The best part of making the movies... learning from the pros

In the hush behind the curtain, when the light of the projector is still a sleeping star, Michelle Rodriguez speaks a simple oracle: “The best part of making the movies… learning from the pros themselves.” Hear how this short saying braids humility with fire. It tells us that craft does not ripen in isolation; it matures beside the hearth of masters, where the old hands steady the new, and the unseen grammar of excellence is passed from breath to breath. In this spirit, the set becomes a cloister, the soundstage a workshop, and the day’s labor a pilgrimage toward skill.

To learn from the pros is to enter a lineage. The apprentice watches how a veteran grips the mark, how a director trims silence until it sings, how a stunt leader measures risk against honor, how a cinematographer courts light like a hawk tamer. The novice borrows their eyes until she grows a pair of her own. And in that borrowing there is no theft—only consecration—for mastery multiplies itself by being witnessed.

The ancients knew this road. In the ateliers of Florence, the young Michelangelo stood near Ghirlandaio, grinding pigments, copying hands, learning the stubborn grammar of marble and the patient arithmetic of proportion. He first carried the masters’ tools before he carried their mantle. So too on a film set: you fetch the sandbag, you watch the rehearsal, you note the corrections that are never shouted but always heard. The work teaches the worker, and the pros—by habit and example—teach the work.

Consider a lamp from modern lore. A fledgling actor shadowed a veteran on a gritty shoot, expecting to inherit tricks of swagger. Instead, she learned the economy of breath: the elder timed each inhale to the camera move, letting focus pulls and heartbeats rhyme. She learned to mark the lens with a glance, to save the tear for the final take, to protect her truth amid chaos. None of this was written in the script; all of it was written in the body of a pro who had failed and risen, then failed finer and risen higher. The lesson was not a lecture; it was a nearness.

This is the origin of the saying’s wisdom: the set itself—crowded, sweating, exacting—reveals that greatness is communal. Making the movies is a chorus art: gaffer to grip, costumer to colorist, editor to extra. To call the best part the learning is to honor the hidden covenant of the craft: that we inherit a temple we did not build, and our duty is to add one faithful stone. In this covenant, ego is a poor compass, and curiosity is a royal road.

What, then, is the traveler’s rule? Seek proximity before prestige. Stand where the questions are thick. Ask the sound mixer why the room tone matters; ask the fight choreographer how story lives inside a punch; ask the script supervisor how continuity serves emotion. Keep a notebook that smells of coffee and cables; sketch blocking; record light ratios; log mistakes without alibi. Let your pride be quiet and your attention loud. For attention is the coin that buys apprenticeship, and apprenticeship is the bridge to mastery.

Carry this as a daily rite: arrive early, sweep your square of earth, and make it holy with care. Offer help before you are asked; thank the pros who correct you; return tomorrow with what you learned sharpened, not merely remembered. And if you are already seasoned, become the teacher you once needed—explain the why, not only the how; share the failure, not only the triumph. Thus does the circle hold. Thus does the craft endure. For in the end, the best part is not applause but transmission: the moment when the flame you received, trembling and bright, leaps to another wick and burns steadier still.