The Word of the Month: Inspiration

It is official; I’m burnt out, and not in the way you may think.

The slew of 15 videos coming from CreMedia in the past 15 weeks has rendered me useless. No not really, but the endless nights of negative sleep and filling the entirety of my mind with business and creative world concepts has definetly taken a toll on my editing ability, and most noticeably my editing speed. So how am I going to get out of this? (I’ll tell you)

After moving into my new home, fellow CreMedian Nate Boyer and I sat down to check out a flick called The Pixar Story. Revolving not only around the brilliant animation style of the firm, the story placed emphasis on the tenacity of the 3 leaders, and the way they adapted their business and mindset to ensure the survival of a once fledgling company. Their biggest challenge: making their second movie as good as the first. How does one capture the magic of an original work again and again and again? Ultimately this is the question that has resonated within me as I struggle to overcome this creative wall. And the approach to Pixar took to solving this problem is brilliant, and something I seem to have forgotten sometimes – To do whatever you want.

Getting wrapped up in the wishes of clients and even your followers is always important, but the lesson I have learned is that in the creative field the decibel level at which you hear these voices has to be significantly less than the level at which you hear your own voice. So it took getting back to basics to make this happen. What has been the formula for success in making my videos? Actively seeking inspiration through music and nature. Rather than downing cups of coffee and locking myself in the Grid Lab, waking up at 6am and working until 6am, I’ve told myself to engage socially with the environment and with music, allowing myself to relax when placed in these environments and think of nothing else than the audio coming into my ears and the objects in front of my very face. Sometimes you have to do this for an entire day to draft an idea, or sometimes I have to get up right where I am and run to the lab to edit out of excitement. And in combination with it, you have to develop the confidence to know that your work is truly unique and that people will appreciate it.

I want to thank my roommates Alex Sonneborn, Jerrod Ackerman, and Nate Boyer as well as my CreMedia blogger extraordinare Eric White for making me realize this on our trip to Hocking Hills, OH. I legitimately have never been more flooded with ideas than I have when simply putting myself in a beautiful location with great friends. Too bad I forgot my camera batteries…