Boredom is the Bedrock of Creativity: A Creative Conversation with Chris Do

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Hi there, and welcome to Boris FX’s Flow State Stories from the Creative Process.

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I'm your host, Nick Harauz, and through one on one discussions with creative industry professionals, we aim to provide practical knowledge and insights, shedding light on the discipline, tools and techniques that bring work to life.

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Now, if you're unfamiliar with Boris FX we’re a leading developer of video editing, motion graphics and visual effects plugins and software used in film, television and video production.

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In this episode, we're joined by Chris Do, an influential figure of the design community and founder of The Futur, an educational platform that empowers creative professionals with business skills.

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We invite you to join our community by subscribing to the podcast, and to continue the conversation on our YouTube page, where you'll find additional content, including episode highlights.

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Thank you for tuning in to Boris FX’s Flow State.

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Let's explore the art and science behind the creative industry together.

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Chris, thanks so much for joining me.

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on this podcast, Flow State, and I'm so excited to catch up with you, as well as pick your brain.

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How you been, man?

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I've been great, Nick.

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Good talking to you again.

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Okay. Good talking to you, too.

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So I wanted to just dive in straight to a question.

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what is it that you think creativity means?

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Oh, crave.

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Creativity is the ability to come up with, innovative solutions to go from the way things are to the way things should be.

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And we can do that in a number of different ways.

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It's the ability for someone to imagine something that doesn't yet exist.

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to be able to connect disparate ideas in a new novel and useful way.

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I love how how you distill that down to, a really useful sentence, too.

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And how often do you find yourself, leveraging creativity or finding creativity in your work?

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I think, the minute that you sit down and you connect two things that no one had seen before, even in writing, I think that's creative.

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So I'm I think every day, every moment of my life is a creative moment or an opportunity for creative moment.

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Now, when you try to set up a space to be creative, do you find that there are certain types of day that you can leverage or tap more into creativity?

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Do you find that it could be space related, or is it just a question of of being open?

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I think certain habits and routines and environments are more conducive to creativity, and it's not what you think.

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first, I'll just say that the times I'm most creative is when I'm absolutely bored out of my mind, when I've had too much sleep and have nothing to do except for to exist.

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And in those moments, my mind is most fertile, and it's able to make those connections because I believe there's this connection between the active learning brain and the archival brain.

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Just to break it down.

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So the active learning brain is the one that you and I are using literally right now.

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We're taking input.

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We're trying to respond to things and we're recording.

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The archival brain is usually our subconscious brain that's assembling everything that we've learned during that day when we're sleeping, and connecting to everything we've ever learned in our entire life.

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Even when we're pre language.

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And so oftentimes when we're in a dream where it doesn't make any sense because it's sorting out what you've learned today, but in relative to your your entire history.

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It's smashing things together.

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And so I find that when we're bored we're using less of our active brain.

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What people would often referred to as the 10% that we're able to access and in given time, and we're tapping into that 90% that is available to us for those who know how to dip in and out.

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Some people do this through meditation, some people do it through.

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Psychoactive drugs.

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And some people do it just by being bored and being silent.

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when it comes to boredom, do you actually seek that out?

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And could you even pinpoint to me some time in like the last week, a moment of boredom or stillness and how that ended up of allowing you to mash a couple of different things together in a unique, perspective you might have not even thought had a connection. Yes.

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I mean, all of us have moments of boredom.

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And I'll tell you the little moments, I'll tell you the big moments, and I'll get really specific.

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If you're washing the dishes or you're vacuuming the house, that's the moment where you're not really using your active brain because you've done it so many times.

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You're in an autonomic state.

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You're doing things without a lot of mental focus and concentration.

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When you're taking a shower, when you're washing your car.

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These repetitive tasks put you in this trance state when you're slipping in between the conscious and subconscious mind.

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And it's a pretty cool space to be.

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That's why most people have those Eureka moments in the shower, or right when they wake up from from a good night's rest.

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And those moments are very precious because they're not stored in your long term memory.

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And so we think, oh, I'll remember that idea.

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I'll remember that clever expression or something.

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And you won't.

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And that's the trick.

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So for me, when I'm writing content, it's often that in that slip between the subconscious and conscious brain, between the active and the archival, that I have my best ideas.

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And so as soon as I have them, I repeat them like three times in my head.

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And then when I can get a piece of paper, I write and I'll tell my wife, my my longtime, you know, wife, we're all grown up on almost 30 years of marriage here.

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I'll say whenever you see me and it looks like I'm not here, please don't interrupt me.

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I'm actually doing something I'm processing.

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So oftentimes you'll see me say, oh, not, not now's not the time.

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Because almost always it's going to be something mundane that can be talked about later.

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I often volunteer to go to the Tesla charging station so we can use a supercharger because it's free to us, but because it's sitting in the car with nothing to do, just sitting there allows my mind to wander.

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And I always travel with a little notebook.

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I carry a little field notebook with me everywhere I go because that's where I jot my ideas down.

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Now here's the latest connection that I've been making.

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And I'm keep I keep rethinking this.

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So we're all aware of Abraham Maslow Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

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And it's a triangle.

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But I've asked most people like, what are all the stages in the triangle they can use to remember 1 or 2, but not all three?

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And I started to look at this and packet and started to find parallels between the brand ladder and also marketing tactics.

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And this Maslow's hierarchy of needs sits right in the middle.

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And it's really neat to be able to draw these connections that people haven't made before.

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And to be able to help them understand it in ways that they can apply it to their life and to their brand and to their marketing.

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a couple things came up for me when you were you were talking about taking notes.

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One was a book that I'm actually in the process of reading.

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It's called The Second Brain by Marco Forte.

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And the importance of taking notes and capturing that in and not only capturing that, but being able to draw on those notes quick enough at the right and given moment.

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And how that has sort of changed the way that I've been taking notes.

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I think the other thing that came up to me, just like this idea of boredom, feels almost like the opposite of how, corporate culture works.

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It's like you don't it doesn't encourage people to be bored.

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They're measured on on people taking action.

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So I'm, I'm wondering, do you find the same thing?

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have you heard of any case studies where people are now leveraging this idea of boredom or encouraging that from their employees in order to allow them to be more creative and come up with more solutions?

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I think the problem is, 21st century businesses have inherited a 20th century business model.

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In the Industrial Revolution turn of the century and what was happening is people are measured by productivity.

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And the best way to measure productivity is just by measuring your time, time and effort.

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So they think that the more hours you put in an office, the greater the product in.

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When it's an assembly line situation, when you when you're doing something doesn't require real skills or something, that's that is very repeatable. Yes.

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Put in the time and the results will be there.

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You can manufacture more tires or widgets because you have more people on the assembly line.

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You have fewer down days.

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But when we get into 21st century knowledge, a subset of that is creative work.

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You can't put people on the assembly line anymore.

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It's not a function of putting more hours in.

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We've all been there before.

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When you have to design something, when you have to come up with a cool edit or write a treatment for a pitch that you're doing.

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It doesn't matter if you stare at it for 400 hours or 40 hours.

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If you've not done the proper mental preparation, you won't be able to produce a good idea.

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And and that's why companies that are on the bleeding edge, the ones that are in the fortune 100 list, I think they've learned, incorporate how to take care of the human, the creative human, such that there's ample space for them to come up with game changing ideas.

