Latest news with #Blindspotting
The Advertiser
7 days ago
- General
- The Advertiser
Why a good leader must banish their biases and baggage
Years ago now, I ran into Kirstin Ferguson at one of those networking events. She had what I thought was strong school captain energy* combined with wildly curly hair and an air of extreme calm. You could tell, just from a five-minute conversation, she had a wise centre. A few months later, she wrote to me asking if I would be part of a campaign of hers, #celebratingwomen. God knows why I said no but I was just at the end of my PhD and barely coherent - and had no desire to be the centre of anyone's attention. It ended up, with author Catherine Fox, designed to celebrate women supporting each other and became the book Women Kind. We've kept in touch since then. When she wrote her award-winning book about leadership, Head and Heart, she suggested I do the accompanying questionnaire to see what kind of a leader I was. Headish? Heartish? I ran from that too. Impulsive. Grumpy. Intense. Not exactly sure how my family survived me (although, spoiler alert, they have). Now, I've come good. In Ferguson's latest book, Blindspotting, I've found myself. What is a blind spot? Blind spots, says Ferguson, are really those flaws in our thinking where we've done something really well in the past and we plan to stick to our knitting. And she's got advice for the politicians in our two major parties. She fears the Labor Party's capacity for self-reflection may have been buried under its landslide victory. "Hubris can absolutely become a blind spot where you think that you now know what people want, you think you now know the answers," she says. And the Coalition? "I don't know that they're truly being honest with themselves about why they had such an appalling result, and unless they do that by seeking views outside of their own circles, then they'll just continue to perpetuate the blind spots that got them into this position in the first place. "They need to be able to disentangle their egos and really put that aside, to put the party first if they want to have any hope of succeeding in the future." That might take them at least another couple of election cycles. *So was I right about Ferguson's school captain energy? Nope, nope, nope, as one of our former prime ministers with major blind spots famously said. Ferguson went straight from school to ADFA. She was the first woman to become dux of an Australian air force graduating class at ADFA (in her year, women made up less than 10 per cent of the class). That's where her leadership began. As part of her first job, straight out of ADFA, she was appointed to a job which would break so many of us, the base burials officer in the Royal Australian Air Force, organising funerals for serving members who died because of illness, car accidents, misadventure. And for those who died by suicide. Years later, she undertook a Churchill Fellowship to talk to bereaved military families, to find out how our defence forces could do better with support. Doing better is what she's about. Being pleased with ourselves, though, can be a bit of hurdle if we really want to do well. But what's the problem with being pleased we've done well? Says Ferguson: "We think we'll do it well again. It can come through prejudice, not wanting to believe others can achieve something or do something. It can come through power, through being someone who can't put themselves in the shoes of others. "These are flaws in our thinking that we all have. Absolutely no one is immune from blind spots, and they're fuelled by biases and baggage we bring with us and a lack of curiosity about the world around us." Ferguson, now in her early 50s, says she has blind spots herself. She says she was a real advocate for working from home. She loves working from home herself. But it was only when she started listening to her own daughters, 23 and 25, and reading correspondence responding to her column, Got A Minute, in the Nine newspapers, she realised she needed to open up. "People miss working in the office, they get a lot out of being present, that camaraderie and culture. "I talk about needing to hold our convictions lightly, and on that one, I did, because it's not as though I've gone full tilt the other way. I still think we should have working from home, where it's feasible. The position should be made for people to have a choice. But it's no longer as black and white as I perhaps thought it was." How do we get past our blind spots? Ferguson has a training regime. Be honest with yourself. Be curious. Be flexible. Which is fine for her to say. The rest of us struggle. Her tips? (Dear god, they read like the first week back at the gym after a holiday). "We have to be honest about the fact that we have biases, and we have to be able to disentangle our ego from thinking that we have to be right," she says. I hope our politicians are reading this as we speak. The next one is easy, at least for me. I'm a native-born nosy parker. "Be willing