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Thursday, March 28, 2024
Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes on the shop floor
www.thefabricator.com: Putting yourself in someone else's shoes is a pretty simple concept. It makes me think of job shadowing, when a student is required to find someone to shadow at work for a day and then write a report about it.
7 comments:
Esther
said...
I think this article is really relative to what the Design and Production major is built off of currently. Trying to learn all of the basics of the backstage world even if you know what you want to concentrate on or if you do not. I think that being given the opportunities to learn not only one part of the job helps you become more useful and understanding when you are working on a production. I think it is especially important if you are working in a theatre where literally every part of the job is collaborative and needs you to have good communication to make sure everything is going ot be ready for the show. With my stagecraft classes I have learned more about some of these parts of theatre than I have in my past 9 years of being involved in theatre. These classes have helped me learn different parts that I am not that familiar nor interested in but the skills that I have learned have helped me better communicate with different people in different departments.
I really like the idea of putting yourself in someone else's shoes and I find it is often one of the best methods of education for people on both sides. CMU's design and production program has done a very good job of this, and I also see the importance of this reflected through what the professors say. There have been many times in drafting where Dick will say things such as "This is how the shop builds this, so I'll note it to make it as easy for them as possible." Looking at what others do and working with them gives you great ideas for how to do your job more effectively. Additionally, as the article discussed, sometimes getting new eyes on a job could make you find new methods of doing it that may be better. One person doing the same thing may get stuck in the same methods, so it is good to have new ideas out there as simple solutions can be easily missed.
I think this article follows the ideology of the CMU SOD having to do stagecraft and be a DP for the first year as well as the actors who have to do run crew. It’s important to see what everyone does so you are able to appreciate each other more and how hard each area works. Of course, it doesn’t stop form departments ragging on each other but the idea is there. I liked the article mentioning how people who design can make changes to make the shop life easier without compromising design/functionality—but simply by knowing a few key facts on how their items/designs are brought to life. I resonate with the sympathy of this article being both in the Technical Direction and Scenic design world. I think it’s important for designers to respect what is built to make their vision real and learn how to make their designs better in terms of feasibility to ease the revision process and communication to the shop.
I think that this is a sentiment that CMU Drama follows wholeheartedly, and I agree with it. As a stage manager, at times it is definitely frustrating that in the first year of my education here I don't do a lot of stage managing. However, I think that it makes up for it a lot by being able to learn about how everything works in a lot of different departments.It's incredibly helpful to be able to understand all of the different departmental processes and what they all need to do in order to get a show to operate smoothly. Additionally, I think that it is also helpful at times to have people approach things with no preconceived notions of those said processes, because then you can sort of find the best possible way to work towards an outcome without so much concern for what had been done previously.
I think this can be a useful thing to do not only in the theatre world but just through life in general. It would be so easy to just discount everyone's individual lives judge them from moment to moment, but as somebody who would much rather avoid causing problems, I usually try to give people the benefit of the doubt. Everybody deals with their personal and work lives in their own way, and I think by trying to understand someone and put yourself in their shoes you give them a chance to understand why they are approaching certain situations in the way they do. An example of this could be a designer or director asking for something that isn't physically possible for a TD to accomplish, but instead of discounting their thoughts and calling them stupid, the best course of action is to explain why it isn't possible and see if there are alternate ideas that could achieve the same effect. They might not know it doesn't work because they don't have the same experiences you do, and it wouldn't help anyone to start a fight about it.
Well learning about design I think this has been one of the really important things to drive home is that if a slight change to the design doesn't impact the overall affect you're trying to give but makes the life of the Carpenter trying to build it that much easier then you should do it even if it is a little bit harder to design. You should make your design be as simple to build as possible while still accomplishing the goal of your set or whatever you're trying to design. I think something that makes this hard to remember is how precise you can be with digital design programs like AutoCAD where you can get lines and spaces at sizes with infinitesimal precision. When hand drafting you recognize how hard it is to make something be more and more precise, if it's necessary you do it but it takes a lot more time and a lot more effort the same goes for on a shop floor. If it needs to be that precise you can do it, it takes a lot more time and a lot more effort but if it's necessary you can still do it but you shouldn't have to do it when making things where the precision really isn’t important.
This is a pretty insightful article. It reminds me of a writing teacher telling someone to read their paper aloud to themselves to catch any mistakes, or to have someone else read their paper to get a fresh pair of eyes on it. It really makes a difference to step back from your work for a minute and refresh your view and vision. Putting yourself in others’ shoes can be really beneficial to your communication and skills. It’s easy to write someone or something off because you don’t have the full picture. I often hear students or even teachers around Purnell getting upset with other departments on a production, and more often than not I think to myself that they should consider what that department or person is dealing with. I think it’s more than applicable to communication between departments as well as inter-department communication. It can help us as a whole be more productive and less stressed.
