Movie-Making/Individual Essay: Rough Draft

Rough Draft

In many ways the creative process is humans’ most distinctive attribute. It may even be correct that creativity is prominent only among humans as opposed to all walks of life.  The very essence of life is but creation, yet only humans have the talent to perceive it outside life’s normal boundaries.

In the scope of human ingenuity there are two outlets, art and technology, where creativity thrive.  In a previous essay I explored the common ground these outlets share by looking at writing as an example of both, but now I would like to pay attention to the similarities and differences of the creative process across different media besides writing.  As an aspiring writer I usually keep my creative focus on the familiarity of writing but there are different mediums, such as music or movie making, where creativity more than aptly applies.  In a recent exploration I delved into a collaborative movie-making project with a group of three other writers; collaboration being the key aspect of our “writing” adventure.

I use the term writing purposely towards describing my movie-making experience because writing was how everything began.  It was writing that allowed the group, as well as myself, to get our first ideas out there. Brainstorming is an integral first step for any creative process, but I find it interesting how brainstorming changes from one cloud to many in a collaborative setting.

When a writer brainstorms usually an inner dialogue (or is it a monologue?) takes place between the writer’s consciousness and imagination.  Because these are both mental processes of one writer often that which is documented is abbreviated or written short hand.  Collaborative brainstorming requires a person to clearly express their ideas. When you brainstorm with other people you have to take into account how others perceive what you come up with.  In doing so our private ideas become public, which means we give them up to scrutiny, but in a collaborative setting we must learn to be flexible with our ideas.

When my group came together for the first time we met to come up with an idea for our movie.  The four of us were sitting at a large table in a restaurant quietly sipping drinks and rolling our eyes as we deliberated thoughts in our heads.  As writers it was instinctive that our next step be to jot down a list of our ideas.  Bear in mind this was done with little communication in the beginning. It was as though before we could speak openly to one another each of us had to collect our own thoughts first.  That is why it is interesting we all wrote down a list because we were reverting to writing in order to jump-start our creativity.

After a short pause the table was open for discussion and one by one we turned our private thoughts into public ideas.  Turning the private into public seems significant because it demonstrates how flexible each of us needed to be as we unleashed our ideas to the group.  We spat out concepts at each other and, bit by bit, we added little pieces which we thought were relevant to them.  Speaking became the main mode of brainstorming and the process seemed more instantaneous than brainstorming individually.  Most likely this is because speaking is more instantaneous than writing, but there is little permanence which is what we needed after deciding on a direction for our movie.

We had established what our movie was to be about but we needed a way to conceptualize it therefore we outlined each scene.  We decided on a number of scenes in total and that each of us would take a stab at directing one.  Interestingly we outlined the movie in the same fashion as any writer would outline a five paragraph essay. Each of us concurred there had to be an introduction scene, followed by body paragraphs, and ending with a conclusion.  By the end of the deliberation we had actually planned out and wrote five scenes as five essential paragraphs.

I can see many similarities in the initial processes of writing and movie making. Foremost is finding permanence to the conceptualization of our ideas coming together. We accomplished this by actually writing out our plans in order to get a base that we could build upon. In short we approached this project as writers who essentially “wrote” a movie together by employing writers’ techniques to outline it. The only difference was the collaboration aspect which relied heavily on speaking and also became a lot more prevalent during our shooting of the movie.

On a separate occasion the four of us met at Ypsilanti Public High School in order to shoot our movie.  We shot each scene at a classroom in fairly open space with a high ceiling.  We figured these were important attributes for our film since our main concept incorporated teaching through an assortment of balls as motivation.  Although we had carefully planned out each scene none of us expected to get through all of them in one take. Therefore there were many drafts of each scene and it was our consensus that the more we had the merrier.  We figured that more outtakes would reflect a wider array of editing options later.  Unlike writing, when it is necessary to trim and separate each topic, we let the camera capture every moment that could possibly be used in the film.

In essence, while we were shooting the movie, we just kept the camera rolling.  Part of me believes we decided to shoot this way because it helped us to be more comfortable in front of the camera, but also because more footage meant more editing options.  For instance, if you’ve had a chance to watch the film, consider then the editing magic of the basketball shot.  There was a lot of footage for that one scene but all of it was necessary to have in order to cut the most seamless shot possible.

When working creatively across different media I have found that collaboration with others is highly imperative to the entire process.  Working with different media and unfamiliar technologies causes a person to be creative in new ways.  Often times we rely on the helping perspectives of others to explore such creative avenues that we find foreign.  When we write our concern is expressing ourselves, but through the lens of a camera we are sharing the same moment in lucidity.  I really enjoyed my movie-making process because it has allowed me to look at creativity as a universal aspect of human life.

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(Okay for the purpose of peer-review and editing of this paper there are a few things that I would like to note.  First is that I know this conclusion must seem very weak, but please keep in mind that I don’t generally come to conclusions when I’m drafting a paper so this one is sort of a forced effort on by behalf. That is not to say the direction in my draft is not where I want to end up, because it is.  I started talking about creativity and I really want to end that way with my paper. So the only way I can think of right now to approach this is by examining how creativity adapts through different media. I have never made a movie before, but I am an amateur musician which is why I include music as a creative media in paragraph two. The best way I could think of to bring about how creativity adapts was to trace it through individual and collaborative processes. Please feel free to comment on how well I’ve expressed what I believe to be the main point of my essay; how creativity adapts in individual and collaborative processes.

Lastly just a couple of things that might help make sense of this rough draft. I am aware that I have not included any notable quotables within my draft, but I have most certainly been considering some for the purposes of this assignment. In case you are interested; I intend to use Walter Ong to illustrate creativity as a distinct attribute among humans. Also, in the first half of my essay I talk about the topic of private turning into public and it is my intention to back up this argument with what we’ve learned about rhetoric and ancient style. Particularly the types of sentia and figures that help make our thoughts more coherent when we speak them.  Along with this issue I also mention the problem of permanence and how writing is a solution opposed to merely speaking.  This is a topic discussed in the article “Pencils to Pixels” so I will more than likely cite some of Baron’s words from there.  So a final thank you for bearing with my words and please feel free to comment on any of the points I tried to make up for in these last paragraphs:)