to question for insights rather than trying to win arguments," says Ferguson. And finally, we need to be flexible. "That is all about being willing to change our mind in the face of new information, it's being able to embrace ambiguity, because the world is uncertain," she says. Too many of our leaders across all sectors pretend they are certain. "When we look at some of the political leaders we have, some of the business leaders, other people that we celebrate, so often they're exactly the kind of vacuous people that operate off charisma. "But for time immemorial, these people have consistently failed us in the end - but we continue to be caught out by the ease with which they can convince us they know what they're talking about when they really don't." Ferguson's right about this: "They convince us that they've got our best interests at heart when they really don't." Love books? Us too! Looking for more reads and recommendations? Browse our books page and bookmark the page so you can find our latest books content with ease. Years ago now, I ran into Kirstin Ferguson at one of those networking events. She had what I thought was strong school captain energy* combined with wildly curly hair and an air of extreme calm. You could tell, just from a five-minute conversation, she had a wise centre. A few months later, she wrote to me asking if I would be part of a campaign of hers, #celebratingwomen. God knows why I said no but I was just at the end of my PhD and barely coherent - and had no desire to be the centre of anyone's attention. It ended up, with author Catherine Fox, designed to celebrate women supporting each other and became the book Women Kind. We've kept in touch since then. When she wrote her award-winning book about leadership, Head and Heart, she suggested I do the accompanying questionnaire to see what kind of a leader I was. Headish? Heartish? I ran from that too. Impulsive. Grumpy. Intense. Not exactly sure how my family survived me (although, spoiler alert, they have). Now, I've come good. In Ferguson's latest book, Blindspotting, I've found myself. What is a blind spot? Blind spots, says Ferguson, are really those flaws in our thinking where we've done something really well in the past and we plan to stick to our knitting. And she's got advice for the politicians in our two major parties. She fears the Labor Party's capacity for self-reflection may have been buried under its landslide victory. "Hubris can absolutely become a blind spot where you think that you now know what people want, you think you now know the answers," she says. And the Coalition? "I don't know that they're truly being honest with themselves about why they had such an appalling result, and unless they do that by seeking views outside of their own circles, then they'll just continue to perpetuate the blind spots that got them into this position in the first place. "They need to be able to disentangle their egos and really put that aside, to put the party first if they want to have any hope of succeeding in the future." That might take them at least another couple of election cycles. *So was I right about Ferguson's school captain energy? Nope, nope, nope, as one of our former prime ministers with major blind spots famously said. Ferguson went straight from school to ADFA. She was the first woman to become dux of an Australian air force graduating class at ADFA (in her year, women made up less than 10 per cent of the class). That's where her leadership began. As part of her first job, straight out of ADFA, she was appointed to a job which would break so many of us, the base burials officer in the Royal Australian Air Force, organising funerals for serving members who died because of illness, car accidents, misadventure. And for those who died by suicide. Years later, she undertook a Churchill Fellowship to talk to bereaved military families, to find out how our defence forces could do better with support. Doing better is what she's about. Being pleased with ourselves, though, can be a bit of hurdle if we really want to do well. But what's the problem with being pleased we've done well? Says Ferguson: "We think we'll do it well again. It can come through prejudice, not wanting to believe others can achieve something or do something. It can come through power, through being someone who can't put themselves in the shoes of others. "These are flaws in our thinking that we all have. Absolutely no one is immune from blind spots, and they're fuelled by biases and baggage we bring with us and a lack of curiosity about the world around us." Ferguson, now in her early 50s, says she has blind spots herself. She says she was a real advocate for working from home. She loves working from home herself. But it was only when she started listening to her own daughters, 23 and 25, and reading correspondence responding to her column, Got A Minute, in the Nine newspapers, she realised she needed to open up. "People miss working in the office, they get a lot out of being present, that