Middle Watch - Research
“...when I’ve been assigned a project like Kung Fu Panda, then I have to do a deep dive into the culture and the history and everything. So I can work there with confidence because I can’t work, if I feel ignorant about any part of it.”
John Stevenson Any project, whether I've instigated it or been assigned to it, requires a very deep dive and research and homework to understand the setting or the cultural background or, you know, whatever it may be before before you can be creative, before I can be creative. Maybe it doesn't work for anybody else. I have to ingest until I'm.. I'm full to the brim with data so that I feel confident that I understand the subject I'm going to work on and then that allows me, which is exactly what happened on Middle Watch, to start being less pedantic about sticking to the facts, once I understand and know the truth of the research. Then you can bend the truth, you know, to your creative goal. And that's OK.
“But I think if you if you start bending things before you really understand them, you can make some very big mistakes. ”
John Stevenson You can either do something that possibly is very culturally insensitive. Miss, maybe miss some key element that research would have allowed you to fully understand. But if you don't put the hours in to immerse yourself, you might just blithely make an assumption that you would be incorrect in making. So before I can proceed with confidence, I need to do homework and I need. I need to do so much homework that my head hurts.. at the point where it's where it's like. I cannot read anything more about World War Two trawlers, you know, or the Indian Ocean. You know, when I am maxed out, then it's time to get creative.
Rosa Mulraney So clearly, you don't have that, that feeling or you've moved beyond that feeling of you're not worried about your creativity. You feel confident to kind of immerse yourself in this, this information, these influences and then move on to the kind of creative stage.
John Stevenson Well, that's what works for me, I don't know. I can't speak for what works for anybody else it's just the way my brain works. If I'm attracted to something, whether it's it's a martial arts story in China or whether it's a story set in the Second World War? You know, I've got to ask myself, firstly, well what do I know about China, you know? And the answer I come up with, well, not much. You know, I'm sure whatever I think I know about China is wrong and based on, you know, incorrect data. So I better change that. And if I ask myself, what do I know about the Second World War in the Indian Ocean? Again, the answer is, well, not much. I mean, what? What do I know about an Admiralty Trawler, which was the specific ship that the account took place on? I don't know anything about Admiralty Trawlers. I discovered I had to go and do a lot of research on what an Admiralty Trawler is and how it worked and what did they look like. What was the crew called ..? This is why I went to the Imperial War Museum and did that. And then from that research and the Imperial War Museum in to trying to understand the things that I had read in the letter and and have some concrete visual information in my head.
