In part 2 of why Autistic people are great and why you're missing out on not having them in the workforce, we are going to talk about a specific brand of creativity. Practical creativity.
My background is in art and design, much to my Mum's delight and my Dad's dismay, I went to art college. My family is a creative bunch but my Dad was from a generation that didn't value creativity, but the world was in black and white and only 15 fps then so it's understandable. He started his carpentry apprenticeship at 15, dropping out of school and taking up smoking in the process. Now carpentry on it's own is creative but we're not just talking about any old creativity here, we're talking about 'Practical Creativity'. So what does that actually mean? Well any skilled carpenter is creative, they make houses from trees, they have 'created'. Practical creativity differs in that, while any carpenter can follow taught instructions on how to build a roof frame, few people can reinvent it. Which is exactly what my Dad did.
Traditionally it took a team of people to build a roof frame then lift it up onto the house, this took days and man power. My Dad, through using his practical creativity, developed a way of building a roof frame by himself in one day. Think about what that means. On one side you have 3 people taking 2 or 3 days to do a task. Then you have someone with strong practical creativity who comes along, identifies a bottle neck and creates a solution. Now that 3 man 3 day job has been done in one day by one man. You wish you had that person in your workforce.
The downside of this skill set for employers is that you don’t have much to offer these creative types in return for their formidable talent. They value independence, freedom and genuine challenges and corporate office life just doesn’t appeal. Every job application I’ve ever seen is looking for someone ‘who is up for a challenge’, we all know what they really mean is, ‘we will overwork you’.
A challenge is a problem that needs solving, a challenge is innovating better ways of doing things, a challenge is being dealt a bad hand in a rigged game and still holding your own, we know what challenge is. We also know when you know what challenge is. Contrary to popular belief, Autistics can read people like an open book.
What can the company world offer these agile thinkers? On price work my Dad was earning 3 times the day rate. Can you match that? It’s a bargain really, 1 person times 3 is still less than 9, which is how many man days the traditional method took. It’s also very easy to underestimate these people.
When my dad walked on site in short cut-off jeans with only a saw, hammer and pencil they thought he was a joke. He was very outgoing, charismatic, chaotic and often underestimated. Then he did the work of 9 men in 1 day. How many times have you said ‘work smarter not harder’? How many times did you truly understand what that means?
“But Tom!” I hear you cry, “what use is making roofs quickly for our consultancy firm?” Well it’s probably not useful, unless you need a new roof for your consultancy headquarters. But you’re also missing the point. It’s not a specific carpentry skill. Carpentry was the vessel for the rare talent of his practical creativity. It could have been anything. Do you as an employer have the imagination to extrapolate how that could be critically useful in literally every industry?
After my own diagnosis I retrospectively see a lot of similarities in both my parents. I’m not a psychologist so can’t diagnose them but I wouldn't be surprised if they were both Autistic. We will never really know though, sadly they both passed away last year from cancer. Both sarcomas.
I was diagnosed Autistic after they passed so neither of them ever knew or suspected I’m Autistic. But since learning more about it I can truly appreciate the gifts handed down from them. Anyone who ever met my Dad would know how similar we are. I think he enjoyed stirring the pot just a little bit more though.
Continuing the family tradition I performed a similar ‘work smarter’ trick when I was shooting ‘The Intent 2’, a feature film released across nationwide cinemas. During a 3 week block of filming in London I was given a lighting budget of £2.5k. To put that in perspective, that is a fairly average 1 DAY music video lighting budget. I had to stretch it nearly 20 times further (You think we get weekends off in film?). Using traditional lighting methods this budget was simply impossible to work with.
'The Intent 2'
Following in my Dad’s footsteps I reinvented film lighting. Hiring old unwanted units and using them in new ways. I developed a system of lighting that was incredibly low cost and also faster to shoot with, it had to be because our schedule was very tight. We could film from any angle without lengthy relights, it looked good and we had loads of freedom with it. In the face of a challenge I developed a new technique which is faster and 20 times cheaper. The Guardian review referred to the lighting in ‘The Intent 2’ as “Hopperesque,” a high compliment.
'The Intent 2'
So how as Autistics do we do this?
We have very literal minds. Combine that with creativity and you have a powerful force multiplier, like Yoda with a calculator. We bring practical creativity to the table. I have worked in enough different career environments and industries to understand how rare and valuable that skill set is.
Autistic people have chess player minds. We are 10 moves ahead at all times. If you bring us a problem we have already implemented the solution. We don't like uncertainty. Because of this we are very forward thinking, we like to create certainty for the future. Although the process might not be outwardly obvious, especially in the case of my Dad, we plan everything in great detail, and are always prepared for any outcome.
In my career as a cinematographer this has been an immense asset to me. Film shoots are a series of problems to solve, something(s!) will always go wrong, guaranteed. My approach is to plan to be adaptable, I play out the most likely scenarios in my head to see what I will need to be able to adapt to any eventuality. I have a back up plan, that back up has multiple back ups. It will also be within the budget and most likely unnoticed until it is required.
‘Ruth’ was a career defining shoot for myself and the 2 Directors. We had one day to get a 12 minute one take. It was sponsored by ARRI (The top dogs of cinema cameras) and I’m a relatively new DOP eager to prove I can shoot in the big league. It was also going wrong and we might be fucked.
A DOP is a Director of Photography. We essentially enable Directors egos so that we can shoot some pretty looking images for our showreels. So that we can then impress and enable more Directors. The cycle is endless and I’m not sure what the ultimate goal is but I have a great time doing it.
We were shooting a day time film in a tight winding house with a very difficult to use cutting edge piece of filming tech and time was running out. The shot was difficult to get, ‘staying calm after stubbing your toe’ difficult. ARRI who were sponsoring ‘Ruth’ had kindly provided us with the same camera equipment used to shoot 1917. The piece of equipment involved a 20kg camera on the end of a robotic crane arm strapped to our camera operator. We had an inch of clearance at times through doorways and over obstacles that Dom, our Trinity operator, had to contort around while wielding a crane. If he bumped something the shot would be ruined. There were a lot of moving parts and any one of them going wrong meant starting from the beginning. We hadn’t got a clean take yet and now the sun was going down.
Luckily my autistic mind had considered this, just when the directors started looking worried about our light situation my Gaffer Ollie, had already actioned our back up plan. In the lighting set up I had made sure to light the entire house from the outside with enough believable light that if we didn't make the shot in time we could still shoot uninterrupted. We were scheduled to finish filming before it got dark, but I had to take into consideration the possibility that we run over and then what the effects of that would be.
After the sun went down, we got the shot.
Bellow are 3 stills from 'Ruth'. You wouldn’t notice that this was shot at night, and that’s the point. We solve problems you don’t know exist.
We premiered ‘Ruth’ at Leicester square to a full house of industry and peers. There wasn’t a dry eye in the cinema. The highest praise.
Ruth is available to watch on Arri's YouTube channel linked bellow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4tm797r-4c&t=12s
As an Autistic person you often get overlooked. It’s hard to find your place in a neurotypical world when you’re different. Few people are willing to take a risk on someone unusual. Getting to where I am in a very difficult to break into industry has been years of poverty, grind and struggle. I grew up on a council estate in Cornwall below the poverty line with a single Mum. To go from that to watching 2 films I’ve shot in Leicester Square cinemas is a feeling I can’t quite explain. However it wouldn’t have been possible without a few key people along my career who decided to take a risk, deviate from the norm and see what someone unusual can bring to the table. For those people I have beaten the odds and delivered excellence every single time.
Imagine what would be possible if more people were brave enough to take a chance. Greatness has never come from playing safe.
