Inspiration for Filmmakers: Create a Life Full of Creativity

1. Introduction: You think of filmmaking, what comes to mind? Being on set, talking to actors, looking through one of those big eye piece things. But before you can do any of those things, you need something to say. You need inspiration to get you on set so that you can tell the stories that you want. While you can't force inspiration, you can create an environment and a life that's conducive to being inspired. Hi, my name is Dean Peterson, and I'm a filmmaker from Los Angeles. I've written and directed three future films that have played at dozens of festivals around the world. I DPed another that premiered at Tribeca, and I edited another that premiered at Sundance. In this class, I'm going to walk you through a bunch of different ways that you can spark new ideas, break through your writer's block, and give you a shot of energy that will help your creative practice. This class is geared towards filmmakers, but really anyone can benefit from it. If you're a painter, a musician, an illustrator, or if you're not even an artist at all. If you're looking to jumpstart your creative side and infuse your life with a little inspiration, then this class is for you. When you're stuck in your routine, you can't possibly expect to be struck by fresh new ideas. Our goal is going to be to break you out of that rut so that you can see the world with new eyes. For this class, you're going to need to print a worksheet, and you'll need a pair of dice. If you don't have dice, don't worry about it. You can use virtual dice that I've linked to in the class resources. Alright, Let's buckle up and get ready to be inspired. 2. Opening Yourself to Inspiration: Exactly does it mean to open yourself up to inspiration? Aren't we always open to inspiration? Well, technically, yes. If you get knocked upside the head by an obviously brilliant idea, I doubt that you'll be able to miss that. But a lot of the time, most of us are walking around with our heads in the sand. We're scurrying to the subway. We're rushing to finish a project at work. We're glued to our phones. We're often on auto pilot. And when we're on auto pilot, we are not open to inspiration. We are missing out on tons of tiny ideas, tiny details about the world and the people around us. I liken it to photography. If I've got my camera with me, but I leave it in my bag, I'll forget about it, and I'm not really thinking about photographs when I'm walking around. So I'm not really noticing everything that's happening in my surrounding area. There could be an amazing character on the street, or the light could be hitting a building a certain way. And since I'm not in the state of mind to be photographing, it might pass me by. It's the same with filmmaking. You need to put yourself in the state of mind that allows you to receive ideas. That way, when you hear somebody on the subway talking about a story, you're already in the state of mind to be thinking about how you could incorporate that into your script. Or if you see an interesting building while on a walk, you might realize that would be the perfect place to set a scene for your film. One way to do this is to just simply notice things. When you're out on the street or on the subway or wherever, instead of being on your phone or listening to podcasts or tuning everything out, just make it a point to look around. Treat it almost like a treasure hunt. You're scouring the street, looking for a character or for a situation that interests you that you might potentially use in a project. Okay, now it's your turn to try this out. Your assignment is to go out into public somewhere, a park, a mall, a library. It doesn't matter where. Just sit down and people watch for 10 minutes. Just sit there. Don't be on your phone, don't have your headphones in. Just watch and observe. It might be a little bit unnatural or uncomfortable at first, but you'll be amazed by the kinds of things that pass you by. In the next lesson, I'll talk about how to keep a notebook to help you remember all the amazing ideas that come to you. 3. Keeping a Notebook: You're out in the street and you observe something or you have a great idea come to you, you need to get it down. I know for myself personally, if I get an idea, I need to get it down on paper immediately. If I think Oh, I'm in the middle of lunch or Oh, I'm so comfortable in bed, I'll remember it in the morning. That idea is gone. So when you think of something, drop everything and get it down right away. You can facilitate this by keeping a notebook. And when I say notebook, I don't mean that it necessarily needs to be a physical paper notebook. You can use a spiral bound notebook or a moleskin notebook or a legal pad, or if you want to save a tree, you can use a digital note taking app like Notion, Evernote, Apple notes, or one of the many other options. I personally use Google Keep. It's a notes app that makes it really easy to quickly jot down ideas and then be able to search for them later. You can use tags, which is really helpful if you've got multiple projects, and you want to keep everything super organized. I've