Recently I’ve only been looking at my Youtube Subscription feed for stuff to watch rather than browsing through their main page. It helps remove all the dreck from the feed, and then I can choose if I care about any of the things that my subscriptions have posted. It’s been saving me a lot of time.
But really, the best thing about Youtube is the liked folder (Spotify’s also works very well, I also use IMDB’s watchlist for a similar purpose).
I don’t “like” every video that I find enjoyable, I only like the stuff that really punches me in the gut.
So, after ‘X’ amount of years, my liked folder has turned into this wonderful suppository of things that are meaningful to me, and I can scroll through it and sort out the history of my thinking. It’s pretty cool.
Anyway, I was scrolling through this past week and came across a number of videos from The Royal Ocean Film Society’s channel and remembered how great they are.
He hasn’t been posting as much recently, but the catalog is worth it. Many are video essays, which I am typically wary of, but these are really well done. The graphic design and editing are very impressive in each episode. Well worth checking out.
There are a number of repeat discussions that I have with myself whenever I go for a walk or sit down to do some thinking. Every few weeks they’ll pop up and I’ll rehash the same information, the same discussion points, and the same insights over and over and over.
It’s very cyclical.
So, I figure the best way to expunge these conversations from my brain is to put them on paper. That way I can free up some space to develop some new internal discussions that I can also eventually get sick of and also write down.
Makes sense to me.
So, without further ado, here are my thoughts on what we have the time to do with ourselves.
I believe I first came across Warren Buffett’s 5/20 Rule through Cal Newport’s Deep Work, but the experiment has come up in a number of books on productivity, ugh, that I’ve gone through in the past couple of years.
The experiment completed in 3 steps.
Take some time and write down the 20 most important things that you’d like to do with your life. These should be big things; like having a family, starting a business, or writing a book. Those ginormous dream goals that everyone supposedly has.
Then, take even more time to circle the most important 5 out of that list of 20. Really think of what the top points are for you.
Finally, cross out the 15 non-circled points and spend the rest of your life actively avoiding them.
The point is, if you spend your life trying to complete all 20 of these goals, by the time you die you will likely not have finished any of them. Each may only be 20-30% complete.
Whereas, if you only have 5 major goals, your chance of completion is much higher.
Now, Warren Buffett is a very rich man, so… take that for what you will. But I do believe that this exercise has a lot of gold in it.
I want to make feature films, but there are many other mediums that I find very tantalizing, and it’s tough to not succumb to their songs.
Short stories, plays, animation, children’s books, novels, comics, tabletop role playing games… not a week goes by that I do not feel drawn to one of these mediums and feel that maybe I should give them a go.
Now there are filmmakers that have dabbled in separate mediums. Tarantino and Cronenberg have both written novels; Ethan Coen has published plays, short stories, and poetry; David Lynch has his artwork… and there are going to be other examples too, of course, but these are established filmmakers, they’re going to have the funds to reach out.
And, for the most part, these forays into other mediums only came well into their film careers. They weren’t juggling multiple crafts when they were starting out.
Whenever I’d go over this conversation in my head I’d always be very adamant about the idea that you only get one medium. That if you want to make movies, or write novels, or be an architect, or a fashion designer than you focus on that specific “want,” you don’t let other “wants” creep in.
I’m not so sure now. Does it all add up to whatever you are supposed to be? To whatever you are supposed to do?
I just heard the phrase, “If I knew where I was going, I’d already be there,” and I think that’s all there is to it.
I have a tendency when I’m playing a game to save my resources and never use them. To keep them in my inventory, tucked away, until I really “need” them.
If you only have twenty-fire arrows in the whole game, you should only use them when you really need them, right? On the final boss, or on something that’s actually worth it, not some minion or mini-boss.
There are two typical results from this type of mentality.
I finish the game before I actually use the resources, thus making them completely useless.
I give up on the game because it’s too challenging, even in if I realize that the game would be easier if I use those special resources.
Basically, rather than using this fun game mechanic that the designers intend for me to use, I would prefer to stubbornly/greedily hoard these things away.
This is typically out of fear of wasting them.
I think I’m stuck in this mindset with my work as well. I keep writing new scripts and stuffing them into a drawer or binder when I deem them “done.” Likely leaving them to rot away and be forgotten about.
