Ridiculous Opinions #242
Happy Saturday to you all!
It's very early where I'm at and everyone in the house is sleeping, so I'll have to type quietly. As you may or may not know, I write ideas daily. It's how I start my journals and how I keep up with my writing. It's pretty much a different idea each day and I literally have thousands of them. Not all of them are good, but there are a few gems lurking about in there.
I have decided that this will be the basis of my final movie project. I've wanted to make movies pretty much all my life and have made one feature-length film (The Bean) which is a pretty good film, but one that is simply resting on my hard drive at the moment. I still have that itch, though. I want to make another movie! It may be my last chance to do so!
So, I've had a concept lurking about in my head for a couple of years now that I want to try to bring to fruition, but it may take a while. My movie is called Ideaspace. Originally, the film was going to be about the creative process and it was simply going to focus on a writer sitting down to create something, over and over again, day after day. I was going to use my thousands of ideas to show what he was writing. So, whatever ideas he had, we were going to see them on screen. If it was a giant space opera, then I was going to film that. If it was a zombie movie, I was going to film that. You know how it goes.
The problem with that is that there was no plot. Nothing was going to happen. It was just going to be a mishmash of ideas vomited up on screen for everyone to see. I had no direction. Part of me celebrated that concept. This would be an independent film, with no oversight from a studio or anything of that nature. If the film made no sense, who cares? I was making this for me! But the more I tried to write it, the more this seemed like it would simply be an incoherent mess. And in the end, this prevented me from even getting started on it.
Enter my lovely wife. One night, we were getting some exercise and walking along the beach, when I told her about my idea. She dashed off some comment like she usually does about how the movie might not be about the writer and she asked whether it could be about something else other than the ideas.
I walked along in stunned silence for a while, marveling at the vague statement that she said that was so wise. It shifted the gears of my brain entirely. Sometimes, that's all it takes.
Famous music producer Brian Eno has a method for unlocking creativity. In the 1970s, he (alongside artist Peter Schmidt) created a series of playing cards called Oblique Strategies. They were a set of cards that, when one is confronted with some kind of creative block where they no longer could move forward, enabled you to draw a singular card to start you thinking about your concepts in a fresh and creative way.
The cards have singular phrases on them. Here's a few statements from the cards:
Decorate, decorate
Your mistake was a hidden intention
Only one element of each kind
Think of the radio
Use fewer notes
See how they're "oblique"? They're a bit of genius that enables one to simply look at the world through a new lens. I have used them often to train my brain to think differently about a concept of some sort.
On that day on the beach, Tracey was my "oblique strategy". She helped me think about what I wanted to do in an entirely new way. This was about a month and a half ago and in the time since, I have been writing away on this movie that I wanted to make. The original concept is there (the notion that the movie will be filled with endless "ideas"), but the framework in which I present it will be something new, fresh, and quite moving, if I might say so.
The neat part of all of this is that this is going to be an opportunity for me to really create something different. This won't be a regular movie at all. It's going to flow in an odd way. It's going to tell a story in a way that isn't normal by any means. It's going to be true to Randall's sensibilities.
Long ago, George Lucas was talking about digital technology in filmmaking and how it was going to be the great democratizer for making movies. This has been true. People have access to equipment and methods now that couldn't have possibly been dreamed of prior to the turn of the century. JJ Abrams gave a TED talk where he spoke about the idea that if you want to learn how to do something in this day and age, technology means you can! I can do anything with film today. I can create worlds that were impossible just a few years ago. I can animate. I can add visual effects. Whatever is inside my brain is available for me to bring into the world.
So, Ideaspace is going to be my EPIC. This thing is going to be so jam-packed with ideas and concepts that it will be unlike anything that you've ever seen. It will be a real window into Randall P. Girdner's brain.
And it could take me years to make it.
I'm giving myself five years. I'm going to be learning new tricks and techniques. I'm going to need to film this in locations all over the world. I'm going to need tons of actors to make it happen. Heck, you might be one of them and I won't even tell you. If I run up to you and say, "Hey, will you film this with me?", then you should know that it may, in fact, end up in my movie in some form or another.
I'm about mid-way through writing the film at the moment, but it won't be long before the whole thing is written. After all, I've got thousands of ideas to choose from.
And then, I'll have scratched that itch. I'll have made something that I can sit back and say, That is what I'm capable of doing. What happens after that? Let's ask Oblique Strategies...
Openly resist change
I certainly will.
