Sunday 4 March 2012

The Creativity Discipline

To function optimally, you need to shut out distractions. Turn off your phone, stay away from Facebook and do your creative work. Brain research has shown that it takes twenty five minutes to fully regain focus after giving in to a distraction.

Make your creative work your priority. It needs to be more important than the phone bleep or vibration.

You need to focus entirely on the work at hand. This applies to all creative disciplines.

PARADOXICALLY----

Most 'hunches' and 'insights' come when you're busy doing trivial tasks.

When you've been pounding away at the keyboard for six hours, or when the scene you're acting  in is on take 37 and you're not improving, chances are you need a break. You need to text a friend, or get some fresh air, or kick a ball around.

When you focus too hard, for too long, you get stuck in a rigid way of thinking. Fresh insight, literally, needs fresh air.

The best work doesn't come under stress or anxiety. So don't force ideas, let things go and take a walk.

SO YOU'RE SAYING FOCUS ABSOLUTELY, BUT ALSO THE OPPOSITE?

Strangely, yes.

The problem most of the time is that we don't reach the stage where our minds can be creative, because instead we focus on the incoming text message, or we convince ourselves that the washing up must be done immediately.

Creativity must be the priority, it needs to become a strong habit, just like checking your phone. Habits get hard-wired in the brain. They become second nature. Creativity is a habit which must be nurtured, supported and prioritized.

Yet compulsive, obsessive thinking will kill your creative drive. We get hooked on instant ideas. Ever been busy doing the work when suddenly your brain flashes up a much better idea? You switch ideas, but then soon lose interest. By the time you return to the original work your attention is gone, and you opt instead for coffee and Twitter. The problem is that we get obsessed with ideas and plans and success, and even with our passions themselves; writing, directing, acting, etc.

THE WAY FORWARD

Is to focus on your creative work and do it when you say you'll do it. Commit to the work and see it through.

But also, find the time to step away, to do other things, to be an explorer. Life is to be lived, and you need to be able to look at a tree as a tree, without wondering if there's a way you can write the tree into your screenplay.

If you can truly TRULY let go of your compulsive creativity, then a more organic creativity will rise within you. You just need to trust it.

Care to share?

THE WOMAN IN BLACK Script Pitch Meeting

The WOMEN IN BLACK pitch meeting.



WRITER
I have an idea.

EXEC
Fire away.

WRITER
A man walks around a haunted house.

EXEC
Okay...

WRITER
What do you think?

EXEC
I like it. Carry on.

WRITER
What do you mean?

EXEC
Continue your pitch.

WRITER
That's it. A man walks around a haunted house.

EXEC
Will anything else happen?

WRITER
No.

EXEC
You want us to make a piece of pointless garbage?

WRITER
How is that different to usual?

EXEC
We cover it up by attaching stars.

WRITER
You could use the Harry Potter guy.

EXEC
He's about 15.

WRITER
We can make him look a little bit older.

EXEC
How?

WRITER
Give him a tiny bit of facial hair.

EXEC
I'm not sure he's capable of that. I'll call the special effects guys.

WRITER
We could also give him a kid.

EXEC
I'd rather just pay him money like usual.

WRITER
I mean his character could have a kid, it will make him seem older.

EXEC
This totally changes your idea.

WRITER
How's this: a manboy has a child. He goes to a haunted house and walks around for a while. The End.

EXEC
I'm greenlighting this. 

PLEASE NOTE: This dialogue is of course fictional, and the film is actually an adaptation of a book, where I assume a character who looked a lot like Harry Potter walked around a haunted house for 300 pages or so and then it ended.

Care to share?

Dancing Queen

There I was, heading towards the platform at Tottenham Court Road, and I could hear the sound of a busker playing "Dancing Queen" on saxophone.

A feeling rises up in me, I don't even know what it is. Maybe it's the memory of hearing it at my Aunt's wedding when I was 8 or maybe it's just the pure fun and joy of the song itself. Anyways, I crave it like crazy 'cos what this guy is doing sounds so much like LIFE! Isn't that why we love art? Isn't this why we continually want to find music that resonates? I'm making my way home after seeing 'The Woman In Black', and it sucked so bad! Such an awful movie. I thought I'd get all filled up on a movie but it turns out I'd get my fix from a busker doing an ABBA tune.