camaraderie and culture. "I talk about needing to hold our convictions lightly, and on that one, I did, because it's not as though I've gone full tilt the other way. I still think we should have working from home, where it's feasible. The position should be made for people to have a choice. But it's no longer as black and white as I perhaps thought it was." How do we get past our blind spots? Ferguson has a training regime. Be honest with yourself. Be curious. Be flexible. Which is fine for her to say. The rest of us struggle. Her tips? (Dear god, they read like the first week back at the gym after a holiday). "We have to be honest about the fact that we have biases, and we have to be able to disentangle our ego from thinking that we have to be right," she says. I hope our politicians are reading this as we speak. The next one is easy, at least for me. I'm a native-born nosy parker. "Be willing to question for insights rather than trying to win arguments," says Ferguson. And finally, we need to be flexible. "That is all about being willing to change our mind in the face of new information, it's being able to embrace ambiguity, because the world is uncertain," she says. Too many of our leaders across all sectors pretend they are certain. "When we look at some of the political leaders we have, some of the business leaders, other people that we celebrate, so often they're exactly the kind of vacuous people that operate off charisma. "But for time immemorial, these people have consistently failed us in the end - but we continue to be caught out by the ease with which they can convince us they know what they're talking about when they really don't." Ferguson's right about this: "They convince us that they've got our best interests at heart when they really don't." Love books? Us too! Looking for more reads and recommendations? Browse our books page and bookmark the page so you can find our latest books content with ease. Years ago now, I ran into Kirstin Ferguson at one of those networking events. She had what I thought was strong school captain energy* combined with wildly curly hair and an air of extreme calm. You could tell, just from a five-minute conversation, she had a wise centre. A few months later, she wrote to me asking if I would be part of a campaign of hers, #celebratingwomen. God knows why I said no but I was just at the end of my PhD and barely coherent - and had no desire to be the centre of anyone's attention. It ended up, with author Catherine Fox, designed to celebrate women supporting each other and became the book Women Kind. We've kept in touch since then. When she wrote her award-winning book about leadership, Head and Heart, she suggested I do the accompanying questionnaire to see what kind of a leader I was. Headish? Heartish? I ran from that too. Impulsive. Grumpy. Intense. Not exactly sure how my family survived me (although, spoiler alert, they have). Now, I've come good. In Ferguson's latest book, Blindspotting, I've found myself. What is a blind spot? Blind spots, says Ferguson, are really those flaws in our thinking where we've done something really well in the past and we plan to stick to our knitting. And she's got advice for the politicians in our two major parties. She fears the Labor Party's capacity for self-reflection may have been buried under its landslide victory. "Hubris can absolutely become a blind spot where you think that you now know what people want, you think you now know the answers," she says. And the Coalition? "I don't know that they're truly being honest with themselves about why they had such an appalling result, and unless they do that by seeking views outside of their own circles, then they'll just continue to perpetuate the blind spots that got them into this position in the first place. "They need to be able to disentangle their egos and really put that aside, to put the party first if they want to have any hope of succeeding in the future." That might take them at least another couple of election cycles. *So was I right about Ferguson's school captain energy? Nope, nope, nope, as one of our former prime ministers with major blind spots famously said. Ferguson went straight from school to ADFA. She was the first woman to become dux of an Australian air force graduating class at ADFA (in her year, women made up less than 10 per cent of the class). That's where her leadership began. As part of her first job, straight out of ADFA, she was appointed to a job which would break so many of us, the base burials officer in the Royal Australian Air Force, organising funerals for serving members who died because of illness, car accidents, misadventure. And for those who died by suicide. Years later, she undertook a Churchill Fellowship to talk to bereaved military families, to find out how our defence forces could do better with support. Doing better is what she's about. Being pleased with ourselves, though, can be a bit of hurdle if we really want to do well. But what's the problem with being pleased we've