WHADJA EXPECT?

What time is it?

I expect a lot, actually, especially of myself. I get frustrated when I know I've merely phoned it in, scratched the surface, written two cliches in a row.

Expectations can lead you to treasure and they can lead you to the abyss. They can build respect and they can cause calumny. Expectations define goals and calibrate presuppositions. They can also tie you in knots.

The thing about doing creative work is that expectations are simultaneously your best armor and your worst enemy. If you've done well before, people expect high quality next time. That tends to instill loyalty among fans, and help you continue doing what you're doing. Of course if you don't deliver something sublime, dashed hopes can shatter a reputation in no time at all. Positive expectations that fail to deliver can prompt death spirals of doubt, friction, and poor judgement.

But nobody's great all the time. Even your best friend acts like a jerk once and a while. Michael Jordan had bad games from time to time. In terms of expectations that I believe should hold particular sway, it's vital always to expect integrity among those closest to you. Honest appraisals and honest effort matter more than perfection of craft in almost all cases. To expect less is to live in a house with a leaky roof. Gentle rains may not destroy the furniture, but come a bad storm and your risks rise.

At 1AU we hold these values close. While everyone on the team has some degree of cross-applicable skills, we all specialize, too. The great synergy that emerges from cross pollination of ideas demands honesty and effort. That leads to expectations of mutual respect and of probity in pursuit of solutions. Without it, we're working at cross purposes.

Is it fair to expect excellence from colleagues all the time? Not at all. Is it fair of myself--or anyone, really--to assume that all creative output will be sterling, that nothing short of superb work ever deserves to be done? Of course not. But the expectation of an overall pursuit of quality defines fair and reasonable expectations, in my opinion.

Should we simply presume that everyone believes this, that everyone want to pursue excellence? Nope. We all know lots of people who choose to bump along, to get by, to slouch. That's fine, but for my part I choose to steer a polite distance around.

Consider this: without reasonable expectations, everything we did every single day would be left to the vagaries of whims and chance. Expectations force us to bring our best selves to our work and to each other. Expectations provoke honest dialogue and thus honest efforts because we understand the rules of the field. When we bring our best selves to creative work and to those with whom we create that work, we expand the potential for us to bring similarly positive values to the broader domains of our lives, too.

Next week, we continue this train of thought with a look at politics in creative work.

--MS

HEY: ONE MORE THING! Our new movie WATER FALLS opens on October 10th. Check out all the latest on the movie at the website http://gpm.nasa.gov/waterfalls

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INTENTIONALLY IGNORING A BIG OPPORTUNITY

We work with high tech gear, smart creative thinkers, and influential clients, but that doesn't mean we've seen everything! Much as we believe in our abilities to deliver high-end work, I'll admit that Hollywood class budgets are not generally our daily bread.

So when the opportunity presented itself recently for us to use a high-end cinema camera--free of charge!-- for a few days of production work, our collective pulses started galloping. It's good to have friends in the world who want to share their toys. What's more, hands-on experience with high-end gear is always a chicken-and-egg dilemma for media teams looking to elevate their games. Access to the latest and greatest equipment is usually expensive and hard to coordinate. Practical knowledge about the latest and greatest makes creative teams like us more desirable. Why on Earth let the opportunity pass?

Have you ever been on a backpacking trip? When you're packing your gear, do you hold items in your hand wondering if they're worth the extra weight on your shoulders, space in your bag, whether you'll want them miles down the trail, if they'll be essential to your journey? Ultimately you make your decisions and set off.

And what happened? Good trip or bad, you clearly returned alive. (You're reading this blog, aren't you? You must have survived.) Unless it was a complete disaster, you came back with stories to tell, and while you may have wanted whatever it was that you didn't ultimately bring, the chances are it didn't make the difference in the trip. (Seriously, though: send us a note if you were on a trip and things really DIDN'T go as planned due to some packing or preparation error before you departed!)

