Behind the Scenes: Creative Cross-training
“the point of creative cross training is to immerse yourself for a short period of time in an art form that is not your primary one.”
2015 ended with two big projects at work getting cut, lots of self-doubt, and a hunger to shift into a higher gear. My then co-worker Alyson posted a link for an online course called "THE GREATEST YEAR EVER." It definitely sounded like scam.
I was quickly humbled by how freaking useful this course was. As a part of creating "MY GREATEST YEAR EVER," I had to break my daily "work" down into three creative fundamentals. This is what I came up with:
- creating + experimenting (actually making films)
- communicating (interviewing skills, building + pitching treatments, leading teams, etc.)
- learning (watching, reading, studying, etc.).
Like most human beings, I was incredibly inconsistent with doing activities from these three buckets. However, what carried over from this work in 2017 was a nagging question: "how can I hone my directing skills on a daily basis?" The challenge with directing is that you need a project to direct, people to actually direct and the resources to do so.
Werner Herzog shares in his philosophies to filmmaking to "READ. READ. READ. READ. READ." and "Write Quickly." Noted. I also came across this 99U article about using creative cross-training to grow in our crafts. Learning what I have over the past few years, I'm coming back to my practice of writing. At least for 2017, I plan to use this blog as my experiment. It'll be a place to play, create, test and practice. Hope you'll join in along for the ride!
I'll leave you with a quote from Seth Godin:
“My suggestion is, whenever possible, ask yourself: What’s the smallest possible footprint I can get away with? What is the smallest possible project that is worth my time? What is the smallest group of people who I could make a difference for, or to? Because smallest is achievable. Smallest feels risky. Because if you pick the smallest and you fail, now you’ve really screwed up.”