Ways to Get Ideas

Mitch Dittkoff's "14 Ways to Get Breakthrough Ideas" is an intriguing article that contemplates the one problem that plagues those in the creative industry most often - actually coming up with good, solid ideas.  Mitch comes up with fourteen different ways to grab new ideas - covering everything from brainstorming and noticing patterns, to fantasizing and listening to one's sub-conscience.

I feel that Mitch's second suggestion of "Immersion" is a great way to dive into something interesting or challenging to develop it into something bigger and better.  Basically, the process of immersion requires you to block out a large amount of time in which you will focus and work through a problem or process.  In MGT202, this is known as a hitting a "flow state", a mental state of mind in which you are utterly focused on accomplishing a goal. Your entire being  is dedicated towards working through this task, and when you come out of the flow state, hours may have passed in what seemed like minutes. Flow states, or immersion, inspire such a degree of dedication that one's sense of time is warped.  I highly recommend immersion as a way to accomplish goals, because I utilize it all the time.  When editing a project, I'll start with all the pieces of the puzzle: video, audio, images, and text - with an empty timeline which I must fill up.  When I finish the edit, what comes out may be a relatively short video - but it may have taken dozens of times of the duration of the finished clip to piece it together properly. And when immersed, you have no idea how long it took - only that it was accomplished.

Mitch's tenth suggestion of "Hanging out with Diverse Groups of People" is also valid, particularly in my experience. When working on a project, I may get stuck in a rut of doing the same things over again; recycling ideas or methods.  It helps immensely - both in refreshing how I do things, and in making the project more dynamic - to interact with people whom you may never before have though to communicate with.  Everyone has a different viewpoint and way of analyzing things.  Taking advantage of this to broaden your perspectives may in fact help you to approach a project in a completely new light.  This keeps one's ideas, motivations, and methods freshly engaging - changing things up and putting a new spin on your approach makes things exciting for you and for those who benefit from your project. 

Finally, his sixth suggestion of "Defining the Right Challenge" is an oft-overlooked but still important way to come up with ideas and solve problems.  Many times I will encounter an obstacle or dilemma on my way to completing a task - and instead of trying to determine ways to master the overall challenge, I focus instead of trying to fix the one specific problem.  In some cases this can work, but if you are stuck and unable to come up with a solution to a small dilemma in a big challenge, consider this: come up with a list of ways to overcome the big challenge first. Perhaps one of this ideas can allow you to bypass and ignore the smaller problem that you were stuck on in the first place!

I actually find this sixth suggestion to make so much sense, that as an exercise I shall fulfill the prompt that concludes it: "State your most inspired challenge or opportunity as a question beginning with words 'How can I?' Then write it five different ways. Which is the real question?"
Currently I am acting as director of photography for an independent feature film on campus entitled "The Nameless Cryst".  As such, my biggest challenge is being able to dedicate enough time to not only complete the film, but finish in a way that makes the film as polished as possible and as exciting as possible for those involved.
How can I find enough time to finish the film well and make it worthwhile for those around me?

How can I arrange schoolwork, extracurricular activities, and work to be able to dedicate enough time to the film?
How can I make the film look as professional and exceptional as possible?
How can I work to make the experience on set as rewarding as possible for those in my department?
How can I accomplish what is necessary with the lack of budget that we have?
How can I make the project appeal to those involved with it?

In the end, I believe that the real question is: How can I balance my responsibilities in such a way that work, school, and extracurriculars are affected as little as possible?  Which leads me to believe that I need to plan and schedule my time more effectively - which I assuredly have not been up to this point!