The point is, adding one extra thing, even a valuable, useful thing, is sometimes not what's most helpful. Often focusing narrowly on those things you know you'll need differentiates between great success and middlin' mediocrity.

It's that way for everything.

When our colleague called and offered us three days use of his fancy camera for a big sequence we were planning, the inner geeks in our souls started salivating. It would be top-end gear, a great learning opportunity, probably a lot of fun. It might even enhance the shot!

But we let the opportunity go, and never looked back. What's more, even the camera's owner had to agree when I gave him our explanation.

Having more stuff means managing more stuff. Our production calendar was jam packed and our work plan was equally filled. Integrating this camera would take a mighty effort just to get tooled up for the specialized procedures necessary to make it all work. The learning curve was steep; the ancillary requirements substantial. If the shot looked spectacular, it wouldn't match the look of our other (totally terrific!) footage. (Just calling it like I see it…) The great opportunity to use the great gear would become a fools errand, an albatross, a prized sports car we couldn't even use to run to the grocery for fear of dinging a door.

Am I frustrated we couldn't take it out for a spin? Totally! Did we make the right choice? Absolutely. Our first loyalty is always to the client we're working for at the moment, and to distract ourselves with what seemed like a great opportunity would have turned out to be a huge mistake, especially in service to our client. Knowing when opportunities genuinely present themselves and when they offer nothing but distraction can be all the difference in the world. Creativity requires deep understanding of techniques and technologies, no matter what the discipline. But having the discipline to stay focused on a particular task can help keep a good project on course and ensure success.

--MS

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PROJECTS IN SLOW MOTION

Everything is faster these days. Faster than what? Faster than it was a moment ago. Project schedules of all types no longer abide by 40 hour work weeks. Design cycles barely give consumers enough time to even get comfortable with changes in product lines. Books come to market about major current events only weeks after they happen; follow-up films to Hollywood blockbusters come out like the changing of the seasons. Major retailers are starting to experiment with same-day delivery solutions.

That's why, when it really counts, when reputation and big money is on the line, I almost always turn to the file folder of ideas I've been gathering for years.

Sure, sure: when it's time to put ideas into action, I like to think we move like lightning. But as a general rule, faster isn't better in much the same way that lethargy won't ever get you where you're going either.

Do you ever eat a salad? Intellectually, you know that those vegetables took weeks if not months to grow. There's simply no way to grow them faster, even if you consume them in mere minutes. Were you ever a child who wondered about his or her grown-up life, years away? It took you years to become that grown-up. Sometimes the most meaningful projects happen in slow motion.

What I find interesting here is that slow motion does not have to mean boring. If you've ever watched the countdown for a rocket carrying astronauts, it takes place with deliberate, almost tedious precision. On the way to the big boom, the rocket masters even pause for built-in holds. The clock stops while lengthy checklists and evaluations take place all over the launch facility. No doubt the process could be expedited, but when human life is in jeopardy, the need for speed clearly pales. Perhaps it's not nearly as vital as that mortal component, but you might feel a similar feeling if vast sums of make-or-break capital are on the line, too. Go too fast, and you risk calamity. Failure is generally not an option.

My point is this: feel free to go quickly at whatever game you're playing. Go fast to compete; go fast to impress; go fast to get it done and out of the way. But go too fast at your own peril. Some things are supposed to take time. You can make a bottle of wine in just a few months, but most varieties benefit from appropriate aging.

--MS

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TOAST

 

The bread has edges, beyond which the peanut butter cannot go. But because the bread does have edges, toast made right will support peanut butter--or marmalade, or Nutella, or cream cheese--all the way out to those edges. The details matter, especially if you're preparing that toast for someone else.

What if you're making that toast for yourself? You can do it any way you like, of course. But consider the choice you have if you're making toast for yourself, all alone one morning, with nobody else around. I wonder if sometimes in the service of ourselves we think, "It's just for me. It really doesn't matter how it comes out, and it's just a piece of toast."