got different tags for all the different projects that I have going, which is so useful because when you sit down to write a script, you can just click on the tag for that project, and instantly, all the ideas that you've jotted down for that script are right there in front of you. There's also a really satisfying archive button that you can hit once you've implemented that idea. The key is finding something that works for you. I've tried so many different options over the years, Evernote Notion to do list apps. I've even tried to keep a cool little notebook in my pocket, but I found that I just end up with a bunch of random, half filled notebooks strewn about, and I can never find what I'm looking for. But if physical paper works for you, then go for it. Experiment and find what system is best for your process. Aside from taking written notes, you should be taking visual notes as well. If you watch a movie and you're moved by its lighting or cinematography, save specific stills from that movie, or if you see a painting whose composition you love, find it on Google images and save a J peg of it. You can do this a number of different ways. You can keep image notes in Google Keep, or you could start a Pinterest board. Pinterest is a great place to save inspiration, and it doesn't just have to be film stills. It can be drawings, illustrations, gifts, whatever. These will also serve you down the road if you want to make a lookbook for your film. But if it is film stills that you're looking for, there are a bunch of really great sites out there. Film grab is a fantastic website that allows you to search by title, director, and cinematographer. If you watch a movie, and you love the way that it was shot, you can search for who the cinematographer was and see stills from their other movies. Sites like blu ray.com are also fantastic resources. They're meant for reviews of blue ray releases, but they include a bunch of really high raise screen grabs from movies that are often perfect to use for inspiration. Whatever you do, you should start to accumulate a treasure trove of inspiration like a squirrel gathering nuts for winter. If you create a vault of film stills, paintings, and jotted down ideas that you can go back and revisit any time, you will have a well of inspiration and things that excite you that you can dip into any time you want. This is a great way to court new ideas and to stir the pot whenever you need a little boost of creativity. Okay, it's your turn to try this out. C hoose one of the note taking methods that appeals to you and start taking notes. Bring it with you wherever you go, and when you get a little idea, jot it down immediately. In the next lesson, I'll go over how to organize these notes into a format that's gonna allow you to be as productive and organized as possible when writing. 4. Making Project Buckets: Start taking notes wherever you go, you're going to need an organizational system. It's great if you see a guy speaking like a pirate while wearing a Wayne Gretzky hockey jersey, but it's doubly good if you've got a movie idea that you can plug that into. This is what I call a bucket. Say that you've got three very general broad movie ideas. Just for the purposes of illustration, let's say you've got a New York City Romco, a Midwest road trip, and a Christmas movie. These are your buckets. They're just broad ideas of films that you might want to make. You don't have to have a ton of details. They can just be ideas that you want to develop more. Now when you're out taking an inspiration, you've got a framework to conceptualize it. Say, now you see a guy speaking like a pirate while wearing Own Gretzky Jersey, you might be like, Oh, wow, that would be perfect for my New York City Romco scene set in Central Park. Having buckets helps you focus your inspiration a little bit more and gives it helpful context. They also help you develop your ideas much faster. After a few months of jotting down ideas with tags for all your projects, you've got 35 notes for your Midwest road trip movie, you're that much closer to having a fully fleshed out story. You might have characters, scene ideas, shot ideas. All that added together is the start of a really great, detailed outline, instead of just a bunch of wild random ideas that have no connective tissue. Let's put this into practice now. Grab a piece of paper and think about the movie ideas that you've been vaguely kicking around. It can be as as you possibly want. Maybe you've wanted to write a movie about a lawyer. That could be it. That's enough for a bucket. Come up with a few buckets, and when you start to brainstorm ideas, use whatever notebook method you've adopted to start adding tags or separate pages for your different buckets. In the next lesson, we'll go over how to create a workspace that will help you be more creative. 