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We think about companies like Google, who create pods and spaces for people to be quiet, to break away.

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We're moving away from having people to show up at an office and sit in a cubicle with decentralized office, for the most part, and we're allowing people more flexibility so that they can then be more autonomous and come up with those kinds of ideas.

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I really like that.

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And I'm speaking about these spaces.

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I wanted to focus, on video and motion graphic designers who usually, when putting together some forms of content, are sitting in front of a computer.

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in order to achieve their final task.

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I'm wondering from from the people that you work with when they put together, video editing content and motion graphics.

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what do you think the majority of video editors and motion graphics centers are doing wrong?

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And how can they leverage more creativity in their life in terms of being bored?

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especially in, let's say, if they're in a state where they feel that they are behind in producing given work or where anxiety might come up, to meet deadlines and catch up with the daily tasks that need to be done.

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And this answer is going to sound really counterintuitive in that I first of all, I don't know how editors, all editors work.

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I don't know how a handful of people work.

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So I'm gonna have to extrapolate here.

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You probably have a better beat on this.

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My theory is this is that, believe it or not, structure creates the space for you to be more creative.

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That chaos, the lack of rules and boundaries, creates too many options.

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And within those options, we get lost and go down different rabbit trails.

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So I think a lot of creatives, because I do know creative sources editors specifically, is that they think the the active creativity and imagination, this is wild, unbound thing.

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That's part magic and art, and it's not any part science.

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So they don't take any time to develop a process or system that is repeatable with predictable results.

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And so you give them a bunch of assets, they start working and they don't even know why they do what they do, mostly because they've never had to explain it to anyone else how to do what it is that they do.

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But if they sat back and used the the five rule, which is something that Doctor Samuel Holtzman from Artcenter taught me, which is what are the five big decisions that you're making such that by the end of those five decisions, you can end up with a pretty good product?

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And he asked me to reexamine how I taught motion design, and I started to say, okay, so we're looking at storyboards, we're looking at sequential design.

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And the old way was for me to walk in and say, I don't get this part.

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You should change this.

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And these three things aren't working for me.

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What is your intention?

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And if that is and you should do these things.

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So it puts all the expertise and knowledge into the structure of versus into the students.

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So the new way of doing is to ask myself, what are the five decisions?

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What am I looking for?

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Such that if I were to explain it to someone, they have a pretty good shot at understanding how I make decisions.

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So we said, okay, rule number one, is it clear?

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Because if I look at your sequence, it's not clear if there's no point for me to talk about anymore.

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So as they're working late night, they have to look at their sequence like, can I even understand what it is?

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And then they can start to self edit.

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Now you'll you're not surprised here.

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Motion designers tend to layer on more and more things because they're not confident that it's good.

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So they just put too many things on top of it that's so heavy, so dense with motion design.

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They don't even know what the point is.

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And so we mask our ability to communicate with just adding visual candy.

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So number two, if it's clear, is it boring or is it interesting.

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So if it's clear I can see what's going on.

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But it doesn't spark anything in me, then it's kind of clear and boring.

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So then we have all kinds of tools to make it more dramatic.

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What if we change the angle?

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What if we lit it differently?

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What if we really art directed the set like Wes Anderson does?

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How he frames everything and symmetry and the wardrobe in which he cast his characters in or just even his casting decisions are unusual and different.

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So we can just go down through all these five things, and then by the end of it, when someone's designed in sequence, like, okay, I kind of know what's going on here.

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from what I've seen through my own upbringing of, of teaching people in video editing, one of the things that I, I find that is a tool that needs to be taught in some of these books is just the ability to keep your sequence organized and how easily that can become overlooked when you're just learning the software In fact, speaking to some main video editors who cut feature films when they look for an assistant, the first thing they want is someone who is extremely organized and process driven.

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So that, like you said, Chris, when you look at a sequence, it makes sense.

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The track that a clip is on makes sense the color coding.

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And then there's also just a flow to it.

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it tells a story of itself without you even having to look at the, the visual or the frame that it represents.

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And I think that that can be a great tool, to help with the process and allow for more creativity flow throughout it.

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I wanted to go back for a second to your own process.

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and over the years, just seeing your impact.

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If if you notice there are any triggers in your own workflow, things that could, throw you off, kill from being 100%, whether that be creative or, when you're producing work, things that can throw you off, kill.

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I know exactly what it is, Nick, and that's something I suffer through until I get the ultimate assistant.

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This is going to be a problem.

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And I think the ultimate assistant one day will be like some kind of near intelligent eye.

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So we have assets and we have lots of assets.

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I probably have 100,000 assets.

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Images, pieces of topography, texture, things like that.

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And they're organized in the way that I thought in that moment.

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Sometimes I can't figure out my own brain.

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Right.

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Or it's like a bunch of assets I've downloaded, and they're called something with a number system, but I'm not I'm not able to find it.

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And so oftentimes I sit there and spend more creative energy and focus and finding the asset than actually using it.

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I think this goes back to structure and organization.

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And so for a summer, I had my young boy go in and do certain things to prep all the images and to relabel them.

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And when he did that for three days, it was working really well.

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But I still have 200,000 more images that somebody's got to go through and figure that out.

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So what was really exciting to me was a couple of years ago, Adobe started showing off the sensei technology where it's like, you kind of just tell it what you want and you'll go through all of your assets and kind of figure out, that's a cat, that's a dog.

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Those are two people. That's a portrait.

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And then just say, portrait man, old, Caucasian.

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And then they should just be able to pull them up for you and then identify lighting style, and it just starts to cool it down.

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I'm hoping that that time is coming really, really soon.

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And I believe it is. Yeah, I think that's great.

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I've seen some of this technology on the video front too.

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I believe ago this was like two years ago there was a beta and I'm, I can't remember the name, but you could upload a video clip and it would automatically tag that video clip and represent moments of not only, being able to give you a transcript, but identify if someone had a blue shirt, mentioned a blue shirt, you saw a blue shirt in a video clip.

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And just being able to sift through that content and find that exact moment is huge. Yes.

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Even looking at Adobe's technology right now inside of Premiere Pro, you've got these auto transcripts.

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I have a feeling that the next layer in that, as well as in Photoshop is this identification of multiple assets and being able to call that up.

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No problem.

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versus just the metadata that's entered in onto the photos, but literal visual cues that are, memorized by AI.

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Yeah.

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And, we've let the cat out of the bag.

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We're talking about AI right now, as a video editor, most of the tools that I use are AI algorithms that help make my life easier and automate it.

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But then I want to open up the discussion a bit to gen AI.

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So tools like Midjourney text to image prompts.

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recently OpenAI just released.

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Sorry, I'm sure you've heard that news about a week ago or now you're starting to see incredible video quality generated from a text prompt.

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Do you think that this is a threat to creatives jobs?

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It isn't. It isn't.

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any time a computer can do the work that's mundane or repetitive or something that's very labor intensive, I think it's a good thing because it frees us up to think about what it is I want to do, what is it I want to say versus how do I do that thing?

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The images that I saw coming from saw are mind blowing, because it seems like on one hand, we're still struggling with text to image, and now they've just leapfrogged in like text to video.

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And the amount of intelligence that's going into this where things are not shifting in, glitching out all the time, it's incredible to me.