That's true to a degree. No one will know if you under-browned the bread or missed a corner with the raspberry jam. But standards begin with an internal adjudication, and the moment we begin equivocating about whether quality matters in private is the moment we begin eroding quality in public.

Sounds obsessive, doesn't it? Sounds a little nuts.

It doesn't have to become a boat anchor around the neck of your life. The point is that small gestures add up. In aggregate they begin to describe how we approach our days, how we think about thinking, how we regard an endeavor undertaken and a mission completed. Making toast should not become a complicated process. But next time you're about to coat a good piece of pumpernickel with butter and jam, notice the fine details around the perimeter. If it's for you, there's a moment's pleasure in knowing it's just the way you like it, however that may be. If it's for someone else, enjoy the fact that he or she will ever-so-slightly appreciate the care you took to do it right.

--MS

PS -- Yes, yes, here's where the good people of 1AU ask our dear readers to share what you've read with friends and colleagues. And here's the place where you think, "Oh, sure, one more imposition of my precious time." Well, we're asking. It's something we value above rubies, above gold: if you like an idea enough to give it a moment's thought, then consider giving it a measure of freedom. When you share an idea with another person, you release an idea to grow freely in the world.

Like what you see? Set it free.

ROCK 'N ROLL and MONSTER TRUCKS

Silence has it's place. Noise has it's place. They don't often belong in each other's space, and learning to respect the differences that separates each presents valuable fuel for invention and clear thinking.

Try it like this:

Ice cream is good. Pickles are good. Together? Not so good.

It's tricky. In terms of a creative process, the juxtaposition of disparate qualities often sparks life into a new idea. But generally I find the combination of disparate qualities something that must be undertaken with care. Driving a monster truck to a monastic Zen retreat strikes me as a philosophical discontinuity. It doesn't reconcile easily.

This all has to do with a process of making good aesthetic choices, at least superficially. But superficiality does not confer irrelevance. Superficial presentations of ourselves and our creative work are often the only interactions we will have with a majority of others. Presentation matters, and if you're hoping to present something to an audience beyond your spouse, your parents, and your children, you're going to need to polish it up.

But beneath the surface, we enter a dialogue about the nature of things--the essential, deep, honest nature of things. This is the book judged for what's beneath the cover. This is the person regarded for the content of his character rather than the color of his skin. This is why some software delights us, and some software exasperates us. This is why amateur performances of great music are not the same as great performances of great music. This is why paintings of ostensibly the same subject can have profoundly different merits. Transcendental truth presents hard to define boundaries. People of good intention can disagree intensely about the nature of an ordinary thing or idea. But my point is that in a world of seemingly effortless information transfer, and a seething churn of ideas and cultures, it's important that the potential for all combinations does not overwhelm good decision-making. Just because something is possible does not therefore mean it should be done. Pickles do not go well with ice cream.

And there it is: everything…is not everything. Discretion is not the same as prejudice. Decision is not the same as exclusivity. Merits of good invention spring from respectful evaluation of source material. Rock 'n roll is great…if you're in a rock 'n roll frame of mind. But to play it at a Zen retreat is to miss the innate nature of each thing.

Do I think there will never be a way for them to brush shoulders, rock music and zen meditation? Not at all. While nothing lasting about that particular pairing springs to mind (and I'm not clearing my afternoon to await an epiphany on this juxtaposition), I most certainly remain open to some unexpected, delicious frission. That's because a respect for each element individually affords the potential for new relationships. Respect for the essential nature of ingredients makes it possible to consider new combinations.

After that, anything's possible.

-MS

PS -- Yes, yes, here's where the good people of 1AU ask our dear readers to share what you've read with friends and colleagues. And here's the place where you think, "Oh, sure, one more imposition of my precious time." Well, we're asking. It's something we value above rubies, above gold: if you like an idea enough to give it a moment's thought, then consider giving it a measure of freedom. When you share an idea with another person, you release an idea to grow freely in the world. Like what you see? Set it free.