done well? Says Ferguson: "We think we'll do it well again. It can come through prejudice, not wanting to believe others can achieve something or do something. It can come through power, through being someone who can't put themselves in the shoes of others. "These are flaws in our thinking that we all have. Absolutely no one is immune from blind spots, and they're fuelled by biases and baggage we bring with us and a lack of curiosity about the world around us." Ferguson, now in her early 50s, says she has blind spots herself. She says she was a real advocate for working from home. She loves working from home herself. But it was only when she started listening to her own daughters, 23 and 25, and reading correspondence responding to her column, Got A Minute, in the Nine newspapers, she realised she needed to open up. "People miss working in the office, they get a lot out of being present, that camaraderie and culture. "I talk about needing to hold our convictions lightly, and on that one, I did, because it's not as though I've gone full tilt the other way. I still think we should have working from home, where it's feasible. The position should be made for people to have a choice. But it's no longer as black and white as I perhaps thought it was." How do we get past our blind spots? Ferguson has a training regime. Be honest with yourself. Be curious. Be flexible. Which is fine for her to say. The rest of us struggle. Her tips? (Dear god, they read like the first week back at the gym after a holiday). "We have to be honest about the fact that we have biases, and we have to be able to disentangle our ego from thinking that we have to be right," she says. I hope our politicians are reading this as we speak. The next one is easy, at least for me. I'm a native-born nosy parker. "Be willing to question for insights rather than trying to win arguments," says Ferguson. And finally, we need to be flexible. "That is all about being willing to change our mind in the face of new information, it's being able to embrace ambiguity, because the world is uncertain," she says. Too many of our leaders across all sectors pretend they are certain. "When we look at some of the political leaders we have, some of the business leaders, other people that we celebrate, so often they're exactly the kind of vacuous people that operate off charisma. "But for time immemorial, these people have consistently failed us in the end - but we continue to be caught out by the ease with which they can convince us they know what they're talking about when they really don't." Ferguson's right about this: "They convince us that they've got our best interests at heart when they really don't." Love books? Us too! Looking for more reads and recommendations? Browse our books page and bookmark the page so you can find our latest books content with ease. Years ago now, I ran into Kirstin Ferguson at one of those networking events. She had what I thought was strong school captain energy* combined with wildly curly hair and an air of extreme calm. You could tell, just from a five-minute conversation, she had a wise centre. A few months later, she wrote to me asking if I would be part of a campaign of hers, #celebratingwomen. God knows why I said no but I was just at the end of my PhD and barely coherent - and had no desire to be the centre of anyone's attention. It ended up, with author Catherine Fox, designed to celebrate women supporting each other and became the book Women Kind. We've kept in touch since then. When she wrote her award-winning book about leadership, Head and Heart, she suggested I do the accompanying questionnaire to see what kind of a leader I was. Headish? Heartish? I ran from that too. Impulsive. Grumpy. Intense. Not exactly sure how my family survived me (although, spoiler alert, they have). Now, I've come good. In Ferguson's latest book, Blindspotting, I've found myself. What is a blind spot? Blind spots, says Ferguson, are really those flaws in our thinking where we've done something really well in the past and we plan to stick to our knitting. And she's got advice for the politicians in our two major parties. She fears the Labor Party's capacity for self-reflection may have been buried under its landslide victory. "Hubris can absolutely become a blind spot where you think that you now know what people want, you think you now know the answers," she says. And the Coalition? "I don't know that they're truly being honest with themselves about why they had such an appalling result, and unless they do that by seeking views outside of their own circles, then they'll just continue to perpetuate the blind spots that got them into this position in the first place. "They need to be able to disentangle their egos and really put that aside, to put the party first if they want to have any hope of succeeding in the future." That might take them at least another couple of election cycles. *So was I right about Ferguson's school captain energy? Nope, nope, nope, as one of our former prime ministers