Abstract
On the basis of understanding the journey that an idea takes, this chapter will look to examine the nature of creativity itself in this process. Referencing anecdotal experiences and case studies from the StoryLab International Film Development Research Network workshops, this chapter will explore how patterns—personal prejudicial patterns, thought patterns, social patterns, patterns learned in schools, patterns learned in higher education and patterns emerging from peer pressure—limit creative acts and creativity. The chapter will then go on to explore ways of breaking patterns of thinking in order to come to an understanding of how creativity works in the practice of developing original, and personally relevant, film ideas. The role of play, courage, gullibility and humility will be central to this discussion, as will be the paradoxical need to place creativity within the context of an established language of film.
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Notes
- 1.
See http://www.thecreativeindustries.co.uk/uk-creative-overview/facts-and-figures/employment-figures; accessed 25 June 2018.
- 2.
See, for example, Chris Anderson’s study (2007) of how digital technology has created unlimited demand and the consequent development of the long tail business models we see in such new companies as Amazon and Netflix.
- 3.
- 4.
Greek for “I have found [it]”.
- 5.
- 6.
See The Independent’s article, Benetton Sued Over Shock Ads, from the 22 January 1995, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/benetton-sued-over-shock-ads-1569139.html
- 7.
- 8.
Perhaps it is no coincidence that children can be profoundly moved by stick animations in ways that most adults have lost the ability to be. We probably read and engage with animation in very different ways to that of the child in that adults arguably have a Brechtian-like verfremdungseffekt -driven relationship to animations. See Willett (1964, p. 91).
- 9.
Using the quote attributed to the founder of the Jesuit order, St Ignatius of Loyola, “[G]ive me the child until he is seven and I’ll give you the man.” Michael Apted created an extraordinary documentary series for UK’s Granada Television entitled Seven Up (Apted 1964) in which he followed the lives of 14 British children as they grew up, interviewing them every seven years. When looking at later interviews, it was striking to see how much their lives resembled their vision of their futures when they were seven years old. Similar concerns, interests and preoccupations already established by the age of seven would permeate the rest of their lives. Speculations about whether this could be down to nature or nurture could be entered into, but for our purposes, let us assume that it was a bit of both.
- 10.
On opening up Andy Warhol’s New York apartment to the public following his death in 1987, it became apparent that the entirety of his personal art collection was dominated by antique art.
- 11.
A significant innovator in German cinema during the 1970s and 1980s, Rainer Maria Fassbinder was heavily influenced by the work of the traditional melodrama movies of Douglas Sirk, for whom he had tremendous admiration and respect.
- 12.
Picasso famously had an African period, in which he went back to explore the basics of two-dimensional art, which was to be so influential in the development of Cubism.
- 13.
Though a feminist filmmaker, Chantal Akerman spent a lot of time studying the work of the inimitable Robert Bresson and was heavily influenced by him.
- 14.
I had a very influential teacher of screenwriting at York University in Toronto called Ewan Cameron. I admired him and loved his classes. He was responsible for a life-changing discovery I made as a young student. One day he came into class and announced that he was departing from his normal plan, as he had seen a film the night before which he wanted to spend the lesson telling us about. He proceeded to talk about this film by a director I had never heard of before, and while I don’t remember anything he said, the thing that I did pay attention to was the fact that his eyes were welling up with tears. He was crying; so moved was he by the experience of the film. I remember being so struck by this that I was determined to find out who this filmmaker was and watch the film. The filmmaker was Robert Bresson. While it would take me another 25 years to see the specific film he spoke about, Une Femme Douce (Bresson 1969), the introduction to Robert Bresson changed my cinematic life. The inspiration, the influence, the foundations that have shaped all my cinematic creative endeavours started with this discovery.
- 15.
Paraphrasing Dr Dartey Kumordzi speaking in Heart of Gold (Knudsen 2006), in which he is comparing the minds of rural Ghanaians with urban Ghanaians in relation to their relationship to their spiritual heritage.
- 16.
When making my film, The Silent Accomplice (Knudsen 2010), I cast a mother and her disabled son. All the actors in that film were playing themselves as characters in scenarios I had made up, so this was a real mother with a real disabled son. He was wheelchair bound, but could walk short distances with crutches. They were to appear at the end of the film. The disabled son would get up, get his crutches, walk a few yards to the end of the peer and look out at a fishing boat that had just left the picturesque harbour. As I was waking up on the morning of the shoot, I awoke to a thought: why don’t I have the mother anoint her son with holy water from Lourdes in a cross on his forehead just before he gets out of his wheelchair? When I met her on set, I immediately suggested this to my actress, pointing out that she could have a little bottle of holy water from Lourdes that she would always carry with her in her handbag. She pointed out to me that she did actually have holy water, but didn’t carry it in her handbag, but always had it in her pocket. I hadn’t realised that she had ever been to Lourdes with her son and had brought back holy water that she always carried with her.
- 17.
Later we shall explore the differences between feelings and emotions as they relate to storytelling.
- 18.
See Koestler’s (1964, p. 108) discussion of the importance of ripeness in creative invention.
- 19.
- 20.
Arguably, Louis Le Prince’s 1888 film Roundhey Garden Scene was the first narrative film.
- 21.
While being profoundly disturbed by the messages emerging from Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (1935), it is hard not to simultaneously admire the power of the filmmaking; perhaps it is this dichotomy that is particularly troubling.
- 22.
See Eisenstein (1969).
- 23.
Welles was to return to this theme more explicitly in F for Fake (Welles 1973).
- 24.
See Sigmund Freud’s 1899 book The Interpretation of Dreams (1997).
- 25.
Amongst filmmakers directly influenced by surrealism were Hitchcock and Salvador Dali, who, of course, would work with Hitchcock years later on arguably Hitchcock’s most influential film, Vertigo (1958).
- 26.
The breaking of the fourth wall is something Godard returned to again and again, most strikingly in Pierrot le Fou (1965).
- 27.
See John Willett (1964), for more on Brecht ideas on the verfremdungseffekt (distancing effect).
- 28.
See Schrader’s Transcendental Style in Film (Schrader 1972), in which he discusses the transcendental qualities of Ozu, Bresson and Dreyer.
- 29.
- 30.
See a discussion of eyes and eye lines and their relationship to story in Eyes and Narrative Perspectives on a Story (Knudsen 2014).
- 31.
Filmmakers as diverse as Scorsese, Ackerman, Kaurismaki, Ceylan, Godard, Truffault and many others cite Bresson as a significant influence and/or inspiration.
- 32.
See, by way of example, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Implications of a Systems Perspective for the Study of Creativity (Sternberg 1999, p. 313).
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Knudsen, E. (2018). What Is Creativity?. In: Finding the Personal Voice in Filmmaking. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00377-7_3
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