“I’m saving them for later,” I tell myself. “Saving them for the right time.” Saving them to be made after whatever I make next.
This is a loop. If I keep writing these things and putting them away, waiting for the “right” time to make them, I’ll never make anything.
It would be smarter, more sustainable, and more fun to just make these things that I’ve spent time on. I enjoy them, I just don’t want to see them fizzle out as finished pieces. But that’s exactly what they’re doing in the drawer.
Finish your projects. Don’t have a drawer where you can hide things away.
In my last post I quoted David Lynch speaking on his process and how he compares ideas to puzzle pieces that he receives individually from some other room.
He says he slowly collects these pieces one by one until he has them all, then he begins putting them together.
This is a pretty simple analogy for the process of making anything, but it’s been swirling in my brain recently and I’d like to find out why.
I’m working on a bigger project at the moment, or at least trying to, and I’m still on this puzzle piece collecting stage, although I seem to be in denial of it. Most of the pieces are still in the box, but I’ve taken out a few handfuls and have already started to try to put them together. Needless to say, the odds that all of these choice pieces fitting together when they’ve been selected at random is very slim.
Sure, I’ve got a few that connect, but the majority don’t and I’m getting frustrated by this.
It’s sort of a mountain fever type thing. Oliver Burkeman’s book, The Antidote, goes into some detail about this phenomenon. In short, it’s when mountain climbers push safety to the side when the peak of their mountain is just within sight. They’ll keep moving forward, even when everything – health issues, equipment malfunctions, poor weather… – starts yelling at them to turn back. This is where most casualties in mountain climbing come from.
I think that prior to a rough draft—which is a cohesive, whole piece of writing, just without the flair and style of an edit—you must have a collection phase, and you must collect enough pieces before you can start to try and put the project together.
Keep collecting pieces, keep those pieces organized, and only start to link them when you’ve for sure stockpiled enough.
The creator of the Mothership RPG, Sean McCoy, posted this blog entry last October. It references another blog by Ted Gioia, also called My Favorite Problems, which talks about the scientist Richard Feynman and how he had a dozen or so questions that guided his life’s work.
Gioia created a list of his own questions, related to the music industry and education, as did McCoy, related to the tabletop roleplaying game industry.
I’m not in the middle of anything at the moment, I’m still looking for the start line. These are the questions that I have as someone eager to begin:
1. How do you know what you’re supposed to make?
“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”
– W. Somerset Maugham
It seems that you are not allowed to know this until you’ve already done it. The only way to figure out what you were supposed to make, is to have already made it so that you can look back on it.
You can’t see what you haven’t yet done.
2. What do you do with all the stuff that’s sitting in the drawer?
“I get ideas in fragments…it’s as if in the other room, there’s a puzzle; all the pieces are together. But in my room, they just flip one piece at a time into me. The first piece that I get is a fragment of the whole puzzle, but I fall in love with this fragment…and it holds a promise for more. I keep it, I write it down. And then I say that having the fragment is more bait on the hook…it pulls in more, and the more that come in, the faster the rest come in.”
– David Lynch
Don’t forget it, because it’ll probably come in handy some day.
I think big projects are really collages of smaller projects. Fragments that don’t make sense by themselves and must be paired with other fragments to make a whole.
This article by Austin Kleon really goes into detail about filing your ideas for later. It’s important to be able to grab them at a moment’s notice.
Right now I’m trying to use this method for a larger project. I might write about this more at a later date.
3. How do you get things done?
“Write a little every day, without hope, without despair.”
– Isak Dinesen
Somehow you have to work a little everyday. Somehow.
This is where habits come in to play. A page day, a drawing a day, a workout a day. Small and manageable tasks, things that don’t have the potential to explode in a fiery mess.
I’ve been doing a single sheet of loose-leaf paper, front-and-back, a day. If I feel like doing another, I grab another sheet, but I only have to do the one.
