division officer and captain. Know why?”  I said I didn’t. “Because they actually control what’s going on.” I always found it an interesting perspective since I was regularly harassed to do things by the department head one level above me and two levels below the captain. But there was a lot of truth to what he said: in my own little division, I led the men who actually did the work of making the ship run; and although what I could ask them to do was perhaps limited, there was direct authority to do real things. In the same way, the captain could pretty much do what he wanted to with his ship (within reason), and had direct authority over all of us. What he realized made both jobs so appealing was they each oversaw their own limited worlds – the other positions in between were just forms of middle management. I think this is one of the reasons I find independent film production so appealing: you can pretty much control all the aspects of the little world through creativity and leadership. I find the roles of writing, producing, and directing almost to be continuous: one flows naturally into the other to create a single artistic whole. Since we have the privilege of shooting a short film next week for a national family ministry, the pleasant aspects of a dramatic production are again upon us. So, to make the analogy complete, I guess in the world of independent film production, making short films is like being a division officer. And it’s a blessing to be able to do it.