Coppola, BJJ, and why doing the thing beats knowing the thing

I teach Brazilian Jiu Jitsu as well as filmmaking, and I'm always fascinated by how many parallels there are between them. Of course there are always going to be parallels to mastering any skill, but one thing that unites these two in particular is that they're constantly changing on the surface, whilst having a relatively stable centre.

Filmmaking today does look very different to when I started, never mind 50+ years ago. I've been recently watching clips from Megadoc, of Coppola losing his mind on the set of Metropolis, which is as interesting as it was watching him lose his mind on the set of Apocalypse Now in Hearts of Darkness, but for very different reasons. He's clearly so frustrated at the changes in the industry - even the titans need to adapt, it seems!

Similarly, BJJ looks very different to what it did even 10 years ago, and it's likely that today's champions would quite easily defeat those of the past if they were able to time travel there. The rules are largely the same, but the techniques have evolved, polished by countless hours of competitors fighting in countless matches. Winning, losing, and adapting.

In both scenarios, this creates a panic to keep up with the times, which results in endlessly chasing the newest, shiniest thing. A variation on an obscure leg lock. The latest fancy Claude integration with X software. This is what I call horizontal movement. You're not getting a deep understanding of anything, but rather a superficial understanding of lots of things.

You're not building a tree, you're collecting sticks.

That's not to say it's a bad thing. It's important not to get left behind, but it's less important than vertical movement. Your tree trunk and roots.

You build that by doing the thing you're supposed to be doing! In BJJ it's grabbing someone and trying to submit them. In filmmaking it's making a film, or at least a shot. You'll fail horrifically but you'll reflect on it and learn, and that friction strengthens the trunk and stretches out the roots.

It also naturally leads to horizontal movement. You'll find the current limit of your creativity, and technicality, and you'll need to find a way around it. That could be a YouTube video showing a fancy trick to get around a problem, but that video will actually count for something if you hit the problem, and you only hit real problems when you're doing the thing that you should be doing!

The leaves and flowers catch the eye, and they're on the horizontal branches, but of course, they grow from the trunk. Vertical work is hard, and it's less flashy. If you're ahead of the curve, it's easy to impress people with what you know. It's much harder to impress people with vertical knowledge. Try saying "I have a good understanding of shot composition and rhythm" and see how many people care. But that knowledge comes from doing the work, and it shows in the work.

Ask yourself what your vertical to horizontal ratio is. If it's horizontal heavy, find the thing that's stopping you from working vertically. The thing that's stopping you from filming and editing right now. 9 times out of 10 it's just an excuse, so you can let it float away, and get to work.