Planning for the Unknown
I’m surviving. There’ve been moments where these fires in Oregon have felt like the last straw, but I haven’t reached the psychological breaking point — yet. Aside from being tremendously lucky, there’s one other thing that has helped me keep my bearings — and it’s a tool I’m borrowing from my experience in telling stories where there are countless unknowns.
As a control freak, I don’t do well with unknowns. I’m sure many of you can relate. And these days, it feels like there are more things we can’t control than ever. It’s uncomfortable, to say the least. But there’s an important reason that I haven’t crumbled yet...
“We make our own luck,” I remember saying at a storytelling workshop some years back. It was in our event filmmaking days, when we were often “accused” by our peers of staging or faking scenes, while we insisted they were in-the-moment and authentic. People would say, “there’s no way you get this lucky this often and get these kinds of shots organically.”
I can see how it would appear unlikely. Time and time again, we’d find ourselves in the right place at the right time, capturing amazing moments that unfolded before us like magic.
But we made our own luck. In a nutshell, it boiled down to three things:
Get as much intel as possible
Determine which findings are most important for the story
Execute the plan and adapt to surprises with intention
If you’d like to dig even deeper, here’s a detailed breakdown of how we approached a specific film project with this approach.
1. Get as much intel as possible
To make good predictions, you need a lot of data. So we ask a million and one questions. Especially in documentary filmmaking, when things are unfolding in front of you in a completely unscripted way, you need to get a hold of everything you can possibly predict to improve your chances of favorable outcomes. This level of information doesn’t just allow you to limit unknowns, it enables you to prepare for possible unknown unknowns — those things that are impossible to even anticipate. Even this one step, if you don’t follow through on the second two, gives you increased confidence and a greater sense of control.
2. Determine which findings are most important for the story
All that intel is great and all, but it can also backfire if you’re not careful. Great storytelling is largely about knowing what NOT to include. It requires discipline and intention. By sifting through the plethora of options and isolating the ones that are truly aligned with the vision, we can start creating a plan for where we need to be and when. It also lets us leave some wiggle room for those unknowns we’re starting to anticipate.
3. Execute the plan and adapt to surprises with intention
I’m going to stray from the cliché that we should control the things we can and let go of the things we can’t. I think this advice is incomplete. Yes, we should strive to control what we can. But the second part is more nuanced. If we’ve done our homework and created “if this, then that” scenarios for potential unknowns, we can feel more confident even about those that are hard to predict. And the things we can’t possibly anticipate at all? Well, with all this intel gathering and strategizing done, we can feel pretty certain that we’ve minimized their probability. But they could still arise, and if they do, our plan is to take them as they come — but with great intention. Because if we’ve created a deep sense of alignment across the team about the vision for the project, there’s a good chance we’ll be in alignment when we need to make a decision on the fly.
As you may have gathered by now, this isn’t just an approach for filmmaking or work-related projects. This is life. Life IS that film shoot, that project, that story arc where we can feel a greater sense of control if we just take a breath and think strategically and objectively. I will admit, sometimes this work is uncomfortable — not just because it’s yet another thing on our to-do lists, but because sometimes it can reveal things we’d prefer to sweep under the rug. Sometimes we may find aspects of ourselves that we’re not so happy with, that we wish were different.
The good thing is, if we have the courage to find them, we can change them.
This is how I’ve been navigating these fires, when, for a moment, we started asking ourselves, “what if we lose the house?”
What’s the intel? What’s important? What can we control? What don’t we know? What will we know soon? What won’t we know for a while? How can we respond to the knowns? How can we respond to the unknowns when they become known? If this, then what?
If this, then that.
Pack a go bag. Make a list of everything that can’t be packed until the last minute. Identify escape destinations (multiple in case of restricted access). Call insurance company to verify details of fire insurance. Make tweaks to policy if needed. Breathe a sigh of relief that if we lose everything, we’ll still be ok. Refuel both cars even if we only need one. Check wind direction predictions. Plan for potential scenarios based on wind. Plan for scenarios based on predicted rain. Plan for the worst, hope for the best. And try to be there for those who are much worse off.
There are a lot of things we can’t control right now. From COVID-19, to our social fabric getting torn apart, to people losing their homes in raging fires. Getting a better handle of what’s actually in our grasp and putting some structure around it can help us feel a greater sense of ownership and confidence. At least it has for me. I hope it can for you as well.
If anyone out there needs an ear, needs support, needs a friend, give me a shout. I’m here.
–Amina