Sometimes the only way you can tell something is art is because it was made by an artist.

How's the weather up there, Mr. Lincoln?

Did you see 'Lincoln'? Go see it. 

Not the whole thing. The first five minutes will do. Go ahead. I'll be here when you get back.

Okay. Notice anything… funny? I'll give you a hint. It's the scene at the beginning, where Lincoln (Daniel Day-Lewis) is talking to the soldiers. Lincoln is sitting on a covered platform; the soldiers are standing on muddy ground. Tents are pitched around them. Campfires burn.

When we're looking at Lincoln, it's raining. Hard. That backlight thing Steven Spielberg likes so much –– with shafts of light that illuminate the weather –– makes it impossible not to notice. But when we're looking at the soldiers Lincoln is talking to –– same time, same conversation –– nary a drop is falling.

It's tempting to call this a mistake. It isn't. 

It's not a mistake because while in real life, we have to put up with whatever weather we're given, as directors we get to make whatever weather we want. 

If we want rain –– even if the forecast calls for a 90% chance –– we bring in water trucks and hire crew members to build and operate the rigging necessary to make it look natural. 

If we don't want rain it's a little easier. It takes a serious downpour to register as rain on film. Still, if there's money in the budget and we're not shooting in Southern California, we bring in tarps or silks and rigging and hire crew members to build and secure the rigging and light through and/or around it. 

That's what we do. We make daytime look like night, winter look like summer, and sunny look like cloudy. 

This goes a long way toward explaining why movies are so damn expensive to make. 

When the UPM and the Assistant Director (Susan McNamara and Adam Somner) broke down the script for 'Lincoln' with Spielberg, they went through every single scene and asked Mr. Spielberg, among other things, whether he wanted any special weather effects. That's their job.

It’s the UPM’s job because it affects the budget. Rain takes trucks and water and rigs and all sorts of ancillary characters that need to be added to the number of people to be wrangled and fed and provided parking spots and restroom facilities on that day. It’s the AD’s job because it affects both the shooting schedule and the safety of the crew members and actors. The three of them have more than 100 films under their collective belts. This ain’t none of them's first rodeo.

Then there's the script supervisor whose job it is to make sure that continuity is maintained. When Anna Rane showed up on the day they shot that scene, she would have asked Mr. Spielberg if he was sure the scene was going to cut, what with rain when the camera was pointing in one direction and no rain in the other. You don't get to be script supervisor for Steven Spielberg by letting huge continuity lapses happen. 

And don't forget the crew. As in the entire crew. The gaffers who lit the scene. The grips who rigged it. Maybe they didn't all notice, but I'll bet some did. I guarantee you Ryan Cole did. He's the sound recordist who had to fight the sound of the rain in one shot and didn't have to deal with it in the reverse. 

I figure one of two things happened here: Either a) somebody made an announcement to the entire crew that yes, they knew the rain gag was going to be inconsistent, but that's what they were going for or b) Spielberg had to contend with a relentless parade of helpful people pointing out to him that they were shooting rain when there wasn't rain before or that they weren't shooting rain when there was rain before. 

I mean, seriously, if you were one of the more than 60 production assistants on this show –– even if it was your first time stepping onto a film set –– wouldn't you go out of your way to be helpful in hopes that you’ll impress someone enough be invited to the next one or get promoted to a better, higher-paying job?

No, I'm certain this scene was shot just the way Spielberg intended it to be. And it must have worked for the members of the Academy, too, because he got nominated for Best Director.

All of this is leading up to a point and the point is this: I don't get it.

I don't get what he was going for. I don't understand why you'd shoot a scene that is so clearly discontinuous. 

I suppose it's art. To me, it smells a lot like Kool-Aid.

More proof I have no clue what I'm talking about.

Not long ago I judged the Student Academy Awards. Which is a pretty prestigious honor, by the way, but not the point here.

One film in particular captivated me. I don't think I'm supposed to reveal which one because the awards haven't been announced.

The thing was, it didn't captivate most of the other judges.

One of the other judges liked it as much as I did, but she had to leave before we were finished, so it was up to me to fight for the film. Which I did. I managed to get it a second shot, to have it screened in front of the entire judging panel at the finals.

Where it went down to defeat.

The films that were selected weren't bad, but frankly, they didn't have something that this one did. They all had heart, story, and craft, but this one also had something extra. It broke ground. The filmmaker understood the potential of the medium and told her story (I think I'm allowed to reveal that she was a her) in a way that could only have been told on film.

Unfortunately, at the finals, I couldn't make that case. All we could do was vote.

So what's my point?

It's not that I don't know what I'm talking about. And it's not that the other judges were idiots. It's that my opinion is just that. My opinion.

This is a tough lesson to learn, especially when you're starting out. But most people you show your work to aren't going to get it. Those that do will never –– and by never I mean really, really rarely –– like it as much as you do.

I wish I could talk to the filmmaker of that film that isn't going to win a Student Academy Award. I'd tell her that she's a prodigy. That her audience, in spite of being a prestigious panel of filmmakers, wasn't sophisticated enough to understand what she accomplished.

And I'd tell her to keep working. Because the only way she'll ever find an audience is to create stuff and put it out there.

I did a bad thing. And I'm not sorry.

Last week, I shot a commercial in New Brunswick. The cast included a 7-year-old and if you know anything about New Brunswick, you know it's 4,000 miles from Hollywood. Which means you're not likely to find a lot of professional 7-year-old actors there.

That's okay, actually, because at seven what you want from an actor is enthusiasm more than experience. The kid we cast was actually great. Totally adorable, totally enthusiastic. But even the most enthusiastic, adorable kid can only perform so much. And thanks to common sense and child labor laws, we were limited in the amount of time we could spend with him.

So when we had two more critical shots with the kid and I could tell he wasn't quite getting the meaning of the line he had to say, I did something I normally never do. I gave him a line reading.

In case you're not familiar with the term, a line reading is when you say a line the way you want your actor to say it. And it's usually a bad thing to do because a) unless you're an actor yourself, you don't really know what you sound like when you say something, b) even if you're an actor yourself, how somebody else says something is going to be different from the way you say it, and c) even if you're an actor yourself and you can get somebody else to say something the way you would, it demeans their talent. It's like you're saying they don't know how to communicate when that's fundamentally what actors do.

But like I say, I had limited time and an inexperienced actor. And very little hope that taking him aside –– one more time –– and explaining what the line meant was going to improve his understanding of it.

I like to think I handled it fairly well. For one thing, I didn't go to the line reading until I was sure we weren't going to get what we needed any other way. And for another, I enlisted the help of another actor to deliver the line reading.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Brian, if you can't know how you sound to an actor, why would you make things worse by playing telephone with the information?" Well, I'll tell you.

Because I wanted there to be a bit of a cognitive gap. If the kid were to parrot me, I'd be evaluating his readings based on my delivery. But if I ask someone else to deliver the lines, I have no preconception about how the line sounds before it comes out. So I can disregard the older actor's delivery and concentrate on the kid's as if it's fresh.

As it turns out, I happened to have a really talented, generous, helpful actor on set, who was not only willing to give the kid line readings, but did so with enthusiasm and variety.

We got the line we needed, delivered a bunch of different ways. And we had time to set up, light, and shoot the other shot we needed of the kid. Best of all, nobody's feelings got hurt.

Okay, best of all, we got a really lovely performance.