THE SHOW

If you do creative work of any kind, you've approached the moment of truth many times.

Performance day. Delivery. Showtime.

Months of work across multiple departments compress into a single shiny point, a captured spark inside a gleaming stone.

It's always the same, and it's always different. By the time something is finally ready to leave the workbench, creators knows every single pixel, every sound, every explanation and justification and reason and inspiration behind every molecular detail in what's about to be revealed. On small projects the coalesced energy presses gently, urging enthusiasm. But on big projects, the potential energy grows exponentially. The coming kinetic release threatens to break on the shore of the event like a tidal wave, like the San Andreas fault growling to tip Los Angeles into the hungry sea.

Oh, Sweet Experience! There's no better teacher for managing the rolling deck of the boat than having brought many, many of them in to shore before. But that doesn't mitigate the buzz. And make no mistake: there's always a buzz.

Everything can go wrong. It's vastly challenging to predict every single eventuality you're likely to encounter on the day of a big show. No matter how much you like to think you leave nothing to chance, variables have a way of creeping in. Generally big performances do not happen in locations of your own choosing, or your own control. That's the biggest source of unexpected drama. You're also likely showing your work, whatever format it may be, to people who are not specialists in your field. You're not showing to other painters, nor dancers, nor even caring school guidance counselors who will clap enthusiastically for every single kid who gets up at the spring talent show to belt out a song. In the real world, your audiences demand something that wows 'em, that moves 'em, that makes 'em think their money was worth spending with you. But caution: if you're thinking you might get away with a Music Man moment, think again. You're not going to engender warmth simply because your clients will see themselves immediately reflected in their so-very-wise commissions. You're going to need much more than that, and flim-flam gets you nowhere. You have to deliver the goods, and you know it.

The great pianist Vladimir Horowitz once said, "If I don't practice for a day, I know it. If I don't practice for two days, my wife knows it. If I don't practice for three days, the world knows it." I've always regarded this as a cautionary tale from a performance master. Coasting on talent and experience is never enough. Preparation and practice makes all the difference in the world, and there's no getting around it. And if…IF…you should be so lucky as to have generated a good idea to work with along the way, well, that never hurts either.

Assuming you're serious about your craft, there always comes a day when what you're working on needs to get seen. Whether you've been commissioned by a big corporate client or you're working on your magnum opus of a novel, there always comes a time. Practice and preparation will get you far; they're essential, and deadly serious. Yet real life is not a practice run. Like Han Solo said, "Going against the living? That's something else." Expect to be scrutinized, expect to be cross examined, expect to be dissected in a million different ways. You may have been working on this thing, whatever it is, for months, but to your audience, it only lives for the few minutes they get to experience it, and they don't really care about how hard it was to create.

Everything can go wrong, perhaps. But everything can go right, too. Walk carefully but confidently. Answer questions, but don't defend positions. Own your creations, but be generous is sharing them. Because if you've been honest about the work all along, and it really is something of value, then your big performance--and that's what it always is: a performance--will be the vehicle that helps convey your vision to eyes that do not know what to expect. It's through those eyes that you have a chance to reach someone else meaningfully.

That's why this moment matters, because, as you know, the eyes are the gateway to the soul.

--MS

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THE TROUBLE WITH LOOKING BEHIND-THE-SCENES

Back in the 1950s, Superman leaped tall buildings in…a theatrical harness with a couple of stage hands pulling rope through a block and tackle off set. But what did we see?

"Truth, justice, and the American way!"

Superman flew. He had to: people watching television decades ago saw it with their own eyes.

