I agree with literally every word you wrote. But what is this “mastery” or “craft” then? if we agree (rightfully so) that some special people exist, eventually (or immediately) other people get involved, we as industry accept “we had a deadline so it was cool to ‘cut corners’ etc…” - where is mastery or craft in this process?
I have and I am sure you have worked with some amazing people over the years but to me our entire industry is so far removed from anything resembling mastery or craft that even mentioning it at this point in my life makes me chuckle (and at times literally laugh out loud)
I think people have a very weird notion of mastery and think it looks very different in other fields. That’s because mastery no longer looks like mastery once you attain it. Mastery also doesn’t look like the absence of imperfections - even art house films by master auteurs will have imperfections the masters will see and compromises they had to make to get a film done. Talk to a master builder and they’ll instantly start pointing out flaws in buildings. Electrical grids regularly see outages despite.
So my question then is how would you define mastery if you believe our industry doesn’t practice it.
I have and I am sure you have worked with some amazing people over the years but to me our entire industry is so far removed from anything resembling mastery or craft that even mentioning it at this point in my life makes me chuckle (and at times literally laugh out loud)