Sparking Curiosity, When Less is More
This weekend I was working on video edits for my Park Project Global series and came to a roadblock. The script leapt off the page but when the audio was paired with the video it felt dense and tedious. I felt like I was at a creative impasse.
Intellectually I know I’ve managed to find solutions to this type of problem, but I thought to myself, this time I made a mistake. This idea won’t work. What was I thinking.
The Way Through a Creative Impasse
With this type of impasse you can give up or move forward.
I decided to move forward by taking a pause. I left the project and decided to move on to other work, letting my brain work on the solution in the background.
Time and time again my most difficult creative impasses have not been solved by forcing myself to sit in front the computer, or through concerted effort. Instead they were solved overnight after a good night’s sleep, walks in the park, long bike rides, chopping vegetables and many other tasks that let the brain rest.
See how sleeping can help with creative problem solving: Blog
The Art of Trimming
The process of creation often involves collecting information, synthesize it and shaping it.
At each stage of a project we are collecting and culling.
The Obregón Edit
In editing one of four Park Project Global videos about the history of public parks in four medians in Mexico City. For each That meant researching history, public policies, public figures, and art history. The culmination of this research is an end card, which I liken to a museum plaque that accompanies a piece of art on the way of a museum.
The Obregón edit led me down long paths of understanding the high level history of the formation of Mexico. The challenge with this piece was the end card, my version of a museum card describing the significance of each video and providing an insight into the politics of each park or public space.
On the street, names after the 46th president of Mexico, Álvaro Obregón, like many public figures, is quite complicated. He fought the Diaz dictatorship in the Mexican Revolution of the 1910s but was later suspected of calling for the assassination of three of the men he fought beside (his links to the assassination of Pancho Villa is mention in the US Library of Congress). And this is the tip of my research iceberg.
So, how to condense this information and have it make any sense?
Instead of attempting to create a complete understanding of Obregón and his role in history, I called out four facts.
He was the 46th President of Mexico (1920-24)
He wore a fake beard during a talk in 1920
He is thought to have played a role in the assassination of the hero Pancho Villa (source: US Library of Congress)
He was assassinated in 1928 by a Roman Catholic because of his land reform policies
What does this achieve?
When I look at the intention of this series, I am not a historian and I my audience doesn’t come to this work for a history lesson.
What I am interested in is breaking down our hero worship, helping us question the heroes that are placed in public, and question the histories that we ignore or are not obvious by a casual glace at the names and statues that exist in our public spaces.
My first end card explained the history and twists and turns in detail. But editing the card down to these four facts shows that Obregón as a person whose actions were not universally heroic.
The Earthquake Edit
A second example where sharing less information created more space for curiosity is a video on the Parque Mexico.
I had collected an interview and footage that both related to the Parque Mexico. As I do in this series, I wanted to make a collage of the audio story and images I had collected.
The interview spoke about the 2017 earthquake, how the younger generation didn’t have the same experience as those who were in the city in 1985, how the people came together to help pull people from a collapsed building and then later in the park to gather supplies to send to people in need, and this individuals experience in the park knowing that when he walks his god in the park he is surrounded by neighbors who will help each other in an emergency.
The words on the paper were jumped off the page but pared with the images from the park in 2019 they dragged.
To fix the problem I had to remove backstory, details about the 1985 earthquake and some of the details about the event as it unfolded. Those details worked as a written piece but slowed the video.
I had to move the story forward to place it in the park, where we hear about the goodwill of the people bringing water and medicines for those in need. Then, when we see images of a mix of wealthy and working class people in the park today the story is more powerful.
We also see these people as being a part of the “goodwill machine” and we get a sense of how in this time of crisis locals bridged social, economic and class divides for the common good.
This might even help the audience see their neighbors differently, maybe remembering times when they were helped by strangers.
Editing to Spark Curiosity
I see the creative storytelling process as a spiral of going wide and then going narrow. We collect our thoughts and ideas, then we sculpt them, giving them shape, weight and meaning.
Often it is the final trimming that brings the story to life.
If you are at an impasse, take some time away from your story, and when you come back with fresh eyes, see what you can remove. Often that is the best way to allow your audience to see what you see and to spark curiosity so people want to learn more.
I’m currently offering Complimentary Curiosity Coaching Sessions, where I help you remove creative obstacles and identity your next step toward sharing your work.
Sign Up Here: Curiosity Sessions