with major blind spots famously said. Ferguson went straight from school to ADFA. She was the first woman to become dux of an Australian air force graduating class at ADFA (in her year, women made up less than 10 per cent of the class). That's where her leadership began. As part of her first job, straight out of ADFA, she was appointed to a job which would break so many of us, the base burials officer in the Royal Australian Air Force, organising funerals for serving members who died because of illness, car accidents, misadventure. And for those who died by suicide. Years later, she undertook a Churchill Fellowship to talk to bereaved military families, to find out how our defence forces could do better with support. Doing better is what she's about. Being pleased with ourselves, though, can be a bit of hurdle if we really want to do well. But what's the problem with being pleased we've done well? Says Ferguson: "We think we'll do it well again. It can come through prejudice, not wanting to believe others can achieve something or do something. It can come through power, through being someone who can't put themselves in the shoes of others. "These are flaws in our thinking that we all have. Absolutely no one is immune from blind spots, and they're fuelled by biases and baggage we bring with us and a lack of curiosity about the world around us." Ferguson, now in her early 50s, says she has blind spots herself. She says she was a real advocate for working from home. She loves working from home herself. But it was only when she started listening to her own daughters, 23 and 25, and reading correspondence responding to her column, Got A Minute, in the Nine newspapers, she realised she needed to open up. "People miss working in the office, they get a lot out of being present, that camaraderie and culture. "I talk about needing to hold our convictions lightly, and on that one, I did, because it's not as though I've gone full tilt the other way. I still think we should have working from home, where it's feasible. The position should be made for people to have a choice. But it's no longer as black and white as I perhaps thought it was." How do we get past our blind spots? Ferguson has a training regime. Be honest with yourself. Be curious. Be flexible. Which is fine for her to say. The rest of us struggle. Her tips? (Dear god, they read like the first week back at the gym after a holiday). "We have to be honest about the fact that we have biases, and we have to be able to disentangle our ego from thinking that we have to be right," she says. I hope our politicians are reading this as we speak. The next one is easy, at least for me. I'm a native-born nosy parker. "Be willing to question for insights rather than trying to win arguments," says Ferguson. And finally, we need to be flexible. "That is all about being willing to change our mind in the face of new information, it's being able to embrace ambiguity, because the world is uncertain," she says. Too many of our leaders across all sectors pretend they are certain. "When we look at some of the political leaders we have, some of the business leaders, other people that we celebrate, so often they're exactly the kind of vacuous people that operate off charisma. "But for time immemorial, these people have consistently failed us in the end - but we continue to be caught out by the ease with which they can convince us they know what they're talking about when they really don't." Ferguson's right about this: "They convince us that they've got our best interests at heart when they really don't." Love books? Us too! Looking for more reads and recommendations? Browse our books page and bookmark the page so you can find our latest books content with ease.
San Francisco Chronicle
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
‘Sinners' is back in IMAX. Fans have this Bay Area cinematographer to thank
' Sinners,' Oakland auteur Ryan Coogler 's blues vs. vampires movie set in 1930s Mississippi, is such a success that it's been booked for a rare return to nine IMAX theaters nationwide this month. 'It's like you get to have fun all over again!' the film's director of photography, Autumn Durald Arkapaw, enthused during a recent interview with the Chronicle ahead of the limited engagement that runs Thursday, May 15, through May 21. As the first female cinematographer to shoot a feature with 65mm IMAX film cameras, she is largely responsible for the visually awesome good time. Durald Arkapaw and Coogler combined shots done in IMAX's boxy, vertical 1.43:1 aspect ratio with 2.76:1 widescreen footage captured by Ultra Panavision 70mm cameras. 'The film was shot with two different aspect ratios, and this is the first time ever that a film has been released combining these two,' Coogler said in a film format explainer video that went viral around the time of 'Sinners'' April 18 release. 