Movie-Making Individual Essay: Final Draft

We Wrote A Movie: Exploring The Creative Process in Multimedia

In the scope of human ingenuity there are two outlets, art and technology, where creativity thrive. In many ways the creative process is humans’ most distinctive attribute.  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 infused with every aspect.  It was writing that allowed the group, as well as myself, to get our first ideas on the page. Our task was to create a low-bridge video about, writing style or technology, and submit it to Youtube. In short, this assignment allowed us to explore the educational possibilities of Web 2.0; which, over the last few years, there’s been a lot of discussion as to whether or not Internet media, such as Youtube or Google, can serve as an educational resource. Professor Daniel Anderson looks at the environment of internet media as a way for students to develop technological skills and multiple literacies, whereas cohort Alexandra Juhasz has experience in a classroom faulted by students reluctant to utilize Youtube.  In my own experience it took multiple literacies to function in the movie making process because it was all uncharted and unfamiliar territory. As with any creative process brainstorming is a critical first step, but I found it interesting how brainstorming changes from one cloud to many in a collaborative setting.

Usually when a writer brainstorms 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. Brainstorming with other people urges us to be more aware of how others perceive our ideas and in fact urged me to be more articulate in how I contributed with group discussion. Collaborative brainstorming works only if people clearly express their ideas to one another.   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 and accept scrutiny as a way of drafting.

The concern of private material broadcast onto public space was a prominent one in Juhasz’s classroom.  In an article the professor wrote, “During Learning form Youtube, students were routinely judged by critical Youtubers who would never see or know…the subtle dynamics in the room.”  (Juhasz p. 135)  This type of critical judgment falls under the scrutiny that we as creators need to either shed or learn from.  Indeed anonymous Youtubers are not going to know the context of Juhasz’s students’ videos, but that does not exclude the fact that such viewers have formed opinions about the students’ work.  Such input from viewers validates the student’s projects as public content and Daniel Anderson believes that, “examining these projects reveals the need to focus on a sense of personal agency and the possibilities for delivering social change when we talk about new media literacy”. (Anderson p. 40)  In other words it is the public forum that allows us to move through ideas in order to progress creatively.  Through collaboration we are able to focus on personal agency by striving to communicate well with one another and in doing so societal change is affected for the better.

When my group came together for the first time we met to come up with an idea for our low-bridge movie about writing.  The four of us were seated at a large table in a restaurant quietly sipping drinks and rolling our eyes as we deliberated in our heads silently.  As writers it was instinctive that our next step be to jot down on a list our ideas.  Bear in mind both steps were done with little communication in the beginning. At first we talked a little, upon meeting each other, but it was as though before we could speak about the project openly each of us had to collect our own thoughts first.  That is why it is interesting that we all wrote down a list because we were reverting to writing (familiar territory) in order to jump-start our creativity.

After the short pause the table was open for discussion and one by one we turned our private thoughts into public ideas through collaborative brainstorming.  Turning the private into public again is significant because it demonstrates how flexible each of us needed to be when we unleashed our ideas to the group.  We spat out concepts at one another and, bit by bit, added little pieces which we thought were relevant for each one.  Speaking became the main mode of articulating our ideas and the process seemed more instantaneous, or fluid than brainstorming individually.  Most likely this is because speaking is more instantaneous than writing, but there is little permanence in speech. In order to conceptualize our movie’s direction we needed some sort of visual key.  Again we turned to writing to formally express ourselves.

After we had established what our movie was to be about but we needed a way to conceptualize it so we outlined each scene. Our outline was not like a storyboard where snapshots of each scene are put into context. Instead 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 our conclusion.  By the end of the deliberation we had actually planned out and wrote five scenes as five essential paragraphs.

In retrospect I see many similarities in the initial processes of writing and movie making. Foremost is finding permanence in the conceptualization or brainstorming stage. Without such our ideas are given no form to build with. Storyboards and outlining are ways to transpose ideas on to paper thus giving them a physical permanence, yet both styles are essentially writing. Walter Ong once commented on this somewhat contradictory nature of writing.

“Yet there is a paradox in the fact that the deadness of the written or printed text, its removal from the living human lifeworld, its rigid visual fixity assures its endurance and its potential for being resurrected into limitless living contexts by a limitless number of living readers.” (Ong p. 22)

In my movie group we wrote out everything in order to get a base we could build upon. We may have just been writers employing writing techniques, but (in all fairness) without writing there would have been no other way to facilitate our project in the brainstorming phase. The permanence that writing offered us was the key to our collaborative efforts, as is what Ong is suggesting as well.  The only real difference between good, old-fashioned writing and movie-making is the collaboration in all parts and processes necessary to make a movie. Communication through speaking becomes indispensable and during the shooting of our movie we relied heavily on speech.

On a separate occasion from our restaurant excursion 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 some basics of writing style through an assortment of balls as motivation.  Although we had carefully planned out all scenes none of us expected to get through any 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.  It was our estimation that more outtakes would reflect a wider array of editing options later.  Unlike writing, when it is necessary to trim and separate each topic for coherency’s sake, we let the camera capture every moment that could possibly be used in the film; and worried about weeding through it later.

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 indeed 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 and edit 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.  With different media there invariably comes unfamiliar technology which can cause a person to learn be creative in new ways.  Often times we rely on the helping perspectives of others to explore such creative avenues that we find foreign terrain.  I found this to be the fundamental flaw with Juhasz and her class; based on her article collaboration was not encouraged and often stifled as a critical element for exploring new media technologies. In Juhasz’s class students submitted essays as vlogs and found it difficult to transpose the writing process directly onto Youtube which is primarily a visual-based forum. Instead of literally transposing the writing process, perhaps Juhasz could have benefited from Daniel Anderson’s perspective on new media technologies. “The writing class as a new media studio becomes a site of heightened personal engagement with learning that movies from the practical to the personal to the public”. (Anderson p. 40) What Anderson embraces about Web 2.0 is precisely what Juhasz rejects; the internet as a public forum where ideas can emerge freely and inevitably converge thus adding to the process of creation.

Participating in a public forum such as Youtube is at its core a lesson in collaboration.  When we write our concern is expressing ourselves, but through the lens of a camera there is the lucidity of capturing a moment and sharing it with an audience. We open ourselves up to the world and hope that our contribution is valid. Whether for educational, or entertainment purposes respectively, I really enjoyed my movie-making project because it allowed me to look at creativity and collaboration as more universal aspects of human life prevalent in everything which represent us.

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Bibliography

Anderson, Daniel. “The Low Bridge to High Benefits: Entry-Level Multimedia, Literacies and Motivation.” Computers and Compositions. Chapel Hill: Elsevier 2007. 40-60

Ong, Walter. “Writing is a Technology that Restructures Thought.” Literacy: A Critical Sourcebook. Eds. Ellen Cushman, Eugene R. Kintgen, Barry M. Kroll, and Mike Rose. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2001. 19-31.

Juhasz,  Alexandra. “Why Not (Yo) Teach On Youtube.” Video Vortex Reader: Responses to YouTube. Eds. Geert Lovink, Sabine Niederer. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures 2008. 130-140