Stepping into 2021
I find it’s always good to have a list. Not a heavy duty ‘must do’ list, rather a possibilities ‘menu’. With that in mind, this is my first blog of 2021. Armed with a phone and a bit of audio editing software, I invite you to join me for part of my walk today.
I like finding linking thoughts that take me forward. On my walk a Christmas window display made of Lego got me thinking and inspired me to look into the story of how Lego was developed. A story of ups and downs and a good inspire for the beginning of a New Year, especially one where we are all facing the uncertainty and danger caused by a virulent virus.
The Lego story is online in various guises, but Youtube provides a lovely animated version, if you have 20 mins.
For now, I leave you with this little Podcast and the image that inspired it.
Upgrade: leave the past behind
So my 6 year old phone decided to go on mute, permanently.
I tried various remedies, restarts, factory resets etc, but none resolved the problem.
The only way forward was an upgrade, a new phone.
So a new phone, well second hand, was acquired and the upgrade made.
But as the software transfer was complete a sneaky ‘feature’ remained. A shadow of the past!
Now the new phone showed the mute button was still on!
For me a picture and a lesson that dysfunction from the past can unwittingly imprint the future.
Open Mic Night
I went to my first open mic night.
It was all kinda scary; fright or flight
So I wrote a poem
Even read it out loud.
But oh dear oh dear
now that I’m home
My brain just won’t leave
the rhyming alone.
REST : a Friday afternoon inspiration
Each letter of the word REST is also the first letter of 4 other words – an acrostic.
The inspiration for this was on a busy Friday afternoon, when I worked in a hectic PR office.
I was stressed out. Not just on that Friday, but I had been stressed out for a while.
At that time in my life people had been telling me to ‘REST in the Lord”. Which is Christianese for ‘chill out and trust God’. But I didn’t get it.
I had searched the Bible for the word REST and seen how in the pre-Jesus part of the Bible, Moses, who’d had more than his fair share of stress, had entered God’s rest. And this didn’t mean that he’d died, it was a state that he had been living in while trekking around with thousands of grumbling people in the dessert.
Then there was a whole bit in the New Testament, the Jesus part of the Bible, about not missing out on entering God’s rest.
Anyway that Friday afternoon, I was busy trying to finish work for the weekend, but I needed to take a toilet break, which is very inconvenient when you are busy.
However…eureka…the little room, away from the computer and the phone, was a place of quiet revelation. (I’ll add here that my visit was no longer than a brief pause, no time for reading!)
Anyway I’d got it.
REST was all about Relying on God.
Not a bit, not some of the time, but Entirely.
It should not be striving, but a complete Stop from self-reliance and constant Trying.
YAY – REST!
Then eureka part 2 came this summer, and I hasten to add I was not in the bathroom at the time!
I was reading and learned that the Hebrew word Shabbat, from which we get the word Sabbath actually means to CEASE or STOP.
In the beginning Genesis story in the Bible, it says that after creating everything God rested: he stopped working and ceased from labouring.
In the Moses story a bit later in that same Bible book, God sets up Shabbat, a rest for people….the weekend!
But RESTing in God goes beyond having a day off each week. It’s a state of constancy.
It’s not about kicking back and doing nothing, rather it’s about doing everything from a place of relationship with God the creator, so that you Rely Entirely on Him and Stop Trying to make everything alright on your own.
I was going to trademark Documercial, but it already exists
I suppose great minds think alike. The Independent, a film magazine, were on to the trend 2 years ago.
www.aivf.org/magazine/2009/09/documercial
and a certain Mr. Obama has been using the format.
Saved in the edit
My writing tutor had told me that writers make good editors, in terms of content. This I have found to be very true.
But I appreciate the skill of the video editors even more than I did at the beginning.
After many hours of listening to audio and looking at pictures, the story is unfolding. I like pithy, fast moving images and this is just what we are producing. I’ve hit on the idea of showcasing the highlights of the content in what I am calling a ‘documercial’. Something that can be used for viral marketing as well as on the website and can be used in our final presentation. A three-point win.
The creative energy in the editing room is exciting and bacon butties are fueling the thinking and activity.
Art Circles is taking shape. I keep telling the team that we could have had this energy from the beginning and I have been waving a book of post-it notes from my bag that I’d brought for brainstorming from the outset of the project. But, the upside of this is that my creativity is being stretched, even if not in the way I had hoped. But, hey maybe it has given the writer’s role credibility and understanding.
The editors definitely earn their keep. It’s been such fun to make the journey together. And, the product that is surfacing. It’s looking great.
From the Iphone
I love it when technology works. I like gadgets if they make life easier, add to and enhance. This is my view of Transmedia too. It has to have a benefit. That benefit has to earn its keep, be a link on a chain. It’s kinda like a cocktail, the mix either works or it doesn’t – chemistry.
Content v concept round 2
Finally I feel that the writer’s role is being understood. Anthony Richmond-Turner is a hit and I am being invited to join the editing. Yeehaa!
Again I’ve said that this is the wrong way round, the script should have been created first, but I am taking on the challenge. I’m not a happy bunny in terms of production route, but a product is arriving, its just not at all the way to work. Perhaps a Caesarean birth!
The aim is produce documentaries of featured artists and their work. I’ve made documentaries for radio and produced and written video before, but this way around is almost editing. I can best describe it a video sculpture.
16 years of press and public relations is the skillset that I am drawing on, nothing that has been part of my MA writing at all. My group is like my client and I have to construct their message. So, it’s back to basics Who? Why? Where? What? When? and How?
But, I am encouraged in my writer’s quest. Thanks to Twitter and my blog posts, I’m now being followed by storylabs.us There are people out there who already understand where I am coming from and they have stretched the hand of camaraderie across the ether.
It’s a small world though. I did some checking and one of my new media tribe used to work at BUmedia school teaching screenwriting. The world is getting smaller!
They love him!
The art critic is a hit! He says all the things that other people may be thinking, mixing wry humour with fact. He is just the human face of the project that is needed. See what you think.
This is what he is sharing his opinions about prideinbournemouth.com