4. How do you meet new people?
“… At some point you’ve just got to make the decision, ‘well, no one’s gonna keep up with me. I’m going to a 12:00 show, then I’m gonna go to a 3:00 show, and a 5:00 show…’ You know, and so you just get used to buying that ticket alone, getting your seat wherever, you know, and it’s fun cause you tend to meet those other loners… I got friends with a guy who always sat over there… about six-months later you finally go, “hey man, who are you? I’ve seen you at about seventy-five movies by now.”
It seems that you’ve got to go where the people are. You’ve got to go up to them and say hello. You have to make the first step.
This of course doesn’t answer WHERE you’re supposed to go. I don’t think I’ve figured that out, but I guess movie theaters would be a good place to start.
5. When do you go for the big project? When do you go for the small?
“The Muse visits during the act of creation, not before. Don’t wait for her. Start alone.”
– Roger Ebert
The project chooses itself. When it’s “done” it is whatever length it is.
The only thing that likely matters is that you pair your projects to your resources.
What do you have?
What can you do?
I think about these problems everyday, and perhaps I shouldn’t. The answer to all of these is either patience or beginning.
Make a line on the ground and call it your own starting line. Right where you stand.
It’s a great feeling when you’re struck with a very distinct vision for a project right from the get-go. When you can see all of the elements in one clean sweep, like the instructions have just been handed to you and all you have to do now is follow them.
It can feel special when this happens, and the obsession to get the project made can be really overwhelming, can completely consume you as you put all your efforts into getting it done. It’s like some sort of blessing from the muse.
The problem that usually arises, at least for me, is that I likely don’t have the abilities, skills, or tools that are going to be required to get some, or all, of the elements complete. And when I realize this, the whole thing can crumble.
A few weeks ago I was rereading some of my old notebooks and I came across a poem that I’d written and just tossed to the side. Rereading it, I rather liked it, and wondered if I could perhaps do something with it.
Later that day I was surfing through some old pictures I’d taken and I found a series of photos that I’d taken in an old fort. I thought they were very cool, and I once again wondered if I could do something with them.
Bam! Eureka! Zing!
The idea had sparked. I’d put the poem to the photos and create a sort of video collage. I liked it, and I thought of what I believed was a great way on how to incorporate the lyrics as subtitles.
Rather than simply type the lyrics onto the images, I’d superimpose scraps of paper that had hand-written lyrics on them. This would enable a certain element of collage and texture that I thought was very important to the piece.
I spent a good amount of time perfecting these little scraps. Making sure the lettering was how I wanted it, that the paper was of the right quality, and that the way each piece was torn would have the right amount of texture to it.
This is where the problem presented itself.
I had no idea how to transfer these pieces onto my computer while also keeping the texture and clarity that I had painstakingly worked on.
I tried various types of scanning – my phone and printer – I tried using Adobe Illustrator to precisely crop out each scrap of paper, I tried simply taking a photo. Nothing looked as good as it did in real life, and I had no idea how to move forward.
I’m sure there is a way to do this, to get it exactly how I wanted it, but I’m an amateur. I’m learning lots of things, and this evidently was not one of things I could learn to do just yet. I’m sure it’s easy, but my skills just aren’t there.
I really almost threw away the whole project. It was very close. The vision was compromised, I was pissed off at my computer and at myself, and things just didn’t seem to be working the way I wanted them to.
But I didn’t. I just made the lyrics regular subtitles and moved forward.
After I finished the project and gave myself a pat on the back, I wrote “If you want something but it’s not working… move on” on a post-it note and stuck it above my desk.
If you’d like to see the finished film, you can watch it here.
Looking back, I can think of a lot of projects that I never finished because some detail, that was apparently critical to the vision, just wasn’t working.
It seems that no detail is worth that much that an entire project should hinge on its inclusion.
If you want something but it’s not working… move on.
While I don’t play a ton of video games, I am really interested in the process in which they get made as it seems pretty similar to a film’s production.
Obviously there is a significant computer science background for games, but a lot of the creative and business elements overlap and a lot can be learned from this.
The Game Developer’s Conference Youtube channel frequently posts great talks from designers, business leaders, and devs that are just plum full of great info.
I thought I’d link a few of my favorites here:
There is a lot of great info about how to create a sustainable life out of a creative career without losing hope or your balance when you feel you need to be making giant projects.
So, the question is, how can I make films that are feasible, sustainable, and creatively satiable?