But that's television; we all know it's just make-believe, even if we tune in to lose ourselves intentionally in the story. Movies are a whole lot more immersive, just by means of working within more expansive boundaries and defining different expectations. But things are changing all over the land of make-believe, from the Province of Television to the Domain of Movies. None of our electronic fictions are precisely what they once were, and it isn't just because computer generated effects have replaced ropes and harnesses for our heroes.

Movies still command a certain measure of cultural attention, but not like they did as recently as twenty years ago. Arena- filling rock and roll bands have taken on profoundly different roles in the culture, too, as have books and other cultural events to a lesser degree. Even television no longer acts as the soothing zone of cerebral down-shifting that it used to be. Twenty years ago NBC's "must-see-TV" line-up held much of the country in thrall, provoking Friday morning office conversations that must have sapped a measurable portion of the nation's productivity.

The change came slowly, methodically, creeping in on catspaws. An easy cause for the change, obviously, was the advent of millions of new web-based ways for people to spend their time, distracting them from large, more widely shared events. The web and its handheld, wireless offspring further fragmented attention. But I believe one of the greatest factors in a new cultural ennui is the corollary to infinite choice. Infinite choice demands an inevitable qualitative discount on well made work just to keep the endless pipes full. As a result, theatrical curtains that used to hide how everything in the world was made have suddenly parted.

Typically we enter into a partnership with performing arts, or any work of art, for that matter. Even if a rock star makes it look like they're just wildly gyrating, the reality is always so much more prosaic: hours of rehearsal, endless practice all alone to perfect complex riffs, preproduction planning, and on and on and on. The partnership with an audience is about suspension of disbelief. We dream about our media idols because the illusion of so much charisma and power and performance excellence is one of ease and effortlessness. We want our magicians to levitate, even as we know that gravity never takes a holiday. We want what they seem to have.

Ever watch a cooking show? Millions do. Cooking shows teach you everything, even if you never intend to cook what they're showing. Most people never try the stuff being made in state-of-the-art studio kitchens. But expectations rise by watching these things, nonetheless, and with those expectations puffing up like soufflés, so do the minimum requirements for general satisfaction. Is this bad? Probably not. An educated public, no matter what the subject, is a better social body. But when everything is ordinary, it's harder to hold an audience's attention.

Lower production costs and an effectively infinite number of media outlets means that humanity's innate curiosity can now be effectively sated for any subject at all. Behind-the-scenes programs, blogs, podcasts, photo galleries, magazine articles, and more can teach you the secrets of just about any subject or endeavor you may want to know. Curious about how to play a diminished C chord on a guitar? Check. Want to know about the manufacturing process of fast food french fries? Yep: that's available too.

It's a funny thing. I like having access to all sorts of information about how the world works. I like knowing how papayas grow just like I also want to be able to look up how to properly place a comma in a sentence.

But endless informational resources about endless subjects is not the same as going behind-the-scenes. Behind-the-scenes programming removes the necessary suspension of disbelief required for theater. Just like audiences still go to see magicians even though they know it's a trick, they go to the movies knowing that the stories they're watching are built by armies of people working for months in movie making businesses. The compact audiences metaphorically sign with creators not to see how it's done facilitates necessary disbelief. The fact is, Superman only makes sense if we believe he can fly. If we see the ropes, we all laugh; it ruins the magic. The moment we go back stage and see that there really isn't a bottomless pit into hell but instead just a wooden trapdoor, we lose a bit of the surprise and emotional connection with regard to the plight of the character and his our her narrative.

And it's a tough thing, steeped as we all are in infinite information. We all have access to trailers and magazine articles and web sites that reveal tons of details about how something gets made. But I suppose my thesis is this: treat behind-the-scenes information with respect, lest you no longer appreciate anything. It's one thing to learn all about a magician's life; it's another thing entirely to learn how he makes the tiger disappear. As soon as you know where that tiger goes, you'll not only stop caring, but you'll be more likely to click on something newer, something incrementally more scintillating, and your own attention will continue to fragment.

Fragment it too much, and then nothing matters at all.

