Alan Kay suggests that good inventors are like Michelangelo, both imagining the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel—and also spending years on their back painting it! Part visionary, part obsessive craftsperson.
I wonder about auteurs in film—hundreds of staff doing detail work!
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Maybe one principle is that it’s possible to (partially) delegate to someone else who is themselves Michelangelo-like in that way.
Like: maybe Wes Anderson’s set dressers are just as visionary and obsessive as he is, so he can let them do some of the “painting”?
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Likewise in games: maybe an auteur-like direct can “outsource” only to a level designer who will themselves bring auteur-like sensibilities—and not to a “technician”? suggests experiences along these lines in his comments about The Witness’s team.
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I wonder if the important element is not so much whether he painted it single-handedly as much as that he was up there, on his back, “with candle wax dripping into his eye” for four years alongside maybe-assistants. That’s not delegation!
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As far as I know, Michelangelo, Leonardo and Rafael all had apprentices that also spent time on their backs actually painting - Sistine Chapel painted by more than one brush.
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Right, but surely even he has tons of staff! What about the mixing engineer? The gaffers? Where can you draw the line?
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Have you read Guide for the Perplexed? The first decade of Herzog's career at the very least involved him working inhuman hours to commit his visions to film.
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Thank you for the rec!
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My SigOther is an auteur docfilm maker - her last film she shot, directed, edited, produced, acted in. Total "staff" doing detail work was under 5
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Of course it took 10 years to achieve the final resulting film