'It was a pretty complicated process to shoot (but) we had a lot of fun.' San Francisco's AMC Metreon 16 is the only theater in Bay Area fans can fully enjoy the frame shifts between the two formats projected from a 70mm IMAX film print. It's the optimum way to see every millimeter of what the filmmakers wanted to show you. That includes high-resolution dance numbers, gory killings, vast cottonfield vistas and two Michael B. Jordans, often in the same shot. And that's along with a deeply personal artistry the cinematographer put in every frame. Born in Oxnard (Ventura County), Durald Arkapaw moved to Hayward when she was 2 and later grew up in Danville. She attended film schools in Los Angeles and met fellow East Bay filmmaker Coogler after she shot some episodes of 'Loki,' the Marvel spin-off series that also starred East Bay native Rafael Casal of ' Blindspotting ' fame. Coogler later hired her to shoot the sequel to his own Marvel project, ' Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,' signaling the start of a beautiful collaboration. 'Whenever I do a film with Ryan, you're not only learning new film techniques,' said Durald Arkapow, who's also shot Gia Coppola 's ' Palo Alto ' and ' Showgirls ' and music videos for the rock band Haim, singer-songwriter Janelle Monáe and pop star Rihanna, who's 'Lift Me Up' she also directed. 'When we did 'Black Panther,' we shot underwater, which was a great feat. 'This one forces you to dive into your own ancestry and want to know more about where you came from,' added the cinematographer, who is of Filipino ancestry on her mother's side and New Orleans' Creole on her father's. The filmmakers got so much out of their new IMAX equipment that they added scenes that hadn't been planned for the format during production. This resulted in the DP's favorite setup, the opening and near-end scenes when guitarist Sammie (Miles Caton) returns to his father's church after surviving a vampire attack. 'It makes so much sense to shoot that space in IMAX,' Durald Arkapaw said. 'It was such a powerful scene that, obviously, ended up bookending the movie. One of my favorite shots is the church door opening in IMAX.' Probably the film's most talked-about sequence is the big dance number at the juke joint Jordan's twin gangsters Smoke and Stack open outside their rural hometown. It involved dozens of dancers intermingling with figures out of Black music history from African origins through hip-hop to Afrofuturist. All the while, the camera wove through the crowd before rising up and over them all, then out into the threatening night. 'It's a very emotional piece that a lot of people are responding to,' Durald Arkapaw acknowledged. 'We did three interior shots on Steadicam IMAX. Then we tip up to the roof, which is a VFX (CG enhanced) takeover; the plate of the roof burning was shot on our last day of photography. Then it tilts back down into a night exterior shot, a 50-foot MovieBird telescopic crane that pulls back on 100 feet of track, booms down and reveals the vampires from behind.' Both film and social history guided the overall look of 'Sinners.' Exteriors were informed by Kodachrome slides taken by the Farm Security Administration in the 1930s and '40s. Underlit interiors hark back to classic horror movies. 'I tend to like darker shadows, people going in and out of light,' Durald Arkapow explained, 'shaping faces, shaping the space, not always showing everything. That creates tension, which is a beautiful thing for a story like this.' And there was a personal factor to close-ups. 'I take being able to expose African American skin very seriously,' she said. 'It's a part of myself. Lighting different skin tones to have richness and a depth to them, it plays better in shadow sometimes.' As for filming Smoke and Stack in the same shots, every old trick and some new ones went into twinning Jordan onscreen, from shooting the actor twice to inventing a 'halo rig' — 10 digital cameras in a ring perched on Jordan's shoulders — that captured his facial performance to digitally graft onto a double's head. 'When you're shooting in such a resolute format for such a big screen, you want it to feel real,' Durald Arkapaw notes. 'So it was very nice to come up with a system in order to showcase the twinning, whether it was a simple lock-off or over-the-shoulder, or if it required more complex moves. We had the proper team to execute it, and I feel as though you cannot see the effects in this film, which is a testament to all that work.' So is Durald Arkapaw's prominence in the film's wider discussion. 'Sinners' has turned her into that rarest of Hollywood pros: a celebrity cinematographer. 'To have people contact me saying they love the work and emotionally reacted to it, that's really why I became a DP,' she said. 'It was rewarding enough just to shoot the film, but to have people respond in this way … especially girls. It's nice to be inspiring to people who were similar to me growing up, when there weren't many female cinematographers and I had to seek them out a bit more. With this out there for people to see, it will encourage more women to do the job as well.'