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I don't know if these demos are 100% real, but my god, if they are, we're ushering in a new era where my my 20 year old son can write a script aided with AI, that it understands story formats and structures like it can tap into Joseph Campbell's Hero's journey.

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It can give him notes about like, what's working, what's not, what's unresolved or open plot points and open loops that have not been resolved.

00:18:05.875 --> 00:18:15.750
And then it can then help him generate text prompts so that soar or something of that equivalence can then create a video asset for him and recommend color palettes.

00:18:15.750 --> 00:18:28.750
So he gets a look and it's like, do I want to do a Quentin Tarantino grade on this, or do I want to do a Michael pay grade on it and then grade the film that way and then generate sound design and just assistance in doing everything that we want to do.

00:18:28.790 --> 00:18:34.415
it's not an exact parallel, but of look at it like pre-digital sensors and cameras.

00:18:34.415 --> 00:18:40.790
Photography was a pretty expensive hobby to acquire, and few people can be quote unquote professional at doing it.

00:18:41.250 --> 00:18:45.750
With the advent of the digital sensor, every single one of us can take pretty decent looking photos.

00:18:45.750 --> 00:18:48.665
We can learn a lot about composition, about lighting.

00:18:48.665 --> 00:18:56.708
So so people understand more about photography and about the exposure triangle than they ever did in the entirety of of human history in existence.

00:18:56.875 --> 00:18:58.333
Is that making better photographers?

00:18:58.333 --> 00:19:06.000
No, but at scale, they're probably elevating the visual esthetic of a lot of people, which is a beautiful thing.

00:19:06.415 --> 00:19:08.833
And so we're not mad at the digital sensor.

00:19:08.833 --> 00:19:13.165
We might be mad at people who don't know how to take a photo, and that's neither here nor there.

00:19:13.165 --> 00:19:18.708
So AI is is an enabler and an enhancer at a scale which we've not seen before.

00:19:19.165 --> 00:19:28.915
So the concern that a lot of people have is that people who don't know how to draw, don't know how to make things, will replace people who know how to draw, who know how to make things.

00:19:29.290 --> 00:19:31.083
And this becomes a problem.

00:19:31.083 --> 00:19:33.040
And I believe it is a problem.

00:19:33.040 --> 00:19:44.083
But I'm just sitting here telling you at the at the front of this that if we have no personal stake in this and we say, like, how would the future look like, well, the future looks like AI.

00:19:44.458 --> 00:19:46.750
And so then we have to re-engineer ourselves.

00:19:46.750 --> 00:19:53.208
So what it is that we're doing and the jobs that we're pursuing, such that we take advantage of the tools versus fighting the tools.

00:19:53.415 --> 00:20:06.583
I really like the parallel that you drew about a person who is drawing or a painter, and then now having someone be able to do that faster and better, who doesn't have that same amount of experience?

00:20:06.708 --> 00:20:15.208
I wanted to take a second with Gen AI and and talk about what are some of the opportunities that you see through embracing it.

00:20:15.540 --> 00:20:21.165
So let's let's for a second talk about painter or even let's talk about a graphic designer.

00:20:21.165 --> 00:20:29.790
Do you think someone who is incorporating gen AI into their work is going to be ahead of the game versus someone who is not adopting to these tools?

00:20:29.790 --> 00:20:32.790
I can say emphatically, unequivocally, yes.

00:20:32.915 --> 00:20:38.125
If you're not incorporating any tool, you're putting yourself at a disadvantage.

00:20:38.125 --> 00:20:41.290
You've decided I'm going to work slower and harder than I need to.

00:20:41.790 --> 00:20:46.250
So back when I was in school, a friend of mine told me about this software.

00:20:46.250 --> 00:20:48.875
It was called brainstorm or something like that.

00:20:48.875 --> 00:20:50.250
is an ideational tool.

00:20:50.250 --> 00:20:53.250
It came on a CD-Rom or floppy disk and can't remember.

00:20:53.250 --> 00:20:55.083
And we install it and it didn't mind mapping.

00:20:55.083 --> 00:20:58.083
It was branches, so it would connect you to words you didn't know.

00:20:58.375 --> 00:21:01.375
It would connect you to things in history and literature that you didn't know.

00:21:01.500 --> 00:21:06.333
So you go on these really interesting journeys and mind mapping, and I found it to be so awesome.

00:21:06.333 --> 00:21:08.790
This is not using modern technology.

00:21:08.790 --> 00:21:09.833
It's not even close to I.

00:21:09.833 --> 00:21:12.083
It's just nodes that map to other things.

00:21:12.083 --> 00:21:20.040
So if I typed in something like, a stranger Comes to Town, it might refer to different stories I've not read, and would go back in time.

00:21:20.040 --> 00:21:24.458
It was show me different things and I can explore all these things and become a smarter, more informed person.

00:21:24.458 --> 00:21:37.458
And I always thought, what an incredible asset to have, that if you're not using this, you're relying on one brain versus the brain of everybody that helped to develop the software and the archives in which I had access to.

00:21:37.583 --> 00:21:54.458
And so I could just get in the brainstorming process to say, okay, what images in Western culture in the last 30 years that were used in cinema, art and theater that conjure up terror and then removes upset blood and gore?

00:21:54.625 --> 00:22:02.125
And so then I'm like, okay, now I can have an informed palette to say, like, okay, I have my vision of what's horror, terror.

00:22:02.458 --> 00:22:08.165
And then it's showing me a lot broader spectrum of what people consider terrifying.

00:22:08.165 --> 00:22:26.290
And so I can look at them like, oh, shoot, this is take me down different branches and I can explore these things, and I could see the most innocent image and be sparked with a new idea to make those disparate connections that we talked about at the beginning of our conversation about being able to connect different things that most people don't see.

00:22:26.290 --> 00:22:27.958
Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

00:22:27.958 --> 00:22:45.165
And there's something about, I use Midjourney quite a bit, Chris, for a few different reasons, but as an ideation tool and one thing I noticed is and through the the text prompts that I enter through, discord is also a willingness to just study more about art history.

00:22:45.540 --> 00:23:04.083
So it's funny, like, it's amazing that you're able to explore all of these different art styles and then in some cases, mesh art styles together into brand new creations that you probably wouldn't have necessarily been able to do by just the old methods of ways of doing things.

00:23:04.083 --> 00:23:13.208
I also find myself doing this just in, ChatGPT, where I'll try to take on the perspective of someone where I'm not an expert in.

00:23:13.458 --> 00:23:29.458
So like going towards video editing or motion graphics, like tapping into how a doctor might few things, or how a scientist might view things, and having that perspective of of how to, potentially open up different ways of thinking that I wouldn't be able to otherwise.

00:23:29.790 --> 00:23:32.165
So as an ideation tool, I love it.

00:23:32.165 --> 00:23:32.458
Yeah.

00:23:32.458 --> 00:23:35.083
There's a couple things I'd love to reference here.

00:23:35.083 --> 00:23:46.125
I saw in my feed on social media recently where they were playing a rap from Dre and Eminem to the tune of the BG saying the live oh wow.

00:23:46.208 --> 00:23:47.290
And it was brilliant.

00:23:47.290 --> 00:23:50.833
And somebody is like, whoever did this mash up, they're genius.

