I went into Rabiger’s chapter, You and the Creative Process, with the hope of getting a strong insight into how I can strengthen my own process of creating, particularly in relation to the ideas and writing stage of short filmmaking.
I very much enjoyed Rabiger’s take on ‘our need to tell stories’, which he associated with our need to ‘explore the tensions we carry’. From here he went into the idea of striving for truth. This is something that I do agree with, though sometimes I think I forget that. While I don’t believe everything I create has to be built on a foundation of pain or depression, I do think that there is always something more going on than just wanting to ’make something up’. Reminding myself of this during a creative process can then result in me realising what it is I’m really trying to communicate, when I otherwise may have been stuck with focussing on something making sense and being entertaining – still important, but extremely far from the foundation.
I also got a lot out of the sections, ‘Just Do It’ and ‘Collaboration’. At times I have been too wary of just trying an idea out, and have instead just thought about it until I convince myself the ideas no good. But as Rabiger says, ‘the just do it approach brings reward no matter what kind of work you do’. The first two weeks of this studio have often forced me to ‘just do it’, and while I haven’t always been super confident with this, I feel that I’m already gaining these ‘rewards’.