|
|
|
|
|
|
by hnbad
870 days ago
|
|
|
He's a filmmaker in the sense that he has made films. He's not a filmmaker in the sense that he thinks of films as films and understands the art form. You can argue that's enough to technically qualify as a filmmaker but most people would argue that having received professional credit as something once while having made something else your entire career is not the same as that thing being your primary career, even if the English language lacks the appropriate grammatical structures to represent this difference. |
|
|
amateur versus professional: King was paid so he's a professional filmmaker.
bad/unskilled versus good/talented: King showed himself to be a aesthetically bad/unskilled filmmaker.
You are offering a third axis:
"one-off" versus "career": King so far has not made a career of filmmaking and only made the one film.
In English yeah, we do tend to assume the first axis (amateur versus professional) as the "default" axis. I think this is a very useful axis to use as the default: it's the least gatekeeping and the least subjective. Have you been paid anything to do that job? Congratulations, you are a professional at it. You've done the job. Otherwise, you are an amateur, keep trying you'll get there some day.
"one-off"/"career" is an axis with more subjective judgments. (How many films does it take to call it your career? 2? 14? If you deeply and academically study films your whole life but only make one masterpiece, is that not a career effort?) I shouldn't need to explain how good/bad, skilled/unskilled are deeply subjective.