00:23:51.250 --> 00:23:53.875
And so we and your expression wow.

00:23:53.875 --> 00:23:55.500
Because you're like, what does that sound like?

00:23:55.500 --> 00:23:58.750
Disco BGS and then hip hop.

00:23:58.750 --> 00:24:00.208
What is that that mashup.

00:24:00.208 --> 00:24:04.125
So that's where we live in that intersection where we call creativity.

00:24:04.958 --> 00:24:25.125
And so when you're talking about being able to imagine this art influence with something that doesn't even make sense, and seeing what the machine can smash together at a speed in which would take a really long time to explore, you know, because you and I have both had ideas at one point in our life, whether in school, in our profession or as an instructor.

00:24:25.375 --> 00:24:26.833
Like, I wonder what that would look like.

00:24:26.833 --> 00:24:29.000
I don't have the skills that's going to take too long for me to see.

00:24:29.000 --> 00:24:39.665
And so we don't pursue that where now, if we have the inclination that we we have a good enough reference of art history and architecture and photography and fashion, we can start to reference certain things.

00:24:39.833 --> 00:24:42.250
And that's where the real creative stuff is going to happen.

00:24:42.250 --> 00:24:53.290
We can bring those things together and create really interesting mashups, and to address the whole art thing, Midjourney has its challenges with where did source images from? Had it learned these things?

00:24:53.290 --> 00:24:54.790
There's a lot of questions.

00:24:54.790 --> 00:24:56.790
I think the jury's out.

00:24:54.790 --> 00:24:56.790
I feel okay with it.

00:24:56.790 --> 00:24:59.790
But I'm not saying I'm going to die on my grave saying that it's fine.

00:25:00.165 --> 00:25:16.790
However, there's a I think it's called Leonardo, where you say, cat at night with blue lighting and you draw something, a gesture, and then it starts to draw the cat for you, and then you don't like that you draw a different gesture or you, you put something in the background that kind of looks like a plant.

00:25:16.790 --> 00:25:19.375
And the next thing you know, there's a plant behind the cat.

00:25:19.375 --> 00:25:21.165
This is wild stuff.

00:25:21.165 --> 00:25:27.708
Now imagine, you're a concept artist and you're exploring, like a fantastical, creature from the Blue or Black Lagoon or something.

00:25:27.708 --> 00:25:35.458
And you want to create an amphibious man or something, and you're like, okay, amphibious man creature with the face of a lizard and a tail of an iguana.

00:25:35.458 --> 00:25:45.040
But the body of the human, you start sketching, you can create crazy poses, the tools that it empowers artists to generate something that we haven't seen before at a scale.

00:25:45.583 --> 00:25:46.833
Why are we fighting that?

00:25:46.833 --> 00:25:51.208
Yeah, and speaking of some of my favorite uses, this actually comes more towards photography.

00:25:51.208 --> 00:25:54.208
But, a lot of times I'll have to take photographs, right.

00:25:54.208 --> 00:25:57.208
Or take photographs and put them into a video piece.

00:25:57.208 --> 00:25:58.665
The video piece is 69.

00:25:58.665 --> 00:26:01.665
Most of the photographs are four by 6 or 9 by six.

00:26:01.958 --> 00:26:09.125
And now I can just go into Photoshop, use a crop tool and ask it to generate a 69 frame like that.

00:26:09.125 --> 00:26:11.625
And it looks seamless. It's amazing.

00:26:11.625 --> 00:26:23.665
And I have so much more leverage when I bring this into a video editor, because I don't have to do some sort of other trick to mask the fact that I'm bringing in an asset that doesn't mask the aspect ratio or dimensions of my sequence.

00:26:24.208 --> 00:26:28.000
and it just opens more opportunities, I think are incredible.

00:26:28.000 --> 00:26:35.083
And, mentioning Leonardo, I, seeing some of the ability to just draw squiggly figure of a man and then have a storyboard.

00:26:35.083 --> 00:26:41.375
It's just it's an incredible, way to ideating just how quickly you can come up with concepts now?

00:26:41.375 --> 00:26:43.540
Do you remember a main title sequence?

00:26:43.540 --> 00:26:48.958
Or maybe it's not even the main title sequence, but the way they treated this documentary film, I think it was called The Kid Stays in the picture.

00:26:48.958 --> 00:26:55.540
kids, they send a picture I think it was in the right time, right place where After Effects had this parallax camera where you can put things in Z space.

00:26:55.583 --> 00:27:02.333
It was kind of a lot of people were exploring z space animation, creating faux 3D, but it created a new form of art, I think.

00:27:02.625 --> 00:27:09.583
So they would take archival photographs and they would mask them out by hand, a very painful process, and rotoscope them out.

00:27:09.750 --> 00:27:17.540
And then they would paint parts in that were missing such that when the camera moved, we actually got to see what was behind the person or the pool or the plant.

00:27:17.915 --> 00:27:29.415
And it created this very strange thing where it felt like a super slow motion camera move, but off of archival images, as if we could breathe life into static archival images.

00:27:29.958 --> 00:27:36.915
Now, I love doing those kinds of effects, especially in the use of motion graphics, and people love seeing things that they could not see before.

00:27:37.250 --> 00:27:38.750
Pretty awesome.

00:27:38.750 --> 00:27:40.665
Super labor intensive.

00:27:40.665 --> 00:28:00.290
You have to have skilled artisans working on this, cutting things out now we have tools to automatically rotoscope things, and if there's some missing hand, use an eye and you just draw it and you're like, fix the hand and the hand is fixed, and then you cut that part out and you're like, well, where that person was missing mass that roughly and fill that part in and fill these parts in.

00:28:00.500 --> 00:28:07.583
And probably at some point this will just happen automatically for us. And we have tools that can extract, I don't know how they do it.

00:28:08.375 --> 00:28:15.833
Z depth map so that now we can like do selective lighting, selective blurring and all kinds of wonderful stuff.

00:28:16.500 --> 00:28:21.415
And we as artists, I think no one's crying like, I wish we could just rotoscope this thing.

00:28:21.415 --> 00:28:26.290
I wish we could just hand paint in hand clone stamp and warp mesh warp this thing back in Photoshop.

00:28:26.290 --> 00:28:27.915
Back in the good old days.

00:28:27.915 --> 00:28:29.083
Nobody wants that.

00:28:29.083 --> 00:28:39.333
So most artists that I know are excited about Gen Fill and Z extraction and and painting in all these things, it's because we see the utility and how it'll help us.

00:28:39.458 --> 00:28:51.665
So we're like that camp seems to be okay, but all these things where it's like someone can just type in words, generate video or VFX or photos, they're scared of that because they're not looking at that as a tool to enhance what they're doing.

00:28:51.665 --> 00:28:54.208
They're looking at instead of a replacement for what they're doing.

00:28:54.208 --> 00:28:55.415
And that's the key difference.

00:28:55.415 --> 00:29:05.165
So it's the optics and how you frame it that might that might determine your future in terms of like your emotional state such that you can brace the tools or you can just ignore them.

00:29:05.165 --> 00:29:08.083
it's very serendipitous what you're just broke down.

00:29:08.083 --> 00:29:13.458
When you were talking about rotoscoping, I'm revisiting a tutorial I did this ages ago.

