Inspiration & Creativity

It's hard being an artist - You want to be original. You want to be creative. You want to say something important. Touch on universal human themes. You want to make people laugh. You want to make them cry. You want them to love your work. You want to love your own work.

And so, when working on my next project (or next few projects, I should say - I am juggling a several in my head and in my notebook) I like stealing from different artists that I respect and admire, to make my ideas for a story or character even better. I really love this quote by Jim Jarmusch, I think about it every time I am making a film:


I think New York City is a great place for me to be right now. There's so much to be inspired by and steal from. I saw a film called Beeswax today, directed by a very talented young filmmaker - Andrew Bujalski. He was there for a Q&A after a screening of his film. He makes low-budget films about young people trying to find themselves and trying to understand the different kinds relationships they're in. They're films I like to see and they're films that I'd like to make. And I think it's these encounters with filmmakers and going to the cinema, concerts and art museums that make me want to write my own characters and to tell their stories.

It's something that was always a little hard for me to do in California. It's not like I disliked where I came from (not at all), but I lacked a serious motivation to invent stories in my head and then creating them with actors and a camera while I was home. After going to New York in the winter, I came home and made two short films (that I actually liked) in two months. I don't think that I would have made them if it weren't for the time I spent in New York.

My summer Sight & Sound: Film class just ended and the class required that I make five films in six weeks. I am not particularly in love with any of the films I made, nor do I dislike them. But the important thing is that I learned a lot about filmmaking and found that creativity can definitely be forced out of someone. Now, with more time to shape my ideas and stories and with digital video (which I have taken for granted, shooting on 16mm is a much bigger production) I feel like I can produce a lot more film. And the more films I make, hopefully, the better I make them.