Perfection is Overrated

I don't know if everyone feels this way, but I've always felt like my instinct when I'm creating something is that I have to make it perfect. Everything needs to go exactly as planned and look or sound flawless, because that's what will give you the best result, right?

Well, not always. Something that I've been starting to experiment with is having my artistic projects not work out perfectly, not having them be the flawless works of art we're used to. You've heard the phrase, "It's our imperfections that make us who we are"? It's the same thing with art.

Here's a good example. One of the things I love to do is use Motion, which is a visual effects application developed by Apple, to create short intros for the Harwood Podcast Network. One of my latest projects was an intro for a show called, "Sundaes with Cindy". As you may have guessed, the show is all about ice cream sundaes. The original plan was to shoot some footage of a sundae being built and then have the title of the show appear above it. However, as often happens, the shoot didn't go exactly as planned. Here's what the finished intro ended up looking like.

You probably noticed that towards the end, the sundae starts to lean waaaay over to the right. During the shoot, we were scrambling to get the sundae built before it fell over. Less than a second after we put the cherry on top, the entire thing fell apart. Needless to say, we were all pretty disappointed, myself included. We had been hoping for a beautiful, perfect ice cream sundae for the intro. But a few minutes later, it hit me: We could still try and make it look perfect, or we could make it look like it was on purpose. What if, I thought, the title zipped in from the left and knocked the sundae over?! Insanity! Crazy talk! Or was it...

A couple of hours later, I had finished the intro you see above. I don't want to brag, but you can't deny that it's hilarious! You're expecting perfection and instead you get the opposite, something that's fun, unusual and that stands out in people's minds. That's the key right there, if you saw that same intro but the sundae didn't fall over, would it stand out in your mind as much? I don't think it would.

Now am I saying that you should deliberately misspell the title of your novel, or put a splat of paint in the middle of your masterpiece? No, certainly not. I'm just suggesting that perfection in art is extremely overrated, that sometimes it's better to do something completely unexpected. Or, do what I did. Make an accident look like it was on purpose. No one will ever know! Unless you write a blog post about it... Dang!

Artistic Education

Let me start off by saying that I have been extremely lucky when it comes to school. I have always been home schooled, meaning that my parents - specifically, my mom - has been my teacher all the way from kindergarten through high school. This has given me the freedom to pick and choose classes that I'm interested in, such as Video I and II, or creative writing. Of course there are mandatory classes that I've taken too, Algebra being one of them. Not my strongest subject, but I survived.

However, high school will be over for me in a couple of years and after that I'll be heading off to college. The question of where I was going to go to college has been without a certain and specific answer for a long time, but recently I've come up with one. The Academy of Art University in San Francisco will be my school in a few short years and I can't wait. In fact, I'm so impatient that I've already started taking classes that they offer online for undergraduates like me. The Academy is such a great place for artistic and creative people. They have a department for everything, Motion Pictures and Television, Fashion, Music, Multimedia... the list goes on. That's all they teach, though. You don't take a handful of artistic classes and a bunch of science and math classes on the side, they focus entirely on your creative potential.

I'm personally very interested in their Multimedia Communications department, because it focuses on new media like Podcasting. I'm heavily involved in the Harwood Podcast Network (shameless plug: www.HarwoodPodcast.com) so an entire department focusing on the new way to create media sounds like heaven to me. Plus, I can minor in something else, like Cinematography for example.

Now that's just me, maybe you'd be more interested in their fashion program or their sculpture class. And maybe the Academy doesn't work for you because of their location or majors they offer, but either way my recommendation to you would be to look for a school that focuses entirely on what you love. Elementary and High School gives us plenty of general knowledge, college is supposed to focus on what you're going to do in your life. So why not make it something you love?

Check out the Academy here

Tools Can Be Obstacles

I don't think I'm alone when I say that when it comes to my artistic projects, the gear I use is a big part of my fun. The idea of editing video on a sixteen core Mac Pro is certainly exciting, as is the idea of shooting photos with a Canon 5D Mark II, but I've started to think that maybe we've placed too much importance in the gear we use. Having the latest and greatest insert-gadget-here would be nice, yes, but it's not nearly as important as the person using it.

Here's what started me thinking about this. A few weeks ago I was in a book store looking for a magazine that had something to do with creativity, when I found one that was on web design. Now I'm certainly no web designer, but it is something I'm interested in so I brought it home and started to read. I was expecting to find articles talking about interesting design, tips on how to make a webpage easy to navigate, maybe some examples of good color schemes. I was severely disappointed, however, because the entire magazine was focused on gear. Articles looking at different HTML editors, reviews of monitors and keyboards and a thousand different ways to monitor the traffic of a website. That's all well and good, but I didn't see a single page that talked about how to design a good looking, easy to use website.

As I said before, I love gear and I have nothing against it. But I have found that some people... myself included... Use the fact that they don't have a good enough computer or the best software or camera as an excuse. I used to think that because I didn't have the top of the line HD camera that I wanted, I couldn't make good videos, when the reality was I simply didn't have enough skill yet. If you give a bad photographer a great camera, he's still going to take bad photos. But if you give a great photographer a really bad point and shoot, he's still going to take some amazing photos with that camera.

The bottom line is, I think that it's more important for us to keep learning more about whatever it is we do than moan about how we don't have the latest gear. I once made an hour long documentary on a camcorder from the late 90s. And you know what? It was a pretty good little documentary, despite the fact that it wasn't shot in HD with a shotgun mic, a lighting kit or even a tripod half the time. Your gear can't limit you, unless you let it. That's what I've decided. Although, there's this new camera that just came out...

The Big Bang

Hello Everyone, I'm Cameron Harris and this is the first post in the Artistic Universe. Sort of a creative Big Bang, if you will. I'm hoping that this blog becomes something really special in the coming months and years, becoming a source of inspiration and knowledge for anyone doing anything that can be considered, "Creative." But what do I mean by, "Creative?" I mean anything that you can make that requires your imagination, whether it be photography, writing, video, graphics, sculpture, drawing, painting, music... You name it, we'll be talking about it.

Now I don't pretend to be an expert in everything I've just mentioned, my focus is on writing, photography, graphics and video. The digital arts, one might say. But I'm hoping to bring in other creative people like us to talk about their areas of expertise. The Artistic Universe is by no means one person, it's all of us.

But who are we? Well, I can't answer that question, but I can certainly introduce myself. As I mentioned before, my name is Cameron Harris. I'm currently about to start my Junior year of high school, where I'll be taking both a creative writing class and a graphics design class. My parents are some of the most artistic people I know, my Mom being an amazing photographer and my Dad being a musical genius. As I said before, my interests are pretty broad, although video and writing are probably my two real passions... for the moment. Ask me again tomorrow and you may get a completely different answer!

I'm hoping that we'll all be able to use this site as a place to hone our crafts, learn new artistic skills and just hang out with other creative people. The Big Bang has taken place, now we get to roll up our sleeves and start building this Artistic Universe. Please, feel free to comment on these posts, I'll be sure to comment back. There'll be more ways for us to talk in the future as well. I can't wait to see what we create together. Until next time, this is Cameron Harris, signing off.