00:29:13.458 --> 00:29:18.625
I, about 12 years ago edited a Johnny Cash documentary called My Father and the Man in Black.

00:29:18.625 --> 00:29:23.333
And the director, at the time reference, the kid stays in the picture.

00:29:23.540 --> 00:29:30.790
And I was like, I want all the independent motion graphic artists to watch this film because I would like photo treatments just like this.

00:29:30.790 --> 00:29:38.000
And it took them about 3 or 4 days of photo on average to, first of all, the photos were on prints.

00:29:38.000 --> 00:29:41.708
They had to scan the photos in order for 4K 8-K plates.

00:29:42.290 --> 00:29:50.790
They then took them, brought them into Photoshop, select the subject painfully, then have to manually with the clone tool step by step.

00:29:50.790 --> 00:29:52.665
Just clone everything in.

00:29:52.665 --> 00:30:00.250
I took these photos, Chris, and I use that new generative fill bar right to select a subject.

00:30:00.250 --> 00:30:03.000
All of a sudden I had three subjects selected.

00:30:03.000 --> 00:30:04.415
Pretty much perfect.

00:30:04.415 --> 00:30:08.290
I just had to select the Magic Wand tool for one brush, stroke select and mask.

00:30:08.290 --> 00:30:17.750
Wow. I have my cutouts and just like you said, then took a marquee tool, added that area where they were cut out from and it cloned out the background almost perfectly.

00:30:17.750 --> 00:30:23.333
The amount of time it took me 20 minutes to make these cutouts bring them into After Effects.

00:30:23.333 --> 00:30:26.333
Then I ran a script for this treatment.

00:30:26.333 --> 00:30:38.540
I didn't do anything with the Z blur depth maps and then added a bunch of effects, and that cost of three days is now pretty much at the hands of someone who knows these tools to be within a few hours.

00:30:38.708 --> 00:30:40.833
I did want to go towards though.

00:30:40.833 --> 00:30:59.250
I think you you said something that brought up another question for me and which is on the lines of the people who are feeling threatened right now, or the way that they are framing these AI tools how would you recommend that they try to switch that frame Do you think that that this is something that can be easily done?

00:30:59.250 --> 00:31:04.500
I think the first thing is if we say if we complained about enough or things change.

00:31:04.833 --> 00:31:06.665
And the answer is probably not likely.

00:31:06.665 --> 00:31:08.375
It's very hard to put the genie back in the bottle.

00:31:08.375 --> 00:31:19.500
So if we accept the inevitable, which is AI tools to enhance creativity and hopefully human existence before we're destroyed by it, say, okay, if that's the inevitable future, what am I doing about it?

00:31:19.500 --> 00:31:24.915
How can I be part of the largest, economic, shift that's happened in human history?

00:31:24.915 --> 00:31:26.540
What am I going to be doing?

00:31:26.540 --> 00:31:31.165
So when I get up on stage and I talk to people about AI, people are very scared and skeptical.

00:31:31.165 --> 00:31:39.208
I say to yourself, I want you to imagine this moment in your life 30 years from now, when your child is old enough to ask you this question.

00:31:39.583 --> 00:31:48.083
So back in the gold rush of AI, when they're making millionaires and billionaires overnight, grandpa and grandma or mom and dad, where were you and what did you do?

00:31:48.083 --> 00:31:49.708
And why are we still poor?

00:31:49.708 --> 00:31:53.958
I want you to think about that for a little bit, and I'll give you a personal example.

00:31:51.790 --> 00:31:53.958
Okay.

00:31:53.958 --> 00:31:57.583
So in the early, I guess mid 90s, I didn't understand what the internet was.

00:31:57.583 --> 00:32:03.333
It was just a thing I asked my brother about it, and then he started to explain to me what was happening.

00:32:03.333 --> 00:32:05.000
This is web 1.0.

00:32:05.000 --> 00:32:08.708
And he on several occasions called me up and told me to do certain things.

00:32:08.958 --> 00:32:15.583
He said, you know what, if you can think of some useful domain names, we should just register them because they'll be worth money.

00:32:15.583 --> 00:32:17.833
I'm like, what's that going to be worth?

00:32:17.833 --> 00:32:18.790
That's stupid.

00:32:18.790 --> 00:32:20.415
What a dumb idea.

00:32:20.415 --> 00:32:22.458
We now know the answer to that question.

00:32:22.458 --> 00:32:24.125
Then he said, there's this company called eBay.

00:32:24.125 --> 00:32:26.833
It's kind of like auctioning butt online.

00:32:26.833 --> 00:32:29.750
It'll be worth something.

00:32:26.833 --> 00:32:29.750
You should buy stock in that company.

00:32:29.750 --> 00:32:34.958
Then he told me about this book store that they had lots of books online called Amazon.

00:32:34.958 --> 00:32:36.750
Like, now that's I can go anywhere.

00:32:36.750 --> 00:32:42.750
So time and time again, technology creates opportunities for those who can take advantage of it.

00:32:43.040 --> 00:32:53.665
So I'm telling you, don't be Chris circa 1995 or early 2000, be the Chris today, which is when you see that opportunity, don't be driven by your fear.

00:32:54.208 --> 00:32:57.000
Think about how it can enhance the things that you love.

00:32:57.000 --> 00:32:59.665
Be motivated by that. Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

00:32:59.665 --> 00:33:17.625
And I think that there's also something to be open to, at least trying and experimenting with these tools to to see where they might have a place in your workflow I wanted to take a little bit of a detour right now, asking like a series of quick, rapid fire questions.

00:33:17.915 --> 00:33:20.915
So there aren't, like, too many rules around this.

00:33:21.165 --> 00:33:24.165
You just have to have your answer within a minute or so.

00:33:24.665 --> 00:33:28.583
my first question is to name a recent experiment gone wrong.

00:33:28.790 --> 00:33:32.000
the launching of our our coaching group called the Brand Lab.

00:33:32.000 --> 00:33:40.458
We tried to first create it for creatives and teach them more business skills and it was launched at a $36,000 annual price.

00:33:41.040 --> 00:33:52.415
And that was not a good thing, because we're like trying to sell a higher ticket thing to people we already serving who are struggling to pay us the $250 a month, let alone the $3,000 price tag.

00:33:52.750 --> 00:33:54.625
So that was an experiment that failed.

00:33:54.625 --> 00:34:00.665
But we we pivoted and we started to understand this was actually for business people who wanted to learn about creativity.

00:34:00.708 --> 00:34:04.625
I love the fact that you pivoted there at the end and are learning from those experiments.

00:34:04.625 --> 00:34:07.790
my next question, favorite song in the last week?

00:34:07.958 --> 00:34:10.750
Oh my God. The favorite song? Question.

00:34:10.750 --> 00:34:13.750
I'm enjoying the soundtrack from From Dune.

00:34:14.000 --> 00:34:19.333
So it's not a new song, but I love listening to it and I'm just eagerly anticipating Dune two.

00:34:19.333 --> 00:34:25.500
So they release one new track from the album, and I just can't wait to get my hands on the rest of it.

00:34:25.541 --> 00:34:26.833
Okay, I'm gonna have to check that out.

00:34:26.833 --> 00:34:28.416
I'm a big Jim fan myself. Actually.

00:34:28.416 --> 00:34:30.208
I can't wait for part two with yeah.

