A natural part of life is looking back over the past and – occasionally – wishing you had a passport back to the “good old days”.
Yearning for the past, however, precludes us from looking to the future. Facing the in the wrong direction not only leads to heavy-hearted nostalgia ((or worse, sentimentality)), but also stops us being open to new ideas and new opportunities.
Most frequently, we hark back to the days of “carefree joy” and “spontaneity” that marked our teenage years, but it’s vital never to forget that everything we’ve experienced – and especially all the good stuff – we were able to enjoy and consequently remember fondly because we were open to a wide range of possibilities and new adventures.
There’s nothing wrong with looking back; just make sure it’s a glance over your shoulder, not a 180˚ turn from your forward path.
Sometimes the best thing a writer and filmmaker can do is get out from behind their screen and make a conscious effort to connect with what’s going on in the world around them.
Today, my great journey to summit the 3 highest peaks in the UK within 24 hours began with the single, simple step of inducting myself at the gym.
I’ve been lucky enough to be sponsored by Topnotch Healthclubs with a gym membership and, if you’ll pardon the pun, top-notch training advice and personalised programmes to get me ship-shape and walking-fashioned in time for the challenge in June.
This blog, in what must been its umpteenth iteration ((having followed pre- and post-transplant journey and a short “trial” stint at university)), will become home to OLI’S 3 PEAKS – the online diary of my build-up, training, highs and lows of my bid to raise awareness of organ donation by attempting a frankly very silly challenge for someone with a) a total lack of any kind of physical fitness and b) a very low tolerance for pain or discomfort.
Anything that doesn’t go the way you intend may at first appear like an utter waste of your time, but it’s important to find the positives and ways to take advantage of a situation that may not be to our liking.
A Twitter buddy of mine this week posed the following question:
Would you use [product placement] to fund / part finance a film?
Followed closely by this Tweet, which makes no secret which way he’s leaning.
All this is, of course, highly appropriate just now with the UK about to start allowing product placement for the first time. ((The BBC have got a great article on it and its perceived impact here))
I do think product placement has a place in helping to fund the TV and film industry over here. Apart from anything else, who are we to turn down sources of funding to get things made – not just for us but, potentially, more and better off-the-wall, risky TV drama and other formats it may help fund?
The issue for me always comes with the compromise that a filmmaker or an artist has to accept in order to allow for product placement. If you have to change elements of your script to accommodate a product you need to take a long, hard look at the reasons behind it and not fool yourself that it’s a “creative” decision.
That’s not to say all changes in the name of placement are a bad thing ((you wouldn’t see a huge amount of harm in switching a character’s car from a Ford to a Seat, for instance, as long as it says the same things about his life, social status etc)) but I would always shy away from placement-based rewrites that affected anything more than a passing glance or irrelevant detail.
The key decider for any product placement-based changes has to be this: if someone were offering you the same sum of money without a product to push, would you make the changes they’re suggesting just because they’re giving you the cash?
If the answer’s “yes” then either a) they’re surprisingly good story analysts and you struck luck or b) you’re a sell-out and I wish you a long and happy career. Just don’t fool yourself into thinking you’re making great art as you pander to the the money-men’s whims.
It’s entirely possible to incorporate product placement in a creative and ethical way, but we should all beware of those people who will become slaves to the product, rather than serving their story.
Welcome to another new LOWDOWN, that part of the Production Office that brings you tips and tricks on all the tools you need to enhance your career as a filmmaker and creative.
Today, it’s Productivity.
Anyone who follows my blog will know I’m pretty hot on productivity. For far too long I spent my days being busy, but rarely productive. Since harnessing some of the tools I’m talking about today and putting some best practices of getting things done into place, I’ve become much more focused, much more productive and much more successful.
Let’s have a look, then, at some of the tools you can use to make your life easier.
EVERNOTE
Evernote comes at the top of the list today for two reasons: number one, it’s the tool I was most recently introduced to and two, it’s the tool I now find the most invaluable.
Evernote is a desktop and web-based app that you can also get for almost all smart phones. It’s free to get started, but if you go over a certain storage limit you have to start paying. That said, I’ve used it quite a lot and still not exceeded my free allowance.
What Evernote does is to collect together all those bits and pieces of things on the web that you want to take note of, as well as allowing you to compile your own To Do lists, projects and other notes. It’s the simplest, cheapest and easiest way of keeping track of just about everything you need to remember. The Evernote logo isn’t an elephant for nothing.
THINGS
The second tool that works hard to keep you on time and on-topic is Things. The biggest down side? It’s Mac-only. So all you Windows dinosaurs can’t take advantage of it. You also have to pay around £30 for it, which puts it a step below Evernote to begin with.
Once you get past those elements, though, Things is brilliant for tracking To Do’s, project files, notes and reminders. Most usefully, though – and what helps to elevate Things to a point worth paying for – is it’s interaction and syncability ((new word alert!)) with iCal and iPhone. If you use Apple’s MobileMe syncing solution to share your calendar across all your home computers, like I do, Things swaps and shares data seamlessly with not only all of your computers, but your phone as well. An invaluable way of keeping track of everything you need to know when you need to know it.
BASECAMP
There are numerous online project management tools that help you and all your collaborators to keep track of all the strands that make up your project, but the best one I’ve found (and used) is Basecamp.
Unlike other, equally useful online tools like Huddle, it’s Basecamp’s pricing structure that really makes it stand out. You pay a flat monthly fee from $24 (£15) and upwards that allows unlimited numbers of people to join your project and work on things with you. Huddle, by contrast, charges you per user per month, meaning a major film or creative project would quickly rack up sizable fees.
Basecamp ((and, in fact, all online project management tools)) is best used for sharing documents and keeping track of project timelines and goals in a way that everyone involved can see. Not only is that a great motivational tool – if everyone know what you should be doing, you’d better be doing it – but also a great way of making sure key things don’t get missed and that everyone knows the timeline their working to and the goals their aiming for.
There are hundreds of different tools of productivity for you to explore, but I’d suggest you limit yourself to trying one or two at a time, otherwise you risk undoing all their good work by spending all day getting to know them and setting them up as opposed to using them to help get your work done.
For more o productivity, keep an eye on my blog here, as well as checking out the99percent and lifehacker, my two online bibles of productivity tips and tools.
Starting a debate is a great way to engage your creative muscles. Not only does it force you to examine your own perspectives, it also opens you up to taking on board new ideas.
Great debates create new angles to examine problems and new ways to solve them.
As a writer, stirring debate can also help you to write both sides of an argument. I frequently start writing scenes between two characters and realise that it’s totally one-sided because I agree strongly with one of the characters. By entering a debate with my friends and Twitter buddies, I can get different views and arguments that help me round out my characters in a much more successful way.
What debates have you used to aid your writing or creativity? How did you get them started – is the interactivity of Twitter the best way to go, or the public discussion of Facebook?
This weekend, I caught up on the BBC’s awesome BTS doc on COME FLY WITH ME, the new series from LITTLE BRITAIN creators Matt Lucas and David Walliams.
One thought from an interview with Matt Lucas really struck me. Inevitably, there was a question about how you follow up a series as successful as LB was ((and love it or hate it, you can’t deny its success)). Lucas commented, on topping LB:
Can we do something as big as that? No. Can we do something better than that? Certainly.
And there’s the rub: whatever we’re setting out to create, the aim should never be about creating something bigger, simply creating something better.
Striving for size and reach will bring pressures and compromises; striving for quality will not only better ensure excellence, but also come with its own–much wider–rewards and may end up being both bigger and better.
A natural part of life is looking back over the past and – occasionally – wishing you had a passport back to the “good old days”.