-MS

PS -- Yes, yes, it's always the same old request here at the bottom of the blog. "Please share with your friends if you like it...yadda, yadda, yadda." There are even the little buttons around here where you can post it to Facebook, Tweet it far and wide, distribute it all sorts of ways. But you know what? You COULD! And you know what that would do? That would make us SMILE.

FIGHTER PILOT VS MISSION PLANNER

…or, "You can't have one without the other".

Shortly after a recent production meeting, I was talking with one of our animators. He usually says a lot even when he says a little, but his brain is always working in the background. Smart, smart, smart, the guy focuses like a laser, works really hard. In short, he's good! So I was thoroughly fascinated when he said, "I'm really glad I do what I do for you instead of what you do for me. I'd much rather be a fighter pilot than the guy who's in charge of where to send the planes."

There's a reason we're a good team.

The truth is, I really love working with people who deeply care about what they do without me having to worry about them hating what they do or trying to do what I do. Sounds obvious, but as we all know work teams are not always harmonious.

He's the kind of guy who genuinely feels like he's doing his best when he can deeply dig in to a discrete assignment. As an animator, his creative life is intensely technical, even as it aims to deliver something that doesn't look technical at all. To viewers, the final result of his labor should be visually effortless, conveying whatever story or feeling it was designed to impart. Viewers doesn't care how it was made, and nor should they. But as a producer or director I most certainly do!

What I've come to appreciate, and what I love best about working with artisans of all sorts, is that inside a discrete assignment, there's no singular way to solve any specific creative problem. I turn to experts to do specific things because I can count on novel ideas to get proposed, no matter how specifically or clearly I think I'm defining the task. I also turn to experts because their expertise is what empowers their own creative contributions to be special.

Now here's the other side of the equation, and try not to flinch 'cause this could sting a little.

You may be a master producer, director, civil engineer, or flower arranger, but the moment you work with any other living person, you've got to accept that you're going to have the living, breathing influence of that other person invested in the output. Even if you give precise instructions -- "Make it powder blue, two meters long, five centimeters thick, and carved from aluminum"-- there will be inevitable surprises. Yes, you most certainly can demand a revision if work delivered doesn't fit your inner vision, and compromising on vision is generally not something you should easily accept. But you're a fool if you don't at least consider the alternative solution presented to you based on your initial assignments. If you really respect your team, you will enter in to a pas de deux with each player, individually. Even if you don't like each other personally, the pursuit of the work itself should be as if you were both trying to have an intimate conversation while walking the wrong way against street traffic on a crowded sidewalk. It should be as if you're making every effort to stay close enough through the endless oncoming distractions, internal and external, to stay on the subject, keep the conversation going, reach your destination in mental sync and understanding.

Are you nervous that I'm suggesting that everyone should have the same level of authority, that everyone is equal on a team? Far from it. The director decides the movie. The architect decides where to place the windows. But the great ones listen closely to the key grips and building engineers. One of the things I respect about the fighter pilot vs mission manager metaphor is that properly compartmentalized, both players each get a positive boost from doing their specific jobs right. They both may be able to pilot a plane, just as they both may be able to make an overall plan, but left to pursue excellence in their individual dharmas, a cohesive team becomes capable of greatness.

Here's where the strategy trips people up. When the pilot doesn't appreciate the challenges of the planner, trust erodes, and the mission suffers. Where the planner doesn't listen to the realities of flying by night, low to the ground, under fire, the planner compromises mission success overall. If you're going to work with a team--and face it: in the modern world everyone works with teams of varying size and scale--you've got to build multidirectional respect. Without it the team fall apart, or at best only achieves middling results. If you can't find a way to respect the various members of your team, you either need to find another team, or quit doing what you're doing.