00:34:30.208 --> 00:34:32.625
Oh my God, the delayed. The release is killing me.

00:34:32.625 --> 00:34:37.166
most surprised film or TV show in the last two months?

00:34:37.375 --> 00:34:49.333
I really loved, Poor Things with Emma Stone, I didn't know what to expect, but it's a beautiful, surreal film, and it reminds me of so many different genres that I love.

00:34:49.333 --> 00:34:50.541
put together.

00:34:50.541 --> 00:34:53.000
for those that are going to watch it, don't watch it with their kids.

00:34:53.000 --> 00:34:54.916
It's rated R for good reason.

00:34:54.916 --> 00:35:01.541
But it was a beautiful story, about understanding like societal demands on us and how we fit or not fit into that.

00:35:01.541 --> 00:35:04.416
And it raises that question and it tells it very poetically.

00:35:04.416 --> 00:35:07.625
it's been on my watch list for a little while now, So good.

00:35:07.666 --> 00:35:11.541
Name something that the internet has wrong about you.

00:35:11.666 --> 00:35:14.666
Usually my age, it runs the spectrum.

00:35:14.916 --> 00:35:18.833
So I've decided to finally just come clean and let people know what my age is.

00:35:19.250 --> 00:35:25.125
I've been pretty private of it, mostly because I just like creating a little bit of mystery, not because I care how old people think I am.

00:35:25.541 --> 00:35:27.333
So I'm 52 years old this year.

00:35:27.333 --> 00:35:30.958
And so you see the spectrum of like 36 to like 50 something. So.

00:35:31.125 --> 00:35:32.208
Gotcha.

00:35:32.208 --> 00:35:38.208
And last question, what's a hobby that you have that most people don't know about?

00:35:38.208 --> 00:35:40.750
probably fishing I love fishing.

00:35:40.750 --> 00:35:43.250
I'm an angler and I've love fishing most of my life.

00:35:43.250 --> 00:35:45.208
I'm an outdoorsy kind of person.

00:35:45.208 --> 00:35:48.791
I like the idea of backpacking and living off grid, even though I don't do anything like that.

00:35:48.791 --> 00:35:50.208
I'm too pricey for that.

00:35:50.208 --> 00:35:58.541
But I really look forward to my semiannual trip where we go off the coast of Canada and we spend our time on the water for like 4 or 5 days.

00:35:59.208 --> 00:36:00.333
Oh that's great. Where are you?

00:36:00.333 --> 00:36:03.208
Is it West Coast where you're in?

00:36:00.333 --> 00:36:03.208
Yeah. When you go.

00:36:03.208 --> 00:36:04.625
Like I pass.

00:36:04.625 --> 00:36:05.000
Compass.

00:36:05.000 --> 00:36:12.000
Okay, They also overestimate my net worth because my little nieces are come up to me like Uncle Chris, your worth is mine.

00:36:12.083 --> 00:36:12.541
Much mine.

00:36:12.541 --> 00:36:14.583
I'm like, no I'm not. Don't believe everything you read on the internet.

00:36:14.583 --> 00:36:30.916
a couple last questions, if you were to go back in a time portal about three years in the, in the past, and you had a chance to sit down with yourself then and offer two pieces of advice, what would it be and why?

00:36:31.125 --> 00:36:34.916
Okay, so 2021 we're still in the pandemic, right?

00:36:34.916 --> 00:36:38.458
We haven't been able to travel, so it's a pretty dark time.

00:36:38.750 --> 00:36:44.125
But there's also a time of like a lot of interest in learning because people are like cooped up in their place.

00:36:44.125 --> 00:36:51.583
We saw the largest growth spurt happened in that period on YouTube and also through this app that's not really relevant anymore called clubhouse.

00:36:51.708 --> 00:36:59.666
So the advice I would give myself is in that time in which there was peak interest and people are trapped, I could have taken more advantage of it.

00:36:59.666 --> 00:37:02.666
I could have grown our channel to like 4 million viewers.

00:37:02.666 --> 00:37:03.625
If I were serious.

00:37:03.625 --> 00:37:08.791
On creating short form content, because YouTube was really pushing that to everybody.

00:37:08.791 --> 00:37:19.583
We had our largest growth, like we grew by 7 or 800,000 people in just a few months, which took us years to get to, and the relationships that I built on clubhouse well, to happen are happening.

00:37:20.166 --> 00:37:22.166
platform I still have to this day.

00:37:22.166 --> 00:37:30.458
So again, doing more of what works, what gave me joy just putting in the reps at that moment in time so that today would be in a slightly different position.

00:37:30.583 --> 00:37:36.833
my final question is for you actually are around action when it comes to creativity.

00:37:36.833 --> 00:37:40.291
this idea of writer's block or being stuck creatively.

00:37:40.541 --> 00:37:43.625
My question is, do you believe in that concept?

00:37:43.625 --> 00:37:48.125
Do you believe there is such a thing as writer's block or being creatively stuck?

00:37:48.291 --> 00:37:50.083
I believe in the symptoms of it.

00:37:50.083 --> 00:37:52.791
I just don't believe that's the source of the problem.

00:37:52.791 --> 00:37:55.250
I think it's a symptom of several different things.

00:37:55.250 --> 00:37:58.666
Oftentimes we will say writer's block because they're putting off.

00:37:58.666 --> 00:38:05.041
So it's a procrastination strategy or it's a mislabeled perfectionism syndrome.

00:38:05.333 --> 00:38:06.416
So they're very similar.

00:38:06.416 --> 00:38:08.916
Perfectionism and procrastination are very similar.

00:38:08.916 --> 00:38:11.500
They manifest themselves in inaction.

00:38:11.500 --> 00:38:28.041
Now, the part that we talked about that we can kind of weave together as part of our conversation, is if you have writer's block or creative block, it's probably because you've given yourself no time to rest, no time to be bored, no time to synthesize and process the many different things that you're doing.

00:38:28.041 --> 00:38:30.291
And that's why people say, I'm just burnt out.

00:38:30.291 --> 00:38:38.625
Because when you're working 16, 17 hours a day, day in and out for weeks at a time, and you're not a young person anymore, it's not long term sustainable.

00:38:39.083 --> 00:38:46.458
And I think there is something like, you can rev the engine to hot such that you destroy the engine.

00:38:46.791 --> 00:39:02.041
Now, I have a friend still alive, but he was one of the most creative animators I knew, working in the motion design industry and the way he saw things, because he was a musician and he did a few drugs here and there, but the way he could see things and translate them into motion, I have yet to see anybody be able to do that.

00:39:02.041 --> 00:39:07.708
And I thought, this person is going to be a superstar in the annals of motion design history.

00:39:08.041 --> 00:39:13.125
He went to work for a place I won't name their name, but they just ground people to death.

00:39:10.541 --> 00:39:13.125
They just brought people in.

00:39:13.125 --> 00:39:14.541
They sucked their life out of it.

00:39:14.541 --> 00:39:19.416
They worked Saturdays and Sundays, and a few years later, he was definitely overweight.

00:39:19.625 --> 00:39:24.875
He looked like he was hollow, like I'm talking to him, but I don't know if he's all there.

00:39:24.875 --> 00:39:27.708
And his creative output was vastly diminished.

