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My Howl

Finding Your Howl by Jonathon Flaum tells the story of a red fox who had been taken into captivity for protection and later placed back into the wild. The wolf’s name was Mumon and he decided to search the forests for his howl, so that he could lead his pack and to help them survive. During his search Mumon finds a deer and chases it. The deer talks to Mumon asking him how he knows he is able to take down something so much bigger than himself. Mumon answers he just knows. Mumon lunges at the deer, killing it and starts to eat it. Mumon feels remorse for the deer, wishing he didn’t have to kill. Mumon starts talking to a raven who tells him that he must not feel shame for being what he is. The raven explains that he can hear the howl, but Mumon can not because he is holding back. Mumon started running at full speed and feel his old self stripping away. Eventually Mumon runs into a farmer who shoots and kills him. Mumon then sees  people dances and drumming around a fire. Mumon realizes that the beat of the drum is coming from his own heart. Mumon walks into the fire and howls. He realizes that the tribesmen are actually his own pack and they let out with a howl of their own. 

This story explains that if we decide to find our freedom-howl-then there is a lot we must give up and change to do so. We must separate ourselves from the world we know and from our friends. We must do things that we never thought we could or would ever have to do. We may mistake this process for death, just like when Mumon was killed by the hunter, but it is actually our souls finding freedom and discovering the animal inside. This is not a quick process. You can not just wish for freedom and find it instantly. You must do things you thought you would never have to do in order to discover what you want. 

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WAYS TO GET IDEAS

2: IMMERSE

I disagree with Ditkoff’s suggestion about immersion. This is a valid point that he makes, but I do not believe that it is for everyone, or at least not for me. I can see the benefits for both the employee and the employers by giving workers time to work on their own projects but I don’t believe that immersion works for everyone. For instance if I am trying to write a script for a movie, I do not sit in a quiet room with a pen and stack of paper. If I  am trying to write a script I need to do other things, I need to be inspired by my surrounding. I take pieces of events and compile them together. I take song meanings, conversations with friends, bits of dreams and turn that into a script. I do believe the some people need to have complete focus and immerse themselves into a project for it to get done, but I am not one of those people. 

3: TOLERATE AMBIGUITY

I strongly agree with Ditkoff’s opinion tolerating ambiguity. If you want to accomplish something, you wont be able get it exactly right on the first attempt. No one is perfect and if you want to create something you can do it, but you have to do it wrong before you know how to do it. If you want to write a song, write a song and then work from there. Learn from your first attempt, if it did not work out the way you hoped the first time then you need to ask yourself what you need to change for the second time. I implement this idea all the time in my own life. When I am trying to write a scene or a piece of dialogue I will write it over and over again. I will have some drafts where everything is essentially the same except for a few words and I will have some where the two scenes are complete opposites. Then I look at all of drafts and figure out which one works best for what I am trying to accomplish with the story. 

10: HANG OUT WITH DIVERSE GROUPS OF PEOPLE

The other idea that Ditkoff brings up is the idea that if you want to breakthrough you have to hang out with diverse groups of people. If you work with only one group of people you can perfect your skills working in that group, but eventually you will reach a point that you can not get past. If you work with different people you will get new ideas and a new set of eyes on how something should be done which can help if it is successful or a failure. If it successful you learn about a new way of doing something that you thought could have only been done one way. If you fail you learn that the way you were doing something was more successful and you should stick with it until something else that you can try comes along. In media for instance if you only work with one group of people your projects should get better for a while until your group gets to the best of its abilities and there is no where else to go. If everyone in the group works with other groups then each person can add things like maybe we should try this because it worked for us or lets definitely not do this because it just didn’t work. 

Prompt 12:

What “failed experiment” or unexpected outcome might be interesting for you to reconsider? Who else might you invite to participate in this effort?

Over the summer my friends and I tried to make a sitcom and put it on YouTube. The production was what seemed to be a huge flop. We spent weeks writing on a script. We were all happy with the script and we all thought that we really had something here, something that could be successful. It was not successful. We never started taping anything. None of us knew what to do. We had no idea how to tape a scene or how to direct. We did not of a camera to record any scenes and we had no editing equipment to edit our nonexistent shots with. During this upcoming summer though we are going to try and actually make this “failed experiment” work. Now that I, and a few other of my friends, have some experience on how a production is suppose to go we will try and use what we learned to make this production actually work. We plan on bringing in other people we have met who are more familiar with working a camera and using audio to help us take our script and turn it into a video. We also plan on getting some new people to help us out with the script so we can get other people’s opinions on what we have so far. 