--MS

PS — Have something to say? Leave us a comment! Don’t want to miss the latest from 1AU? Sign up on our mailing list. (Cool email like ours is better than that boring stuff that clutters your inbox, right?) Consider yourself a fan? Please re-Tweet us, post to Facebook, or otherwise forward us to your friends. Cool? Yep: cool.

IMPROVISATION

Improvisation: that's when you have an idea and you make up the next bit based on what you just did a moment ago, right?

I bet you do this a lot. We all do. But often people mistake improvisation for "making it up as you go along". No doubt there are elements of this in all improvisation, but artists know something intuitively that onlookers may discount. Lots of practice making things up leads to better results when you've got to perform.

We're heading into presidential debate season and no matter which side you support, keep one small corner of your brain open to the inevitable display of improvisational footwork from both candidates. They've both practiced prior to the debates; we all know that. They both have their standard buzz lines and tropes and stylistic flourishes; we know that too. But we don't know precisely what they're going to say to the inevitably unexpected events that arise and neither do they. They will improvise.

Each of us improvises when we reach the next moment in our lives. Do you think every surgeon knows precisely what they're going to see when they cut someone open just because they've had twenty years of training? Does every NASCAR driver know what's going to happen on lap 217, even though the job can be reduced to "drive fast and turn left"?

So, what's not improvisation? I could argue that all things fit the improvisational spirit, considering that life will eternally provoke unexpected moments for "making it up as you go along". But some things aren't so fluid. Some things are genuinely predictable. Monthly bills to pay, nightly dishes to wash, weekly reports to write for your boss: none of these fit the spirit of improvisation very much. But sometimes moments of inspiration springing from deep understanding of these tasks leads to invention and innovation, and the first time you try them out…voila: improvisation. Things only become codified, even ossified, after they've been done a million times.

When you give a speech, you're not improvising. You're presenting something that's gone through revision, trial, testing, and rehearsal (and if you're not, you definitely want to call us, 'cause we provide all sorts of great coaching services!) When you're building a model rocket from a balsa and cardboard kit, you're not improvising either. But the moment you're not sure what to do at the podium when one of the spotlights inexplicably goes out, or you discover that the rocket kit came with a cracked stabilizer, you've suddenly been thrust into the realm of improvisation.

This is not comfortable for everyone. Not everyone likes to riff on a theme. Some people feel much, much better working from a set of known data, from a cookbook, or a sheet of printed music. This is not only okay, it's valuable. I rely on concrete thinkers to do concrete things. I demand it of myself, in fact. Cooking, writing a novel, flowcharting the architecture for new software all require disciplined thinking and rigorous labor. They cannot be done well without a focused mind. But focused thinking is not the same as rigid thinking. The value of improvisation is being able to notice an unexpected opportunity, seize it, and not get tripped up by the inevitable surprises.

Undisciplined improvisation is just making it up and you go along. The difference in being a good improviser is the ability to impose the ballast of discipline even as you tack with ungovernable winds. Good improvisation is being able to take cues from known rules, briefly experienced inputs, precedents and even accidents, and not get thrown. Great improvisation is being able to take those elements and turn them into something breathtaking. Done well it's effortless; it just flows.

--MS

PS -- Have something to say? Leave us a comment! Don't want to miss the latest from 1AU? Sign up on our mailing list. (Cool email like ours is better than that boring stuff that clutters your inbox, right?) Consider yourself a fan? Please re-Tweet us, post to Facebook, or otherwise forward us to your friends. Cool? Yep: cool.

SPHERE TALK TODAY!

A hundred million years from now, archaeologists will marvel at works like LOOP and wonder how they did it! But you don't have to wait until you're a fossil to find out. Vicky Weeks will present a special session at today's JHSM Symposium called DECONSTRUCTED: Science On a Sphere. Join her in the Africa Hall upstairs at the museum at 10:30, and then come downstairs to see our latest movie called LOOP, playing in competition this year. Questions or comments? Drop us a note!

Want a sneak peak? Check out the trailer to LOOP here.

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