00:39:27.708 --> 00:39:30.666
He was still that curious person that had that spark.

00:39:30.666 --> 00:39:37.583
But I can just say like, he lost the edge and and I've seen it happen to so many creative people.

00:39:38.166 --> 00:39:39.833
A knife keeps its edge.

00:39:39.833 --> 00:39:43.958
If you take care of it, but if you abuse it, it will chip, it will break and it'll become dull.

00:39:44.041 --> 00:39:45.875
And that's how your mind is.

00:39:45.875 --> 00:39:49.541
Second symptom is if you run into creative block, maybe you've had rest.

00:39:49.875 --> 00:39:52.416
Maybe you're not burned down, you're working normal hours.

00:39:52.416 --> 00:39:56.125
I believe you're stuck because you don't have an understanding of the problem.

00:39:56.291 --> 00:39:57.958
So you're given a brief that's not clear.

00:39:57.958 --> 00:40:01.250
So it's not with the proper constraints in it.

00:40:01.416 --> 00:40:02.583
Not enough structure.

00:40:02.583 --> 00:40:06.541
So your, your, your mind is left to like go bananas and you're in chaos.

00:40:07.083 --> 00:40:09.750
Or number two, you have understanding the problem.

00:40:09.750 --> 00:40:11.583
But you're not done enough research.

00:40:11.583 --> 00:40:16.333
You don't have enough perspective on this to be able to give it a meaningful answer.

00:40:16.666 --> 00:40:21.583
So the brief is clear, but you don't understand the components so that the creativity can't happen.

00:40:21.875 --> 00:40:27.291
Your archival brain can go to work when you haven't thought about the problem deeply enough.

00:40:27.291 --> 00:40:31.750
along those lines, I can get that idea two perspectives shared there about writer's block.

00:40:31.750 --> 00:40:39.791
I wanted to of shift towards this idea of of completion of projects, how can people rebalance themselves?

00:40:39.916 --> 00:40:53.958
in order to allow themselves these moments to be bored, how What do you think are some great tactics in these situations which some cultures could allow for burnout, for people to try to recapture themselves and actually become more valuable on their own creative processes?

00:40:54.666 --> 00:40:59.833
if you're hit in a place where you feel like you're empty and you're burnt out, there are things that you can do.

00:40:59.833 --> 00:41:05.958
Number one, I would suggest that you go cold turkey and just do a detox, a creative detox and say, you know what?

00:41:05.958 --> 00:41:08.041
I'm taking a sabbatical. Leave of absence.

00:41:08.041 --> 00:41:10.916
I need to go on a four week vacation. Please don't anybody call me.

00:41:10.916 --> 00:41:15.583
And then honor that yourself by not checking emails, by just unplugging.

00:41:16.000 --> 00:41:20.083
And if you have a lot of self-control and will, then you can just do it.

00:41:20.083 --> 00:41:34.500
But otherwise go to the desert where there's no cell phone technology and you are not allowed to bring any batteries just so that you can reconnect with nature, like put your feet, your bare feet on the earth and just be comfortable in the silence and not being able to do anything.

00:41:34.750 --> 00:41:36.250
Don't bring a lot of work with you.

00:41:36.250 --> 00:41:38.708
Don't bring books or journals or anything like that.

00:41:38.708 --> 00:41:52.833
Just sit there for 3 or 4 days, not able to do anything, but just to be with your own thoughts, perhaps even take a vow of silence because you want to do the exact opposite of everything you were doing to kind of shock the system and hit reset if you can.

00:41:52.833 --> 00:42:06.333
If you can afford it in your place where you can do this, I would suggest you travel afterwards to take in different cultures to experience different things food, customs, clothing, temperature, environment, all those kinds of things.

00:42:06.333 --> 00:42:08.916
Just to say like, you know, the world is a lot bigger than we think.

00:42:08.916 --> 00:42:11.916
And we've just been exposed to a very small part.

00:42:12.000 --> 00:42:26.250
Two, the recipe that's worked for me in the past when I felt like, oh gosh, I have nothing left to give, is to go and volunteer to teach somewhere, give a lecture, run a workshop, or be committed to a seven week course somewhere, at a community college, at a private art school near you.

00:42:26.583 --> 00:42:30.541
And what will happen is you'll learn so much about your creativity, your thought process.

00:42:30.541 --> 00:42:32.125
You have to develop systems.

00:42:32.125 --> 00:42:36.333
But the thing that you'll realize is, you know, a lot of things.

00:42:36.750 --> 00:42:48.250
So when you're put in front of hungry minds that are asking you very curious questions, it gives you an opportunity to know who the heck you are and to be seen through the eyes of people who can truly appreciate you for who you are.

00:42:48.791 --> 00:42:56.583
And the last one is to be around people, around the right kinds of people that can, that can start to fire off those neurons that have been dormant.

00:42:56.833 --> 00:43:02.583
Because oftentimes when we work as a motion designer or as an editor, we're working in isolation.

00:43:02.583 --> 00:43:08.166
So if we get out and we meet interesting people, they share with us glimpses of their world and what they're working on.

00:43:08.333 --> 00:43:11.166
And whenever I do this, it really excites me.

00:43:11.166 --> 00:43:18.583
I get to tell people I get paid a lot of money to sit around and have conversations with interesting people, and from that I get to share that information.

00:43:18.750 --> 00:43:24.708
And so when I talk to anybody who's not remotely connected to any of our content, they're like, wow, you have an answer for everything.

00:43:24.708 --> 00:43:28.625
You know, somebody that's doing something because I'm led by my curiosity.

00:43:29.125 --> 00:43:30.291
it really resonated with me.

00:43:30.291 --> 00:43:32.625
specifically the sabbatical, if you can take it.

00:43:32.625 --> 00:43:44.583
There was a TedTalk that I saw, from Stefan Sagmeister, who was a, a graphic designer out of New York who talked about the benefits of a sabbatical and how that could really reignite creativity.

00:43:44.791 --> 00:44:03.083
And what I really loved about that TEDx talk is that you can see how his work was sort of getting very similar, because of burnout and how his time away from that, changed his perspective and, almost reinvigorated a creative spark, in his work allowed him to think differently.

00:44:03.583 --> 00:44:13.833
So just a huge fan of that and just how powerful it can be just to get up and away from your desk and surround yourself with good people if you have it around you and how important that is.

00:44:13.833 --> 00:44:15.166
So thank you for sharing that.

00:44:15.166 --> 00:44:15.625
My pleasure.

00:44:15.625 --> 00:44:18.083
I know exactly the TedTalk that you're referring to.

00:44:18.083 --> 00:44:28.291
I'm curious, when I see video editors who are working on personal projects, they tend to hold onto it longer than it needs to be held before releasing it.

00:44:28.916 --> 00:44:37.583
So I'm wondering if there if you like the idea of what some refer to as good enough, and then sort of figuring out when to release a project.

00:44:38.291 --> 00:44:47.500
is good enough, good enough, I have great admiration for craft for people who have put in their 10,000 hours, who can do something really well almost effortlessly.

00:44:47.500 --> 00:44:57.666
And if you look at videos on the internet, the videos that were people who are doing the most mundane things, who do it so well autonomously, we were just blown away.

00:44:57.666 --> 00:45:02.458
Like the guys who throw bricks up to the guy on the roof, he just catches them and he's just like, they're just doing that.

