16 posts tagged “creativity”
Via Core 77.
Via Advertising for Peanuts.
Open source is the future, I guess. Even in the world of advertising and entertainment. Someday soon, Coke will provide us with raw footage and ask us to cut our own commercials for them. Maybe the next Friday the 13th movie will be made by fans from parts of other Friday the 13th movies. It might be pretty good, too (or just as bad, depending on how you look at it).
So get your editing skills in shape by participating in Stray Cinema's open source film project. Download the raw film footage. Craft your own narrative. Then edit to your heart's content (links to free editing software can be found on the site). You upload a two-minute sample of your film, people vote on their favorites, and in true open source fashion, the best ideas win. Three winners will get to edit their complete film and present it at a London screening.
You have until June 21 to submit your film sample.
When it comes to creativity, limits can be very liberating. Check out the films already submitted. It's amazing how many different ideas can come from the same pool of footage.
Via Thoughtspurs.
Want bigger ideas? Want to be more creative? Then skip those allnighters and go to sleep. According to a Science Daily article published yesterday, researchers have finally linked increased "big picture" thinking to getting a good night's sleep. It seems the brain continues to mix and match pieces of information together, like a big jigsaw puzzle, while you sleep.
Many brilliant people—from artists to scientists—have long advocated the idea of "stepping away from the problem" in order to let the subconscious work on a solution. When Einstein got stuck, he took a nap. He often awoke with the solution to his problem. Salvador Dali often credited his dreams for inspiring his fanciful ideas. Many of the world's great inventors and innovators, in fact, have experienced that sudden "eureka!" moment while showering, sleeping, or taking care of the most mundane task. In other words, while not actively looking for the solution.
That's not to say you can just go to sleep and come up with big ideas. You first need to feed your brain with the right pieces of information. Then you need to actively search for a solution. When the answer doesn't come, you might instinctively walk away in frustration. In my experience, that's the time to let the subconscious go to work. Go to a movie. Move on to another project. If you can, go to sleep.
Here are some more tips I often pass on to young, aspiring creatives:
- Manage your project timeline accordingly. Build in the time for sleep.
- Keep a pencil and pad nearby during your "downtime" since you never know when your subconscious might spit something out. Always keep a pencil and pad near your bed.
- Feed your subconscious with new stimuli. Take a walk somewhere new, listen to music you don't have on your iPod, watch a TV show you've never seen. Something you experience during your "downtime" just might nudge your brain into a new, profitably direction.
- Walking away means walking away. Don't think about the project at hand. Of course, that's even easier to do if you go to sleep.
- If you're up against a deadline and time is precious, move on to another project if only for a few minutes (ideally a totally different kind of project).
- Don't feel guilty. Einstein was unapologetic about his midday naps.
Yesterday I unplugged myself from the Internet (curse you, my Twitter addiction) and took the family on a daytrip to a museum about an hour from home. We went to see a travelling exhibit on Impressionism. Ducks on ponds, ballet dancers, that sort of thing. What really blew me away, however, was this piece in a neighboring gallery, entitled Couch Potato. Note the mailboxes, keyboards, remote controls, video game joysticks, flashing video monitors, and working fax machine. Created in 1996, I was struck by how prophetic the piece was. After all, this kind of information overload is the exact reason I had decided to unplug and take the family to a museum. Yet the first thing I wanted to do was come back and blog about it.
Couch Potato was created by video art pioneer and central Fluxus member Nam June Paik. You can learn more about him here and here. He is credited for coining the phrases "information superhighway" and "the future is now." He was 64 when he created the above piece.
By the way, you can fax Couch Potato at 402-342-0091. The machine just spits each fax out at the base of the sculpture. Pretty cool.
(I was not allowed to take a photo, so I found this one online.)
Here's education expert and creativity guru Sir Ken Robinson speaking at TED. He believes "we are educating people out of their creativity." Based on personal experience alone, I couldn't agree more.
Despite going to a very good public school in a top-ranked school system, my elementary years were especially rough. I was restless, imaginative, and easily bored. I questioned authority. Loved to make people laugh. Refused to accept obvious answers when others were available. And, not surprisingly, ended up in trouble quite often. If I was a teacher trying to make it through the day as easily as possible I probably wouldn't have had much patience for me, either.
Those very same traits that got me in trouble way back then, however, puts dinner in front of my family today.
I had some very good teachers, don't get me wrong. Some even inspired me. But the school system itself tried to break me. Just like it tried to break you.
My guess is there are a lot of creative people out there with the exact same story.
Do watch this video. It's an entertaining and infomative twenty minutes. And if you have kids, or work around kids, or ever plan to have kids, it's important stuff.
The lessons learned in this modest building reverberated throughout Hollywood for decades to come. Disney's Laugh-O-Gram employees, including the legendary Ub Iwerks, would go on to personally create or supervise the creation of the world's most beloved characters--including Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, of course, but also Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Sylvester the Cat, Yosemite Sam, and the Pink Panther.
This building was also the site of a very fortuitous meeting. One night, while working late at the studio, Walt encountered a mouse eating some crumbs by his wastebasket. He put that little brown mouse in a cage on his desk and, over time, taught the mouse tricks. He would draw circles on his drawing board and the mouse would run inside them. He grew quite fond of that mouse on his drawing board. Before leaving for California, Disney took that mouse to his backyard and set him free.
Years later, that mouse would repay Disney with some much-needed inspiration.
Take a look at these Laugh-O-Gram films. They're fun, though not great. But that's why they're so interesting.
After all, had Walt Disney succeeded in Kansas City, there would never have been a Walt Disney.
That's how New York Times columnist Jack Gould explained the wacky, twisted, and sometimes psychedelic world of Ernie Kovacs. A true pioneer, Kovacs saw television as a technology to be exploited for laughs. While other comedians simply took their old vaudeville sketches into the studio, Kovacs explored the vast possibilities of this new medium. He created elaborate sets for gags that lasted but a few seconds. He tilted backgrounds and cameras to create gravity defying visuals. Books sang, water flew upwards, and visuals and sounds were combined like never before (he even won an Emmy for a full show with no dialogue whatsoever). In Kovacs' world, there were no rules. Take the above clip, for instance. Three minutes of show-closing credits. The boring made visually interesting. And many of those fun techniques (live television, by the way) still feel fresh today. Sadly, Kovacs died in a car crash 45 years ago. If you're a creative professional (or aspire to be one), do yourself a favor and check out this original, creative master. And learn from his inventive, carefree methods. Sometimes the fun is in trying.
