From: Mark Toscano (email suppressed)
Date: Tue Feb 17 2009 - 22:58:44 PST
I would definitely agree on finding inspiration from non-film sources. What other interests do you have? Other arts? Science? Gardening? Surfing? Whatever it is, start thinking about those things in terms of films you want to make and films you want to make in terms of those things, maybe.
That also reminds me of something someone once told me about Arthur Lipsett - that he treated the found footage trims and outs he used as if it were his own footage, and his own footage as if it were found footage.
Fred Worden recently told me that Robert Nelson (one of Fred's film teachers at Cal Arts in 1972-74) made a big impact on him in many ways, one of which was giving him a copy of the Samurai Creed for inspiration. Fred says for many years, wherever he was based, he had it tacked up in his work space or studio, as he continued to find inspiration in it. Recently, Fred unearthed it and passed it on to his students at UMBC. Here's a version of the text I found online:
http://www.ancientworlds.net/aw/Post/385535
Also, I know Nelson himself has for 45+ years used the I Ching as a way to reposition or rethink his perspective on his own artistic endeavors, and he still swears by it.
And to share a personal anecdote -
I was having a major block getting going on making films about a year ago. I've periodically had creative blocks, getting hung up on the idea that everything has to be "just so" or utterly thought out, or somehow perfect, whatever any of that means, before jumping in to actually do anything. So I basically did nothing. Anyhow, a lot of things helped me get over that in the past couple of years and make work again, but one thing in particular had a unique impact and was quite fun as well.
I decided I would make a 16mm film in one night. I would work from pre-existing or found footage, so it would be readily available, and with no preconceived notion of what I was going to do. In fact, I didn't even schedule a specific night, I just waited (not too long though) until the night felt right. It happened to be a Thursday. The only stipulations were that it had to be at least 100ft. (roughly 2:45), and it had to be fully synched A/B rolls, because I was interested in playing with some editing ideas I'd been thinking about. The last stipulation was that no matter what I ended up with, I was committing to myself to actually send it to a lab to print it. No choice, had to do it. Weirdly enough, insisting on this with myself actually freed me quite a bit to not dwell on the stupid meaningless "problems" that were hanging me up, because no matter how crappy or meaningless it ended up being, I'd still have a film at the end.
Anyhow, when the night came, I worked from about 8pm to 4:30am, and had a 125ft. A/B rolled film which I shipped the next day to Cinema Lab in Denver area, where they made an interneg and a workprint.
I got it back, watched it, and yeah, it's not anything fantastic, but it has moments, and even if ultimately I consider it a sort of sketchbook with some bits of potential, it was still ABSOLUTELY worth it, and helped me understand the value of taking risks and not getting hung up on some meaningless idea about perfection.
Obviously you could tailor this approach to your own media or interests. This particular approach happened to speak to mine.
I'd also recommend looking into OuLiPo, the group of (largely) French writers who were interested in putting artificial constraints on their writing in order to plumb otherwise unavailable depths of ingenuity and creativity to get often startling results. A famous example is Georges Perec's masterpiece La Disparation, a 300-page book written entirely without the letter 'e'.
Anyhow, hope this is of interest. Give it a shot!
Mark T
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