Kicking The Habit
About this hair-brained scheme…
I was going to call this section “Video Experiments” or “Video Prompts”…but what I’m really after is kicking my bad creative habits.
Filmmaking is a discipline – like learning an instrument, taking over Kitchen Stadium as Iron Chef or training to be the gawdsdamned Batman. When it comes to making films, I’ve not only fallen off the horse but lost my way…and it’s time to do something about it.
My homework is to work off short prompts and turn them into a video. I’ll make do with whatever inexpensive tools, budget, and means I have available. With that in mind…the genres and content quality will vary wildly, but the goal is simple and extremely personal: practice, practice, practice! I want to end the year with something to show for it.
New content, no limits. Let the games begin!
Proof that I’ve been joyriding on life and not doing my filmmaking duties.
Want to participate?
If you’d like to recommend a story prompt that I should try and tackle, please contact me! I will even accept perplexing one-line prompts sent anonymously. (Please send general ideas only and not scripts because I don’t want to be responsible for copyrights…) If I have the time and resources available, I’d love to roll my sleeves up and take on your challenge!
Completed Prompts
Here are the video assignments I’ve completed so far…
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January 16, 2010 - “Time is money…”
I think this is a brilliant idea. Matt Stone wrote the forward to Lloyd Kaufman’s Make Your Own Damned Movie, a book I recommend vastly, and attributed much of his success to the fact that, in film school, he’d turn out a movie a month (or sometimes a week) while his colleagues did one per semester. It didn’t matter that they were awfully written bits of kung fu drek. The churning and repeating taught him a great deal about getting the thing done and being creative under pressure.
It’s something I stood by once, in the days before my video efforts went into roller derby. I guess I still stand by it…I just don’t practice it.
Is this like the prompts on Who’s Line? Cause I could give you lots of those…
Hillary and Monica as roommates! Go!
Rhett: “It didn’t matter that they were awfully written bits of kung fu drek. The churning and repeating taught him a great deal about getting the thing done and being creative under pressure.”
Yes! I’m definitely after the same results. The quality of the video is not so important to me as the process of creating the output.
Jess: “Is this like the prompts on Who’s Line? Cause I could give you lots of those…”
Totally. If you’ve got a prompt to recommend, come back here and don’t be shy!