Cinema Cemetery

Why are there no VFX Unions?

We’ve all been there but we all have different ways of describing it.

Art block, burnout, low motivation, depression, etc.

As creators, we pour ourselves into our work and sometimes it just doesn’t feel like there’s anything left to give. At times like these a blank canvas feels like a death sentence. For a lot of us, our jobs depend on our ability to produce regardless of how we’re feeling personally. Fortunately, there are a number of things you can do to not only inspire you but to make you a better artist, filmmaker, and storyteller as a result.

Like most complex problems, there’s no silver bullet here. Only a series of good habits that will benefit you with long term use.

Diversify Your Friend Group

The first thing you can do to better position yourself for inspiration is to examine your friend group. Do most of your close friends work in the same industry or have the same interests? Are they mostly of similar ages, genders, or backgrounds? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then it’s time to add some diversity into who you surround yourself with. It’s so easy to fall into a comfort zone, but a friendship with someone with different interests and life experiences can provide an incredible amount of inspiration! The easiest way to approach this might be to connect with some distant family members, hanging out with the weird trucker uncle with a heart of gold or spending some quality time with your estranged grandmother. 

Why is this important? Well, getting to know someone who grew up long ago is like stumbling across a time traveler! Their views on modernity as well as memories of times past are worth their weight in gold, once that person is gone they take all of that with them. By knowing them, you becoming a living record in a way. This can go a long way towards inspiring you to create stories and characters that you may had never conjured previously.

The same goes for people from different countries, racial backgrounds, genders, and professions.

Finding new people is awkward for some, but it’s not out of reach. Join a book club at your library, pick up a sport or a class at your local rec center or community center, get to know your neighbor, there are options all around! Face to face is best for this kind of life-enhancing inspiration-quest as digital relationships can become isolating and artificial if not carefully handled.

Practical Time Travel

Outside of the aforementioned befriending of a time traveler, why not travel back through time yourself? I’m talking about museums, art and history! Sometimes the best cure for getting stuck in the present is to see a small slice of where we’ve been. Bring a camera and a notebook, take pictures and notes about everything that sparks something within you. When you get home, do some light writing or sketching...you never know what will bubble to the surface.

Shatter Your Comfort Zone

To find inspiration, many people return to their favorite films or music. I think this is a terrible idea. Creative block is an obstacle that requires out of the box thinking, if you are returning to your box of a comfort zone then you probably won’t find the solution you’re looking for. If you normally watch action movies, look up what some of the best romance films of all time are and watch a couple of those. If you only listen to hip hop, give the hits of Johnny Cash a spin. Taste is learned and if we never force ourselves to eat new foods, experience new cultures, or take in unfamiliar art then we never grow as people or artists. 

Get out of your comfort zone, go to an opera, go see an orchestra then a pop concert for tweens then jump into a deathmetal moshpit. Experience something new and try to experience it in order to find some nugget of purity that you can take away from it. There’s a fanbase for everything. Play detective, find out why people love something. Going into it and mocking that with which you are unfamiliar won’t benefit you in any way. I get it, confrontation is uncomfortable. Why would you subject yourself to things you have no appreciation of? Why do we force young children to eat their vegetables? It’s good for you. A quest for inspiration should never be comfortable, if it was then you wouldn’t be stuck with creative block.

Art Block is an Excuse

You’re not gonna like this one but the truth, well, sometimes it hurts.

Creative block, art block, writers block...it’s an excuse.

Yes it’s real and yes I just spent the majority of the video outlining three great ways to sow the seeds of block-shattering inspiration but...creative block is still not an excuse for getting nothing done. You can’t show up at the workplace and tell your boss “Gee sorry dude, not really feeling inspired today”! You’ll be out of a job pretty quickly with that attitude. It’s even worse if you are your own boss, not only do you not respect your clients but you don’t respect yourself? That’s going to lead to some pretty severe depression!

So what do professionals do when they encounter a block?

They plow through it. So you feel like everything you’re creating is garbage, that’s fine, make garbage! Feel like everything you’re writing is the worst? Nobody cares! Vomit words on the page, you can fix them later. What’s important right now is that they exist. Blank canvas staring you down? Cover it with paint, trash the thing, try to recreate some masterworks. The world won’t miss you when you’re gone so don’t start being gone now.

The big secret isn’t a secret. Always. Keep. Moving.

Inspiration will come and go, talent will fluctuate, and motivation comes in waves.

You can only control those so much.

Sometimes you’ll be equipped with a wrecking ball to shatter the walls before you, other times, you’re going to have to dismantle the wall brick by brick using nothing but your own forehead as a hammer.

It’s not pretty, it’s not easy, but it IS the difference between an Artist and a hobbyist.

-Josh Evans