And then his next track: "Baker Street" by Gerry Rafferty. Hell yeah! That's one of those songs you really hate but really love. And it reminds me of Dito's movie "A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints" and it reminds me of every time me and my friends have played air-sax to the tune.




The tube train rolled into the station, but I didn't board it! I ran upstairs to get closer to the music. Music can really suck sometimes, just turn on the radio and you'll see. We get our fixes in different places. There are three drunk girls opposite me on the train right now, they're being obnoxious and loud, singing some song (I think they're Brazilian, hard to tell). As much as they're pissing me off, I can't help but enjoy it a little, because they're singing and finding their fix. Music that means something to them, it's come from their culture. Or maybe they're singing gibberish and are high on cocaine, who knows! But it sounds to me like they're loving it.

Once upon a time they invented the camera and the radio (I don't mean the drunk Brazilian girls), and humans craved it, and they trusted that they'd be entertained, they'd get their natural highs from the novelty, from the artists. But then big business took over, it was all about singles sales and box office receipts. You had to please everybody to get seen by anybody, or you went underground and played a different game to the system.

Now it's blown right open. People don't even know where to rent a movie or download a track anymore - the whole thing is in chaos. We go to the cinema, we listen to the radio, we see the stars being interviewed on TV, but how often do we stumble upon magic? How often does it resonate through to our very core? Hardly ever. Don't look to the old safe bets, don't expect the chart music to give you what you need. You have to go to different places, you have to be open, you have to go underground, just as I did, literally, tonight.

Care to share?

Friday 2 March 2012

The Feedback Friend

AMY
I have a problem with the dialogue, it doesn't flow.

RAY
To where?

AMY
It doesn't make any sense.

RAY
Of course.

AMY
What?

RAY
What?

AMY
I'm trying to give you feedback on the script.

RAY
I like it.

AMY
Your script?

RAY
Your feedback.

AMY
Can we review your script before we review my review?

RAY
Yeah.

AMY
The dialogue is like, well, not real.

RAY
In what way is it not real?

AMY
People don't talk like that.

RAY
Why not?

AMY
Because they speak in other ways.

RAY
There's always someone who talks differently, and that's how my characters speak.

AMY
No.

RAY
I once knew a man who started every sentence with the phrase "Oh my jolly lord."

AMY
Really?

RAY
No I made that up. My point is people talk in all different ways, just like in my script.

AMY
Nobody actually speaks that badly.

RAY
Only politicians.

AMY
Your jokes don't work either, they're very badly executed.

RAY
Is there anything you like?

AMY
Jewelry.

RAY
Amy.

AMY
Yes.

RAY
Is there anything you like about the script?

AMY
I thought the ending was contrived.

RAY
And you liked that?

AMY
Yes, I was happy that it ended.

RAY
You liked the ending?

AMY
I think endings should always be abrupt.

Care to share?

Thursday 1 March 2012

Any Any Everything

They bolted out of town on a train hurtling towards anywhere, like it was their last chance to finally be young and free. They took off determined to get to anyplace, all rushed to get there knowing this was the last time they'd truly live.

Life had been dying slowly for years, meetings and schedules and places to be all set up and ready like clockwork. They were gone and the train whizzed past everywhere and was headed to the specific place they needed to be: anywhere!

To be young and free and alive with no plans, that was the plan. All laughing, fighting, dreaming, smiling! Like the last hooray of childhood and teendom all wild and crazy in anywhere just North of everywhere.

They hit the platform and the train waved goodbye so they rushed to the hills all wet with rain and sprinted forever and never slowed down. Life was here and life is here and they were so happy to be anywhere. Their phone signals said "no" so they danced a happy dance and fled to the trees all giggling and free and excited by being nowhere and nothing yet somehow precisely EVERYTHING they could ever be.

Care to share?