Blog Assignment 1A Who influences you as a Creative Person?

Wes Anderson is a creature of habit. He will use the same actors and actresses throughout his movies. He uses similar shots in all of his movies. And he always shows and example of contrast and affinity in his movies. In the movie Darjeeling Limited there is a lot of contrast and affinity with the brothers. The brothers are all wearing suits and they wear the same outfits throughout the entire film. Anderson uses this to express that the three are brothers, since he can not show a similarity with their physically features since the actors are not actually brothers. Wes Anderson does express contrast though with the brothers because of the way they act. Each brother has a characteristic about them that shows the differences between them. These characteristics appears to show how different the brothers truly are from each other, but at the end when they are reunited with their mother you find out that each characteristic they portray is something they inherited from their own mother’s personality. Another example of contrast in the film is the fact that the three brothers wear no other colors besides black, white and gray. Jason Schwartzman, and Adrien Brody both have dark black hair and eyes, Owen Wilson is the only brother who has blonde hair but his face is covered with bandages so the audience focuses more on the white bandages than the blonde hair. Wes Anderson puts these brothers in a world filled with vibrant colors such as burnt orange and turquoise and all the other people seen have different skin tones. Wes Anderson uses this to show contrast between the brothers and the world they live in to express that their upbringing has caused them to be very distant with the world around them.

The movie In Bruges is written and directed by Martin McDonagh. McDonagh uses Text and Subtext throughout the entire film. There is hardly anything that a character does or says that lacks misdirection. The story follows two hit men who appear to be waiting for instructions from their boss about the next job. As the movie goes on, the audience finds out that Colin Farrell’s character is a hit man who botched his first job and killed a kid. His boss played by Ralph Fiennes who plans on killing Farrell for killing a kid. There is also a midget who is acting in a movie. McDonagh makes the audience believe that the only use for this character is for comic relief during depressing character discovery. At the end of the movie though Fiennes goes to kill Farrell with exploding bullets and instead hits the midget in the head. Fiennes looks at the body and thinking it is a kid puts his gun to his head and says you have to stick with your principles. Comic relief is constantly used as a misdirection in the movie. Towards the beginning of the movie Farrell’s character is sitting outside a tower. An American tourist walks up and asks him if he saw the view, Farrell says he doesn’t care for it, but its not like the tourist will ever know. The tourist asks him why and Farrell tells him its because he is fat and there are a lot of narrow stairs. The audience would take this as an example of comic relief but at the end of the movie Fiennes tries to go into to tower but because a tourist had a heart attack the tower is closed. Fiennes then kills the guide at the tower which shows Fiennes anger and love of killing. It also proves that the scene was not just for comedic relief. 

A recent example of film that has created inspiration is the film Black Swan, directed by Darren Aronofsky. Darren Aronofsky uses tension and release in his controversial psychological thriller. Aronofsky puts the audience in a roller coaster situation. There are two types of tension used in this film; sexual and a sense of fear. Natalie Portman’s character, Nina must abandon her previous ways of life to be able to play the Black Swan in her ballet company. To do that she must explore new sexual boundaries. In one scene Nina is in her bed and she starts masturbating. While this is going on looming music starts playing and become louder and the camera zooms up on her face, and shows her masturbating and then the tension releases when Nina looks to the left and sees her mom sleeping. Nina also has sexual experiences with her dance rival played by Mila Kunis, but the tension is reveled when she wakes up and finds out that it is all a dream. This brings the audience deeper into the film and shows the changes that Natalie Portman’s character is going through. Aronofsky also builds tension through the dreams Nina is having. In one scene Nina is picking at skin by her nail and then starts tearing off the skin around her arm and hand and the scene releases when she wakes up. This shows how Nina is changing and she is shedding her skin while she is being replaced by the “black swan.” 

Link to Monique Wingard's Blog

Monique Wingard's Blog