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As a learning specialist, I can never shut that third eye that observes the process alongside the content. The Robert McKee Story seminar certainly gave it plenty to observe...
Those of us who earn a living trying to help adults learn know a thing or two. Concentrate on participative learning activities, and use lecture sparingly is one.
So an event that is predominantly lecture and runs for over 30 hours over 3 days (see schedule), including Saturday and Sunday, simply should not work.
And yet it does. Why? I'm still not entirely sure, but here are some thoughts.
This is not a lecture as generally understood. Although McKee appears to be improvising in a relaxed way around a loose outline, watching him re-start from a couple of unscheduled interruptions showed that it all runs to a pretty tight script. A fascinating and elegant script, which has presumably been honed over the 16 years or so he has been delivering it. This is actually nothing less that an engaging performance of a compelling script.
That script is the book (more or less). Great swathes of the lecture are there verbatim, or at least nearly so. The same points are made using the same films or imaginary scenarios.
So would the book without the performance be as good? Impossible to answer. but I'd certainly recommend starting with the book. The one thing you'd miss, though, is the analysis of Casablanca... and that would be a serious shortcoming.
So are the 30 hours effective? I'd say not.
There were plenty of points where the audience's energy level was so low it was off any useful scale, with lots of what one might charitably call "power napping" going on. I believe that if McKee were to condense each day by about a third the same amount of learning would occur.
The trouble is, the gruelling schedule is central to the Story legend. Shortening it would probably be seen as diminishing it, whatever the reality.
So, a fascinating three days for the third eye too.
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