5. Customizing Your Workspace: The place that you do your work is sort of sacred. You have the opportunity to make it however you want. And I feel like you should use that opportunity to create an environment that allows you to be productive, happy, and inspired. Take things to the wall. If you have a family photograph you like, hang it next to your desk. I like putting quotes that inspire me on index cards or posted notes and spreading them all around my office with wild abandon. Surround yourself with art that you like, tools that enable you to work effectively, and anything else that greases the grooves of your creativity. I like having things that I frequently use within arm's reach. So I've got tools that I use every day. In places I know they'll be. I have all the cords I use in a convenient spot. I have screwdrivers everywhere in my office and apartment because nothing drives me crazier than needing a screwdriver and not having one nearby. Another really important thing is organizing your workspace. I'm not going to prescribe a way for you to organize where you work, but just encourage you to find a system that works for you and to keep it up. For me, personally, I love shelves. I have shelves everywhere. On those shelves, I love to put bins and other containers. That way, I can organize things so I know where they are and keep them out of the way. Something else that I highly recommend you invest in a label maker. I have two of them, and I label just about everything. It's incredibly satisfying and incredibly useful. This way, I can look at a container and know, boom, hard drives, or I can know what camera a battery is for just by looking at it. This will save you so much time and is incredibly gratifying. Another thing that I believe in is keeping your workspace as clean as you possibly can. If you have a cluttered messy workspace, I feel like it's hard to not have a cluttered messy mind. In the midst of a big project, my office will often get trashed. It looks like a tornado came through my room, and guess what? That's what my mind feels like. At least once a week, I try to do a reset where I clean my office. I put everything back where it belongs, and I vacuum. I also try to tidy up whenever possible. Just small things, organize your papers, put all your pens back in the pen cup, things like that. If you personalize your workspace with things that you love and which make you, you, and you keep it clean, well, then nothing can stop you. In the next lesson, I'll talk about how to be a sponge of culture and art. 6. Becoming a Sponge: Alfred Hitchcock used to say that he never watched other filmmakers movies. First of all, I don't believe him. And second of all, that's not something to brag about. As a filmmaker, it's imperative that you soak up as much culture as you possibly can. But don't limit yourself to just movies. You can and should be getting inspiration from everywhere. Great filmmaker will have exposed themselves to theater, poetry, paintings, literature, and more. First things first, you should obviously be watching a lot of movies. It feels a little bit patronizing to tell you how to do that, but if I may be so bold, I would encourage you to push yourself out of your comfort zone a little bit. Watch movies that you normally wouldn't be drawn to on your own, foreign films, older films, films of genres that you normally don't watch. The objective here isn't necessarily to like them. You don't need to love every movie you watch, but even with movies you hate, there's still a ton you can learn. Ask yourself, what specifically about the movie did you hate? Was it the story, the acting, the cinematography, then figure out how you would have done it differently. Now you've got concrete inspiration for how you would have made that movie if it were yours. The key is to watch as much as you can, especially when you're young and you have fewer responsibilities. If you're young and you don't have kids or a very demanding job, watch movies every day, all day, obsess over movies. See everything that comes out in theaters. Regal and AMC both offer unlimited memberships for not very much money. Get one and see everything that comes out in theaters. Another amazing resource is the criterion channel. For only $11 a month, you have access to a repository of some of the greatest films ever made. Watch the cinema of a country you're unfamiliar with. Get into the habit of watching tons of movies, making sure to take notes on things that give you inspiration, as well as grabbing stills for future projects. Put those notebooks and Pintrest boards to good use. In addition to inhaling movies, you should be reading ravenously. Reading contributed more to not only my skills as a filmmaker, but just being a well rounded human being. You should read novels, you should read history, you should read nonfiction, pour as many books into your brain as you possibly can. You'll get ideas for dialogue from novels. You'll get inspiration for a movie idea from a book about climate change. You never know what will jump off the page at you, which is why you need to be reading constantly. If you don't already have one, get a library card and put it to good use. We sort of take it for granted, but libraries are unbelievable. They essentially offer us access to every book ever written for free. While we're on the subject of reading, I would encourage you to read poetry. Even if you don't think you like