Tacit anticipation among film students: an ethnography of making movies in film school

In this ethnographic study of aspiring filmmakers working together to make movies in film school, in the backyard of the film and television industries, I argue that students undergo a “dialectic of professionalization.” Using participant observation, interviews and grounded theory, I found individuals enter film school with varying “factors of individuality,” such as ambition, restraint, and aesthetic subjectivity. Interfacing with curricular requirements to make films, they undergo a tentative, messy yet social process I term “resocialization”: they need to repeatedly ‘fit with’ film crews considered as temporary organizational structures {Chapter 2}. Once resocialized as crewmembers, they exhibit a variety of “tacit knowing,” not only of filmmaking roles, hierarchies, and routines, but also of story, emotion, and characters, thereby “socially making” their reputations even as they discover “artistic discourse” {Chapter 3}. Simultaneously in the classroom, students find themselves embedded in a “cacophony” of conflicting pedagogical discourse about industrial norms, and vacillate between resistance and appropriation in order to extricate their own “authorial” voice. As they form particular reputations and make particular films, they take on the “posture” of “tacit anticipation,” a perpetually alert ‘shape-shiftiness’ that does not fully embrace but cannot fully ignore the call of industry {Chapter 4}. I theorize these changes as “dialectic,” building on philosopher G. W. F. Hegel’s ontology {Chapter 5}. I submit that student filmmakers are not fully socialized in film school as future labor for media industries. Since they have undergone resocialization, practiced tacit knowing, discovered film as formal story, and “hustled” for work, they leave school having been, in various ways, “made productive.” That is what “professional” finally looks like: the more self-reflexive mode of tacit anticipation. Future media production studies must adequately theorize their subjects’ relationships to “work”, “career,” “knowing” and craft “form,” before they can write them off as mere neoliberal “labor.”本民族志研究（ethnographic study）聚焦于影视行业的边缘地带——电影学院中携手创作影片的准电影人群体，本文提出，学生群体正经历一场"专业化辩证过程"（dialectic of professionalization）。本研究采用参与式观察（participant observation）、访谈与扎根理论（grounded theory）方法，发现学生入学时便怀揣各异的"个性特质"，诸如抱负、克制力与美学主体性。在适配课程要求开展影片创作的过程中，学生们会经历一段我称之为"再社会化"的试探性、杂乱却兼具社交属性的过程：他们需要反复适配被视为临时组织结构的电影摄制组（第二章）。在完成摄制组成员身份的再社会化后，学生们会展现出多样的"隐性知识（tacit knowing）"：不仅涵盖电影制作的角色分工、层级体系与日常流程，还包括叙事、情感与人物塑造相关的认知，由此在探索"艺术话语"的同时，通过社交活动确立自身声誉（第三章）。与此同时在课堂之上，学生们会深陷围绕行业规范的、彼此冲突的教学话语"杂音"之中，为了挣脱束缚、寻获自身的"作者性（authorial）"声音，他们会在抗拒与挪用两种姿态间摇摆不定。随着学生们确立特定声誉、完成特定影片创作，他们会呈现出"隐性预判"的姿态——一种始终保持警觉的"弹性调适性"：既不会全然接纳行业的感召，也无法完全忽视其影响力（第四章）。本研究以哲学家格奥尔格·威廉·弗里德里希·黑格尔（G. W. F. Hegel）的本体论为基础，将上述变化阐释为"辩证过程"（第五章）。本文认为，电影学院并未将学生完全社会化，使其成为传媒行业未来的劳动力。经历了再社会化、隐性知识实践、将电影认知为规范化叙事，并为工作奔波打拼之后，学生们在离校时已以多种方式被"塑造为具备生产能力的个体"。这便是"专业人士"的最终形态：一种更具自我反思性的隐性预判模式。未来的传媒生产研究若要将研究对象单纯归为新自由主义（neoliberal）语境下的"劳动力"，需先充分阐释研究对象与"工作""职业""认知"以及创作"形式"之间的关系。