Are You Down On Your Work & Feeling Uninspired?
If you work in a creative industry like postproduction and specifically in color grading, there are going to be days where you just feel utterly…uncreative! For example, your contrast corrections? Horrible. Your shot balancing? Pathetic.
Sure, you can still make your client happy, a director will give you a hearty handshake, and others in your company will give you a pat on the back for job well done.
Even with all that praise, you still feel flat, feel like you work was at best average, but more likely substandard.
Sound familiar?
In late November and early December, I was having a really hard time with my grading.
Sure, I was still billing and clients were pretty happy, but I had some symptoms of needing a creative recharge:
- In supervised sessions, I was getting “it’s an ok look, but can we try something else?” response from clients.
- I was having hard time liking projects. Everything that came in just seemed like another show. I wasn’t excited about the projects I was working on, even though many of them were really good!
- I was anxious – staying up late, looking at other people’s work, wondering what was wrong with my own.
So yes, I was frustrated and feeling uninspired. Just ask my wife – I was in a funk!
However, in a serendipitous way in early December I got an email to the DMVCPUG meeting – for those of you not in the business of acronym decoding, thats the DC, Maryland, Virginia Creative Pro Users Group – my local user group.
The email was inviting me to a meeting featuring photographer and cinematographer Simeon Quarrie.
I had been aware of Simeon from his amazing wedding photography and videos and his company VIVIDA but had never met him in person. The topic of the event – Story Telling and Discovering Creativity.
Ahhh! Perfect Timing!
So, I got a ticket and eagerly hoped that this talk would help me rediscover my creative streak.
In short, this talk was amazing (cheers to Simeon) but after a few weeks removed from this talk I thought I’d share with you my thoughts in this Insight (with a little bit of Simeon’s mixed in) on getting over a creative slump, because, we’ve all been there.
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