5 Creative Habits for Filmmakers

It's Thursday and we're back with another filmmaking article. This week we are going to about creativity which is such an essential part of being a filmmaker. The way you present your characters, the way you tell the story, and the shots you use that amplify your film. To get such things done we need to be creative. This article is inspired by Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit.

Creativity, like any job, is a daily grind. Salesmen don’t wait for inspiration to make a sale. Surgeons don’t wait for lightning-bolt revelations to make their first incision. And the same goes for those of us who do creative work. Whether it’s our full-time job or our side passion, creativity is best practiced every day.

The problem, though, is that some creative disciplines lend themselves to daily habits better than others. A writer can get up every morning and tap away at his manuscript. A painter can paint every afternoon. But what is a filmmaker supposed to do every day to improve her craft? Filmmaking is such a macroscopic process. It takes years to finish a film. It takes writing, casting, financing, producing, editing — the list goes on. What exactly does it mean to practice filmmaking?

It’s not an easy question, because the answer tends to be different from person to person. But what we do know is that implementing a daily creative routine — a creative habit — into your life will not only keep your filmmaking mind sharp, but it will ease many of the creative stresses that can so easily shut us down as filmmakers. So, here are 5 habits that will help your creative process.

1. SPEND TIME ALONE

Being alone with your thoughts is one of the most important habits any creative person can adopt. It’s amazing how infrequently we allow ourselves to sit quietly without music or books or other people to distract us. Go sit in a room for a few minutes with nothing to accomplish, and see how awkward you feel. It happens really fast. But on the other side of that awkwardness is real gold: your subconscious mind where your ideas swim around. It’s extremely hard to hear this part of your brain when you’re pumping a bunch of noise into your ears or making difficult decisions or worrying about things outside of filmmaking. Your ideas are like fish. They scare easily

Sit alone in a room and let your thoughts go wherever they will. Do this for one minute…[then] work up to ten minutes a day of this mindless wandering. Then start paying attention to your thoughts to see if a word or goal materializes. If it doesn’t, extend the exercise to eleven minutes, then twelve, then thirteen…until you find the length of time you need to ensure that something interesting will come to mind. The Gaelic phrase for this state of mind is ‘quietness without loneliness.’”.

2. CARRY A CAMERA

Carrying a creative tool — any tool — with you all the time. Something to tempt your creativity throughout the day. It could be a sketchpad. It could be a notebook. But we think a camera is a good place to start for a filmmaker with great cameras in our phones these days it's even easier. You can’t complete a film every day but you can take a photograph. You can capture a moment and an emotion. You can get into your filmmaker headspace without a budget or a cast or even a script. We realize you have a camera on your smartphone. But consider carrying around a real clunker. Something you can fiddle with at your desk. Something with knobs and buttons. Something that begs you to take it out and shoot for a few minutes every day.

3. WRITE ONE EXTREMELY SHORT STORY A DAY

Great filmmakers are often great writers. Look at J. J. Abrams, Steve McQueen, Werner Herzog, Lena Dunham — and the list goes on. The fact is, if you want to make great films, then you need to be able to tell great stories. And great stories don’t have to be very long. At all. Martin Scorsese once said that while he was at NYU taking film lessons. One of the teachers insisted the class write a story. Since they all had come for filmmaking and directing lessons. One student got up telling the teacher that we have come here to learn directing, how's writing related to it? The teacher replied "If you can't be a good writer, you can't be a good director. Here is a short story by the master of microscopic fiction, Lydia Davis:

Spring Spleen

I am happy the leaves are growing large so quickly.

Soon they will hide the neighbor and her screaming child.

Davis won the MacArthur Foundation Genius Fellowship for work like this, so it’s not to be taken lightly. At the same time, though, even Davis admits her work often happens quickly. Sometimes instantly. The genius of it is not in the labor. It’s her insight into the world — an insight developed by — among other things — writing thousands of stories like these.

4. FIND PATTERNS IN CHAOS

Tharp suggests this daily creative exercise: Take a handful of coins and toss them onto your desk. See how they fall. Then mess with them until you find a pattern in the chaos. “Eventually I land on an arrangement that feels like a musical chord resolving. I look at the coins and they cry out: ‘This is us.’ There in a nutshell is the essence of creativity: There are a number of possibilities, but only one solution looks inevitable.”

5. SCRATCH AROUND FOR IDEAS

In point number one, Spend Time Alone, we talked about the importance of listening to your ideas. But it’s also important to make a habit of scratching around for new ones. Tharp suggests a few places to start your daily digging:

Reading. Whether they’re novels, essays, comics, journalism, or what-have-you, reading is perhaps the most direct way to infuse new ideas into your thinking. Follow your fascination. A good book will lead you to the next.

Conversation. Great conversations are always centered around ideas. Seek out good conversations with fascinating people, and you’re bound to scratch out an idea for a project down the road. Call up a friend, ask a fellow creative what they’ve been working on or reach out to a director you admire.

Nature. Nature has inspired artists since the beginning of time. Make it a habit to spend time outside every day. Some of the greatest creations are not man-made. Connect with creativity’s perennial muse.

That's it for this week. Hope you follow these tips and comment down below if you have any routine in tapping out your creative juices. See you next week.

Keep Learning and Keep Filming