[HN Gopher] The Making of "My Octopus Teacher"
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The Making of "My Octopus Teacher"
Author : localhost
Score : 45 points
Date : 2020-10-11 05:09 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (seachangeproject.exposure.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (seachangeproject.exposure.co)
| MrLeap wrote:
| I'm making a lovecraftian text editor where silly tentacles
| type.. what you type.. on a 3d mechanical typewriter.
|
| Someone on twitter called it "My octopus typing teacher" just a
| few days ago. I didn't realize it was a reference to a
| documentary.
|
| This is just regular old pop culture permeation, but I can't help
| but have that weird baader-meinhof paranoid feeling.
| jbotz wrote:
| I highly recommend this film (available on Netflix)... it shows
| that there can be friendship between two such utterly alien minds
| and thus that higher sentience has some common principles even
| when the "infrastructure" on which it is implemented is so
| completely different.
| blunte wrote:
| I thoroughly enjoyed this film. Knowing nothing about film
| making, I would have never guessed at the number of people and
| the amount of time it took to make what appeared to be just one
| man, an octopus, and some other sea life!
| hyperion2010 wrote:
| Fantastic. I watched this last night with my parents and we
| immediately wanted to know more about the decade long production
| history. This piece has more detail than I ever hoped for, and
| should probably be the basis for a production section on the
| (currently rather sparse) Wikipedia page [0].
|
| 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Octopus_Teacher
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| I loved this. That said, I wondered how much was true and how
| much "story" was added by stitching together different clips from
| different times.
|
| I love being underwater. I can't freedive like him, so I mostly
| scuba dived. Something about being swallowed by the sea, and
| having everything forced to slow down (your breathing, your
| motion, etc) is incredibly therapeutic. It is otherworldly.
| localhost wrote:
| The thing that really stood out for me watching it last night was
| the depth of the storytelling. Making sure to create the back-
| story first (why he spent a year visiting his Octopus Teacher)
| and then the gradual reveal of the arc of the story over the rest
| of the film. The effectiveness of the interviews as well where
| the interviewer was never seen or heard from. It had the feel of
| a vlog, and you could _imagine_ that he did it all himself. Then
| in this piece, you see just how much effort and work went into
| making this an effective story.
|
| There were so many other ways this story could have turned out -
| I'm happy that it turned out this way!
| saltedonion wrote:
| It really is a one of a kind story.
|
| The filmmaker is incredibly ambitious, much like a lot of the
| startup founders we see here in the Valley.
|
| He constantly held himself to such a high standard he
| eventually burnt out. But it's this tenacity and drive that
| made the film possible. Diving daily for a year in frigid
| waters while doing excellent filmography, and then later
| stitching the story together into an mesmerizing narrative.
|
| Much respect for this man.
| TeaDrunk wrote:
| One of the things that weirded me out about the cutting of the
| film was how the guys family was treated- in a way the guy
| appeared to completely abandon his job, leaving to the ocean and
| forcing his wife to raise their child essentially alone while he
| went and had awesome underwater experiences reliving his
| childhood and becoming one with nature. It's of course easy to
| leave and become one with nature if you force all the duties of
| being a human in society(taxes, cleaning, groceries, raising a
| child, etc.) onto someone else (in this case the wife).
|
| I highly doubt that's what actually happened but that's
| essentially the first 10-15 minutes of the documentary and really
| took me out from the main portion, which was the friendship being
| formed. Then I couldn't stop thinking whenever I saw this- the
| octopus is dealing with her life all day, risking life and limb,
| and in her periphery is a guy who is escaping his everyday life
| and making someone else deal with it.
| gitrog wrote:
| I had exactly the same feeling. I didn't sympathise with the
| guy's situation either. South Africa has massive inequality
| problems and this guy is living the life in one of the most
| expensive places you can live (easily rivaling European cities)
| and he abandons his family over writer's block?!
|
| All of that also made me question the entire narrative of the
| friendship with the octopus. I'm sure it's possible, but it's
| also easy to edit things to fit a narrative if you're a
| documentary film maker. I'm probably just being cynical
| though...
| albalus wrote:
| Yeah I agree it really seemed like a wealth adventure porn
| but some of the moments he recorded, like when the shark
| chases left me speechless at the intelligence...problem
| solving skills in the face of dire consequences...shattered
| my cynicism a bit.
| ViViDboarder wrote:
| Yea. It felt a little off to me as well. At the end he tried to
| spin it about him leaning to spend time with his son... by
| ignoring his son.
|
| I dunno. I just couldn't empathize with the guy.
|
| Despite that, the story of the octopus was incredible. If they
| had cut out 100% of the autobiography, I think I'd have enjoyed
| it more.
| blunte wrote:
| As a person grows more imbalanced internally, their impact on
| those around them can go from positive to neutral to
| negative. If fixing this imbalance requires a leave of
| absence, (and especially if they return whole and balanced),
| the gap can be well worth it.
| inasio wrote:
| With 10C water you can only be down there for at most half an
| hour (especially not wearing a wet/dry suit), so he likely had
| time for his family and the other less fun parts of life.
|
| That said, I found it a bit surprising that in his small window
| of time down there he managed to be at quite a few critical
| events in the octopus' life.
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(page generated 2020-10-11 23:00 UTC)