it or understand it, reading and studying poetry will make you a better richer writer. You need to learn how to craft words into art. And what better way to learn that than through poets? Poetry will also encourage you to be a more passionate and engaged citizen of the world, which are both great attributes of any filmmaker. If you're looking for a great place to start, I would recommend picking up a book by Walt Whitman, Edna St. Vincent Maly, or Gwendolyn Brooks. You'll be in good hands with all of them. One other thing you should be doing in your new capacity as a cultural sponge is going to museums, go to art museums, history museums, science museums, any that are at your disposal. Find a painting that jumps out at you and look at it for longer than you normally would. Try to figure out what about it is exciting or interesting to you. In his book, Damn Good Advice, George Lois says that he religiously went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York every single Sunday. It was his weekly church service. We should all approach art with this level of reverence and studiousness. Museums admittedly can be expensive. But most of them have student discounts, and almost all of them have free days. Some places even let you check out museum passes at the library for free. Another benefit of getting that library card. So let's put this into practice. Your assignment for this lesson is to read one poem, either get a book from the library or a bookstore or just look one up online and get reading. In the next lesson, we'll talk about the importance of having an interesting life. 7. Living an Interesting Life: Me tell you a cautionary tale. I went to college with a guy who was a screenwriting major, but who no offense, didn't live a very interesting life. He stayed inside and watched DVDs of the same four TV shows all the time. He didn't go to parties. He didn't go explore nature. He never attended concerts. And guess what? His scripts were all pretty bad. He didn't have anything to say because he never really experienced much of anything. Can you really write a good movie about a breakup if you've never experienced one? Will you have anything compelling to say about living in a big city if you've never spent any time in one. To be a truly well rounded, compelling filmmaker, you need to live an interesting life. By this, I don't mean that you need to party a lot and ride the rails and jump out of airplanes. Although you could, I just mean that you need to go out of your way to expose yourself to new things, new places, and new people. You need to experience a little bit of friction in your life sometimes. So how do you do this? Well, there are a few ways. The first is to travel. You should do this in whatever capacity you're able to. Do you have the resources to crisscross Asia and South America, soaking up the food, scenery and culture along the way? Lucky you, go out there and do it. If you can't afford to do that, and most of us can't, you can explore on a more local level. Take an Amtrak to a new city you've never been. Go on a road trip across an area you've never seen stopping in weird motels along the way, or even just bike to a new neighborhood in your city. The point is to get yourself into novel situations and to have new experiences. It's more than just traveling, though. Look stuff up where you live and try something new. Join a book club in your town, attend a free concert. Say yes, to a weird invitation from a friend that you haven't seen in a while. Push yourself out of your comfort zone and expose yourself to as many different experiences as you possibly can. Another thing that you can do to have a more well rounded life, H hang out with other filmmakers, but don't only hang out with filmmakers. Fraternizing with other people who make movies will give you a community to push and challenge you, but also to inspire you. You can all have each other's backs, offer feedback and lend a hand on projects. But make sure that not all of your friends are filmmakers. This can lead to a bizarre hive mind, where all you talk about is what movies you've seen. Believe me. There's nothing interesting about that. So, let's put this into practice. This is where your dice come in. I've included a worksheet in the class resources. Open it up, roll the dice, and whatever number you get, do the activity on the worksheet under that number. This is a great way to challenge yourself to go out and to try something you maybe wouldn't have thought of. Whenever you're feeling stuck, you can break out the worksheet, roll the dice, and try something new. In the next lesson, we'll talk about the importance of moving your body. 8. Moving Your Body: Filmmaker can be a pretty sedentary endeavor. Long hours on your laptop writing, late nights hunched over a keyboard editing. It's easy to spend hours at a time at your desk, which is not very conducive to inspiration. In order to invite inspiration, you need to not only move your body, but also take care of it. This can be as simple as just going for a walk. Getting out for a stroll is the perfect way to break up a long writing session. It'll get you into