7 comments:
I think this article is really relative to what the Design and Production major is built off of currently. Trying to learn all of the basics of the backstage world even if you know what you want to concentrate on or if you do not. I think that being given the opportunities to learn not only one part of the job helps you become more useful and understanding when you are working on a production. I think it is especially important if you are working in a theatre where literally every part of the job is collaborative and needs you to have good communication to make sure everything is going ot be ready for the show. With my stagecraft classes I have learned more about some of these parts of theatre than I have in my past 9 years of being involved in theatre. These classes have helped me learn different parts that I am not that familiar nor interested in but the skills that I have learned have helped me better communicate with different people in different departments.
I really like the idea of putting yourself in someone else's shoes and I find it is often one of the best methods of education for people on both sides. CMU's design and production program has done a very good job of this, and I also see the importance of this reflected through what the professors say. There have been many times in drafting where Dick will say things such as "This is how the shop builds this, so I'll note it to make it as easy for them as possible." Looking at what others do and working with them gives you great ideas for how to do your job more effectively. Additionally, as the article discussed, sometimes getting new eyes on a job could make you find new methods of doing it that may be better. One person doing the same thing may get stuck in the same methods, so it is good to have new ideas out there as simple solutions can be easily missed.
I think this article follows the ideology of the CMU SOD having to do stagecraft and be a DP for the first year as well as the actors who have to do run crew. It’s important to see what everyone does so you are able to appreciate each other more and how hard each area works. Of course, it doesn’t stop form departments ragging on each other but the idea is there. I liked the article mentioning how people who design can make changes to make the shop life easier without compromising design/functionality—but simply by knowing a few key facts on how their items/designs are brought to life. I resonate with the sympathy of this article being both in the Technical Direction and Scenic design world. I think it’s important for designers to respect what is built to make their vision real and learn how to make their designs better in terms of feasibility to ease the revision process and communication to the shop.
I think that this is a sentiment that CMU Drama follows wholeheartedly, and I agree with it. As a stage manager, at times it is definitely frustrating that in the first year of my education here I don't do a lot of stage managing. However, I think that it makes up for it a lot by being able to learn about how everything works in a lot of different departments.It's incredibly helpful to be able to understand all of the different departmental processes and what they all need to do in order to get a show to operate smoothly. Additionally, I think that it is also helpful at times to have people approach things with no preconceived notions of those said processes, because then you can sort of find the best possible way to work towards an outcome without so much concern for what had been done previously.
I think this can be a useful thing to do not only in the theatre world but just through life in general. It would be so easy to just discount everyone's individual lives judge them from moment to moment, but as somebody who would much rather avoid causing problems, I usually try to give people the benefit of the doubt. Everybody deals with their personal and work lives in their own way, and I think by trying to understand someone and put yourself in their shoes you give them a chance to understand why they are approaching certain situations in the way they do. An example of this could be a designer or director asking for something that isn't physically possible for a TD to accomplish, but instead of discounting their thoughts and calling them stupid, the best course of action is to explain why it isn't possible and see if there are alternate ideas that could achieve the same effect. They might not know it doesn't work because they don't have the same experiences you do, and it wouldn't help anyone to start a fight about it.
Well learning about design I think this has been one of the really important things to drive home is that if a slight change to the design doesn't impact the overall affect you're trying to give but makes the life of the Carpenter trying to build it that much easier then you should do it even if it is a little bit harder to design. You should make your design be as simple to build as possible while still accomplishing the goal of your set or whatever you're trying to design. I think something that makes this hard to remember is how precise you can be with digital design programs like AutoCAD where you can get lines and spaces at sizes with infinitesimal precision. When hand drafting you recognize how hard it is to make something be more and more precise, if it's necessary you do it but it takes a lot more time and a lot more effort the same goes for on a shop floor. If it needs to be that precise you can do it, it takes a lot more time and a lot more effort but if it's necessary you can still do it but you shouldn't have to do it when making things where the precision really isn’t important.
This is a pretty insightful article. It reminds me of a writing teacher telling someone to read their paper aloud to themselves to catch any mistakes, or to have someone else read their paper to get a fresh pair of eyes on it. It really makes a difference to step back from your work for a minute and refresh your view and vision. Putting yourself in others’ shoes can be really beneficial to your communication and skills. It’s easy to write someone or something off because you don’t have the full picture. I often hear students or even teachers around Purnell getting upset with other departments on a production, and more often than not I think to myself that they should consider what that department or person is dealing with. I think it’s more than applicable to communication between departments as well as inter-department communication. It can help us as a whole be more productive and less stressed.
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