Creativity

Creativity + Social Media = a REAL Revolution!

The exploding growth of social media tools & sites is changing how everyone does everything.

Are Artists different? Should marketers, news and casual conversation be the dominant content using these tools?

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFZ0z5Fm-Ng

Slides and good images of visual art work are still important, but should their first destination be a gallery owner’s desk or the jury of an immense and pricey to attend craft show?

Head shots and a good reel are as important as ever for actors, but are casting calls and agents really the first place to be showing your work?

Is the default course for a first time producer to mortgage their home to produce their film and submit it to large film festival today?

What does your social “footprint” look like? How wide is your “net”? If you’re paying attention, what action steps are you taking?

In the 70s and 80s a common conversation in the arts and media was about how democratized media was becoming because of the “cheap” availability of video cameras. Almost nothing happened because the distribution infrastructure remained in the control of broadcast networks. The same has been the case for the visual arts and most forms of expression.

Art is the first technology! Without creative insight nothing moves forward. Distribution mechanisms are now truly open. Broadcast and distribution is playing catch up to what is trending on the net. Marketers and news is being delivered via net dominating more traditional distribution.

The only thing restricting creatives from dramatically increasing their influence and availability of their work is lack of familiarity with technology, and a choice to not exploit this technology. Reasons include everything from lack of time, lack of money, feeling it’s too commercial or just not being comfortable blowing your own horn.

Maybe these reasons have merit, maybe they don’t. In practical terms judging that gets us no where.

Broadcast and distribution is playing catch up to what is trending on the net. Marketers and news is being delivered via net dominating more traditional distribution.

This isn’t going away. This is how everything is getting done. The real choice is to either learn how to utilize it or surrender to those who are using it.

When the internet and television merge, as they already are doing, we’ll have lost an opportunity. Everyone learning the use of these technologies now has such an immense opportunity over those not using them that it’s hard to verbalize. If you’re reading this, you’re already ahead of the game and I congratulate you.

Please leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Production Management = Creative Success

Some pride themselves on their ability to multitask, but we really can only do one thing at a time. To manage more than that means simply breaking tasks down and accomplishing parts of tasks as we can, when we can until the entire task is complete. Human psychology tells us we can manage to keep 5-7 items or tasks in our head at any given moment. You can probably develop strategies to expand that to a hundred or more, but you’re going to start losing track and letting things slip.

My preference is to simplify things and take steps to avoid trying to do more than one thing at a time. I delegate managing and tracking the rest of the handful of tasks necessary for ongoing projects to a low tech solution…paper. I know! So old school.

When it comes to creative expression, producing work on a regular basis means time management to allow for both inspiration and production and making it practical to accomplish all the myriad tasks that might be necessary to produce multiple pieces regularly.

Managing your time and these tasks is a challenge and tends to require specific tactics depending on the materials you use and the kind of work you do.

Do you have a workable method for breaking your work down, parceling your time and tracking where your projects are at any given moment?

If you do, you know how important it is to your productivity and success. If you haven’t given it much thought it’s probably the single biggest thing you can do right now to leverage your own productivity.

How do you manage your productivity?