Until about 15 years ago, I wouldn’t have used the adjective ‘creative’ to describe myself. That changed when an unexpected sequence of events culminated in some almost unbelievable and extremely gratifying accomplishments.
It probably started when I created my own blog. Then my spouse insisted that I take the class ‘Intro to acting for adults’. That class piqued my interest in improvisation. This in turn motivated me to hang out at the renowned Loose Moose Theatre and learn from the best. I made friends with people who were creating stories on stage out of thin air. These same people were also making other forms of content. Plays, children’s theatre, illustrations, music, video shorts, even movies and television shows.
I found myself surrounded by creative people who were proving to me on a weekly basis that there’s no point keeping an idea inside of you. You have to unleash it and see what happens. Wonderful, magical things happen. It took a while, but that ethos started to have an effect on me.
Some very dear friends of mine asked if I would be willing to re-work the script from a famous scene in their favourite movie and transform it into an intimate wedding-like event. The version of myself from even five years prior would have been terrified to even consider it, but the current version of me said “Yes!”. I’m no Wes Anderson (he wrote the movie in question), but I think the finished product was clever, and it allowed for group participation to boot. I had a blast unleashing it on the assembled guests.
At work, I was helping a department produce training content for online delivery, and we found that the total collection of even publicly available material left us wanting. I concluded that the best way to solve the problem was to create our own in-house short film using our own employees as performers. I’m glad that they went along with my idea, because the movie was extremely well received.
An organization where I teach part-time asked their instructors to help promote their courses using social media. I decided to go one better and imagined that a fun video or two about taking their courses could potentially go viral, and that would drive traffic to their website. I recruited volunteers from my improvisation circle, and we made a few proof-of-concept videos, which, I’m happy to report, went over better than I could have imagined. They haven’t quite gone ‘viral’ yet, but the concept really opened everyone’s eyes to the potential of guerrilla multimedia as a promotional tool.
What may not be obvious from my story, is that I am not a professional script writer. Neither am I an experienced video producer, or director, or cinematographer, or editor. But I didn’t let that stop me. We made mistakes and we learned from them.
My point? We all have it in us to create. But for many of us, it’s an untapped resource that we seem to go out of our way to keep hidden. This is a huge mistake. The world needs more original content. So, I present a challenge to you. Just create something.
Karl Plesz
Your Productivity Guru
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