13262: Be Like Miss Johnson: Write Your Own Textbook

Raw transcript:

If you haven’t seen the film Hidden
Figures,
uh, take the time to to watch the film.
It’s a it’s a slice of American history
that’s fascinating. And Hidden Inside
Hidden Figures about Katherine Johnson,
one of the human calculators in the
Apollo mission, uh, is a lesson we can
all learn from.
And it’s a lesson on textbooks. Oh,
there’s a tease for you in this episode
of the VO Heroes podcast
as it was coming out of my mouth. I’m
like, “Yeah, that’s going to get people
to listen and watch talk about textbooks
for sure.” Anyway, Katherine Johnson was
one of a group of women that worked at
NASA doing calculations in the days
before computers were doing
calculations. In fact, they were
referred to as human calculators or
human computers. And there’s a whole
backstory of the racial equality or in
inequality that was occurring at NASA in
those days and how it was dismantled uh
just so that people could get their jobs
done. It’s a fascinating film. It’s a
very well done film. Taj Hansen does a
great job as Katherine and it’s worth
watching. And I’m not sure if this is in
the movie,
but there’s a quote from Katherine
Johnson
who when asked about the fact that they
were developing techniques and
strategies and tactics for the the moon
landing and and the the flights that
occurred previous to the moon landing um
that no one had ever done before. There
were no uh there were no courses on how
to do this. There were no books on how
to do this. There were no textbooks on
even the math in some cases on how to do
this. And she famously said there were
no textbooks
so we had to write one.
And
I feel like that’s something that we do
as creative people all the time. You
know, when you work on an assembly line,
you can fine-tune how fast the line is
going. Uh how how uh narrow the track
is, how how close the tolerances are on
the cutting or the forming or the
moving. You know, you can develop that
over time and you can hone and refine
that procedure. We do that from time to
time as well. you know, we do things
over and over and over again, but
sometimes we’re creating things
specifically for what we do from
scratch.
I’m talking to not only my my actor
students and followers and and peers,
but also my voiceover people, my my my
writing people for Narrate Your Own
Book.
We’re constantly writing our own
textbooks that didn’t exist. We’re
constantly creating out of whole cloth.
It’s kind of our superpower.
You know, we’re given a role to play or
we think of a plot uh uh or an arc and
we need how to we need to know how to
develop that. We create those things out
of whole cloth. There are no textbooks
on how to create that next creepy evil
villain that I’m going to play on
television. Now, there are some things I
can take for other creepy evil villains
that I’ve done, just as you know, the
the Apollo human calculators uh used
various methods of math to to figure out
what was going on. But in many cases, it
was just on the fly. We had to figure
out how to do it on our own. Uh there’s
another episode of this podcast that
I’ve done on the term skunk works
and it talks about, you know, the the
idea of putting together uh a a small
group to get a job done that had never
been done before or to explore something
that had never been explored before. And
I want you to take a moment and
recognize that you have that superpower.
If you’re watching this, you you have
that superpower. You do. And I’d love
for you to talk about it. When you’re
presented with something that you’ve
never done before, you don’t know how to
do.
What happens to you inside? What are the
feelings that you get? What is the
process that you go through? It may be
something that is so, you know,
matterof-act and familiar to you,
creating something new out of whole
cloth that you don’t much think about
it. You just do it. But know that there
are many, many, many more people
that can’t do what you can do.
And you should be aware of that and be
very proud of that and use that to your
advantage.
Uh what’s it like when you have to
create a character out of whole cloth?
When you have to create a uh an approach
to something out of whole cloth, let me
know in the comments below. And I mean
on vioheres.com.
Uh that’s where this podcast lives.
uh join the conversation there. It’s
it’s polite. It’s respectful. Want to
know what what happens when you’re faced
with something you’ve never done before.
How do you handle that? Hit the like
button if you like what you’re you’re
hearing in this episode. You can
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share this with another actor or voice
talent or writer who may not know their
superpower in creating things in writing
their own textbooks.
I’m David H. Lawrence the 17th. I thank
you so much for watching and for
listening and I will see you in the next
episode of the VO Heroes podcast.

(from YouTube)