a new surrounding, and studies have proven that walking can inspire creativity and new ideas. I personally have had some of my best ideas while out for a walk. There is nothing better for beating writers block than long strolls. Bike rides are also a fantastic thing for filmmakers. You're able to travel to new surroundings, get some fresh air, and maybe even get a cup of coffee in the process. If you're a person with a disability, there are tons of great resources for ways to be active that are more inclusive. I've linked to a video by Yoga with Adrian, that's a yoga routine for people in wheelchairs, just to give you an idea of what's out there. Another great thing to do regularly is to stretch. Even just some light stretching before you shoot something will help you feel better after being on your feet for 12 hours straight. One more absolutely crucial thing for filmmakers, both on and offset, drinking enough water. I know that when I'm on set, I can go an entire day without taking a single sip, and by the end of the day, I'm exhausted and unable to make my best creative decisions. So make sure you're staying hydrated when you're shooting, but also just in daily life as well. The purpose of all of this isn't to get a ripped physique or lose weight or anything like that. Purpose is just to move to get some blood flowing and to get a change of scenery. Exercise can generate new ideas, relieve stress, and improve your mood. All things that filmmakers frequently struggle with. In my experience, consistency is key. It's way better to go for a 20 minute walk every day than to do a two hour run once every other month. Go on to any film set and you'll see people with shoulder problems, bad backs, and knee injuries. Filmmaking is really hard on your body, but we can find ways to take care of ourselves so that we can avoid injuries and ensure that we all have long, healthy careers and can make movies for many years to come. Now it's your turn. Take a break from this class and go out and move your body for a little bit. Let you decide what that's going to look like, but get out there and do something. Once you're done, come back for the next lesson, and we'll talk about trying new things that don't involve movies. 9. Expanding Your Horizons: Look, I love movies. I love watching them, and I love making them. But there is more to the world than just movies. You need to expose yourself to other things, cultivate other hobbies, and try different endeavors. There are a lot of adjacent things that you could try that would inform your filmmaking. Taking photographs, for instance. Shooting photos is a great way to learn framing, get more familiar with cameras, and it's usually cheaper and easier to do solo than filmmaking. But there are tons of other things you can try as well. Experiment with pottery, try painting, see if you enjoy playing a musical instrument. I recently started teaching myself how to draw. I'm not the best artist in the world, but it uses different creative muscles than making movies, and it's a really fun hobby to get lost in. It also doesn't have to be a creative hobby, either. Find a place to volunteer in your community, build a bird house, dust off your skateboard and head to the skate park. Carving out an existence that's full of things that aren't just related to film, will make your life richer and will often improve your filmmaking. Learning to draw has changed the way that I look at the world and informed how I arrange compositions in my films. I've also met a ton of cool creative people through organizations that I've volunteered at in my community. But what's important to realize about things like this is that you might not always get a direct yield for your filmmaking. If you volunteer somewhere, you might not necessarily meet somebody who wants to collaborate with you in the future. And you won't necessarily leave a painting class with an amazing new composition to use in your films. But you will leave with a certain amount of enrichment. And if you stack your life with enough examples of culture, movies, experiences, and skills, you will have sown the seeds of a thoroughly creative life. Now it's your turn. Come up with a list of a few non filmmaking related activities that you can do. You don't have to be good at them. In fact, it might be better if you're not. It's just about the process of exposing yourself to new things. In our final lesson, we're going to go over how to take all these lessons forward with you into the world. 10. Final Thoughts: Give yourself a pat on the back. You've made it all the way through the class. If you've done each lesson, then you're already a more well rounded artist who's gotten new experiences and found ways to gather them to use in future projects. This is only the beginning, a jumping off point. I hope that you'll continue to explore new mediums, challenge yourself, and continue to find new inspiration every single day. Please let me know in the comments below what particular exercises you got the most inspiration from, and what projects sprang up from this process. Thanks so much for joining me, and I will see you in the next class.