00:45:02.458 --> 00:45:08.458
Or the five guys who are driving a spike into the ground and they're just working in unison.

00:45:06.166 --> 00:45:08.458
There's a rhythm to it.

00:45:08.458 --> 00:45:09.583
They're so beautiful.

00:45:09.583 --> 00:45:16.083
Or the guy in India or Pakistan where he's holding the pizza box that just holds them, throws him back, and they just keep landing.

00:45:16.083 --> 00:45:17.875
It's a beautiful thing to watch.

00:45:17.875 --> 00:45:19.833
Now that comes through repetition.

00:45:19.833 --> 00:45:23.541
And I think repetition is the the mother of skill right.

00:45:23.958 --> 00:45:26.583
But how do we get those reps in.

00:45:26.583 --> 00:45:34.500
So we create a motion piece or an editing or an edit of a film or a short film that we're making and we don't release that thing.

00:45:34.750 --> 00:45:37.750
We're not putting in the reps because it's not the repetition there.

00:45:37.916 --> 00:45:42.208
And we're not getting what is necessary for most creative people, which is feedback.

00:45:42.208 --> 00:45:47.583
Not to say, look, we are soliciting opinions from people, but it's like we have an idea in our mind.

00:45:47.958 --> 00:45:50.083
There's a story arc, we want you to feel something.

00:45:50.083 --> 00:45:55.500
And until we see people feel or not feel what it is that we intended, we can't make that adjustment.

00:45:56.250 --> 00:45:57.333
We think it's super clear.

00:45:57.333 --> 00:46:01.833
It's like I set up these three shots to create this feeling and we're like, it's genius, this is perfect.

00:46:01.833 --> 00:46:04.041
And then we show it to somebody. It's no reaction.

00:46:04.041 --> 00:46:12.416
I think this is why directors do screeners, so they can see how the crowd reacts, so they can decide what to do, not to be told what to do, but they can decide.

00:46:12.416 --> 00:46:15.833
So I'm a big believer and this is going to make a lot of people upset.

00:46:16.000 --> 00:46:25.916
I choose quantity over quality because through quantity you get to quality that there is no miracle step, that you can't just jump from zero and become a hero.

00:46:25.958 --> 00:46:31.833
Everybody starts out as an amateur or as Chris says, everyone is a schmuck at a point in their life.

00:46:31.833 --> 00:46:41.416
Everyone's a loser, but they put in their reps and they start to get that necessary feedback and the muscle memory that you need to be really good at what you do.

00:46:41.916 --> 00:46:45.000
the feedback thing is actually something that I'm working on this year.

00:46:45.583 --> 00:46:49.916
one of the things is trying to get feedback earlier from my colleagues.

00:46:50.208 --> 00:47:06.500
So I really appreciate you sharing that, because the one thing is just to even show people a segment of a sequence versus like an entirely finished sequence, as in, could allow for more variations or also more experimentation in certain sections Yeah, I want to throw this out.

00:47:06.583 --> 00:47:10.708
If you go back and look at your biography and you look at all the work that you've done.

00:47:10.708 --> 00:47:17.208
every moment in that moment in your life when you were in present, you thought that was the best work you could do.

00:47:17.208 --> 00:47:19.041
in 2000, you thought that was the best work.

00:47:19.041 --> 00:47:21.916
And then 2005.

00:47:19.041 --> 00:47:21.916
Yeah. No, that's my best work.

00:47:21.916 --> 00:47:28.750
And so even the measure of best or perfection changes because we're we're growing and we're changing. We're evolving.

00:47:28.750 --> 00:47:30.750
At least we have the opportunity to.

00:47:30.750 --> 00:47:34.333
So when we look back at that work, this why many creatives like oh, they cringe.

00:47:34.333 --> 00:47:41.458
Or when they look at their old work, but you thought at one point that was perfect and it's not now it makes you cringe, like, why do I choose those colors in those typefaces?

00:47:41.458 --> 00:47:42.583
Why did I make that edit that way?

00:47:42.583 --> 00:47:45.416
It's so, so cringe for me.

00:47:45.416 --> 00:47:52.208
So we say like, every point in the future, you're going to look back at your old body of work and say, it's pretty nasty, why don't we just embrace that?

00:47:52.625 --> 00:48:00.416
And if we can just put in more reps, we're going to learn faster and we're going to get that higher state, even though it'll be imperfect quicker.

00:48:01.083 --> 00:48:04.958
And I've learned that after releasing a thousand videos plus on YouTube.

00:48:05.250 --> 00:48:06.958
I don't even care.

00:48:06.958 --> 00:48:09.250
I'm just going to make it.

00:48:06.958 --> 00:48:09.250
It's not going to be perfect.

00:48:09.250 --> 00:48:11.833
There's going to be weird parts.

00:48:09.250 --> 00:48:11.833
And I wish you didn't say it this way.

00:48:11.833 --> 00:48:18.875
I wish I didn't stammer or I wish I could remember the exact story or remember the person's name the way I had recalled it originally.

00:48:19.000 --> 00:48:20.250
But such is life.

00:48:20.250 --> 00:48:22.958
The audience grows more opportunities to share the story.

00:48:22.958 --> 00:48:26.916
And then I get better every time I tell the story, and then I find new stories to tell.

00:48:27.625 --> 00:48:30.000
Those are open loops that we want to be exploring, I think.

00:48:30.000 --> 00:48:40.291
if if I were to give myself that question that I gave you earlier, which is to sit down and talk to my younger self, these would be projects that didn't live up to my expectation because of imposter syndrome that I had going on.

00:48:40.291 --> 00:48:50.250
I would tell myself to get over that quicker and say that this is part of the process, to jump back into other creative endeavors.

00:48:50.333 --> 00:49:03.833
So I think it's just awesome advice, and I really wanted to thank you so much for sitting down with me and chatting in this, this podcast to me, just to be able to have like great conversations with people about creativity in their process.

00:49:03.833 --> 00:49:14.041
I just, I, I myself learned so much, and I'm also just excited for the people who are going to be listening to this, to engage in this conversation and what it might do for their own creativity.

00:49:14.041 --> 00:49:19.125
So, Chris, thank you so much for taking the time to to sit and and chat with me and all of the viewers here.

00:49:19.125 --> 00:49:21.166
Thank you. Nick.

00:49:19.125 --> 00:49:21.166
I love having the conversation.

00:49:21.166 --> 00:49:35.750
I think, yes, really smart questions and good follow up questions, but also for the two of us just geek out on filming the industry that has served you and had served me for some time, so it's just awesome to do thank you so much and hopefully we'll get to catch up sooner rather than later.

00:49:35.750 --> 00:49:38.083
Next time.

00:49:35.750 --> 00:49:38.083
I guess I'll probably see you at NAB.

00:49:38.083 --> 00:49:41.000
Yeah, I'll see you at NAB and hopefully I don't know if you're an outdoors person.

00:49:41.000 --> 00:49:43.541
I'd love to see you on the water sometime.

00:49:43.541 --> 00:49:44.583
Oh yes.

00:49:44.583 --> 00:49:48.166
Well, you have to keep me posted with, with your next fishing trip up in Canada.

00:49:48.291 --> 00:49:50.000
Thanks, man. Thank you.