ZEBRAS ONLY WHEN NECESSARY

Horses look similar, right?

There's an expression from the world of medicine when a doctor is trying to diagnose a beguiling or unexplainable ailment. "When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras." It's pretty clever. If a patient comes in with a runny nose, the odds are he or she has a cold rather than some sort of respiratory infection from an exotic tropical bug.

Are there respiratory infections from exotic tropical bugs?  Absolutely. That's why you want medical professionals  with a deep knowledge  of what's possible and the tenacity to stay with a problem until they resolve a cause. But just as importantly, it's vital to go to a doctor who won't over-prescribe treatments, especially for problems beyond the scope of what he or she is dealing with.

In almost every case, creative enterprises  can benefit from a similar philosophy. Are there opportunities where sophisticated special-effects must come into play, or gyro-stabilized cameras need to be mounted on high-performance helicopters? (And if you're thinking of a project  that absolutely has to use one of those, PLEASE feel free to get in touch with us immediately!) Of course there are. But most of the time it's possible to deliver beautiful, arresting work at a reasonable budget because anything more complex wouldn't make sense for the assignment. Most of the time horses will do nicely.

Do we like stretching out with sophisticated, wildly complex flights of fancy? Yeah baby: believe it, we do. Are we capable of running with zebras? Yep: check our reel if you want to know more. But most of the time the goal is simpler than the entire range of deployable options. Elegant solutions rarely present themselves dressed in great complexity. The fact is, it's often easier to imagine wildly complex  solutions  then sleek and simple ones. Those complex solutions come with huge risks, big costs, and lots of sleeplessness. Are those reasons to avoid the power moves? Not a chance; when you need a zebra, you need a zebra. But I find this decision process is something that gets better with practice. As long as a creative person remains open to the possibility that a project might need big muscle,  he or she will likely feel more at ease making confident moves without all the exotic frippery. When your movie calls for a herd of zebras, have the guts to bring them in. But when the big cinematic scene concerns a tense conversation at an office water cooler, have the good sense to leave zebras out of the shot. You may worry that clients won't ever get to know how much power you can muster if you never show it off, but I've come to believe the opposite is true. Great power comes from the ability to deploy it when necessary, without the pressures of nervous egos to prompt decisions motivated by the wrong reasons.

--Michael Starobin

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SPEAKING AT THE FRONT OF THE ROOM

Public speaking can focus the mind in a singularly powerful way. In preparing for a public talk, a speaker must not only organize his or her thoughts, but must do so in a way that makes them crystal clear to an audience who hasn't heard them before. If the speaker prepares properly, that process will reveal flaws in logical arguments, examples that may not convey proper authority or power, and dramatic beats that do not make audience pulses quicken on cue. Preparation and rehearsal are vital to the enterprise because the goal, of course, is to move your audience.

Public speaking can play with your head, too. A great talk given once can convince you that you're the keeper of something profound, a seer, a visionary. A great talk given repeatedly can gradually inure you the hard work it takes to keep presenting it afresh each and every time you present it. Remember, the next audience has not yet heard what the last audience heard. The job of a speaker is to make it fresh and new each and every time.

I'm reminded that so much public speaking relies on electronic media these days. It's probably an unavoidable phenomenon. In a visually structured world, the power of images to amplify a message cannot be ignored. But to cede all of a message's power to smart pictures usually dilutes the message itself and disrespects the process of designing those images. If you're going to use pictures, develop them in concert with your talk, lest you bolt them on as an afterthought and start to believe that "giving your audience something to look at" is a good idea. Once your audience thinks that your pictures at least give them something to do while you drone on, you can safely count yourself among the walking dead at the front of the room.

Which leads to the most obvious thing that so many, many speakers miss. Say something that matters. It's not enough to be an expert in a subject. Whatever you do be sure to think hard about what you're going to say and how you're going to say it. If you're message is ordinary, boring, irrelevant, or otherwise not very engaging, it will mean even less to your audience. That's why, to bring this blog back to the beginning, rehearsal matters so much. In rehearsal you uncover the merits of what you want to communicate and the way you plan to do so. When you practice it like you're doing the real thing, you can't hide the sour notes, and you can savor the parts that sing out.

--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

Or follow the movie on Twitter at #waterfalls

Or, y'know, follow me on Twitter @michaelstarobin

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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

Or follow the movie on Twitter at #waterfalls

Or, y'know, follow me on Twitter @michaelstarobin

Or, follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/1auglobalmedia

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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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