CREATIVITY AND COPYRIGHT Just Published
Aimed at creators, not lawyers, this brief book is an overview of basic principles you need to know about what you can and cannot do under copyright law.
Creativity and Selling Your Ideas
One of the few online blogs I subscribe to is “Brain Pickings Weekly” by Maria Popova. (Full disclosure: she listed The Power of Film in her piece, “(Almost) Everything You Need to Know about Culture in 10 Books” in 2011, so I was first attracted to her site by self-interest, but I’ve stayed a subscriber because she is always interesting.)
Today, her free newsletter discusses a new book by Daniel Pink in the article, “Ambiverts, Problem-Finders, and the Surprising Secrets of Selling Your Ideas.” There are several good ideas there for creative people.
The piece is at http://www.brainpickings.org/. It’s the third article on today’s page.
Finding Aaron Sorkin’s (and your own) Voice
My recent post, “Finding Your Authentic Voice” received more responses than anything I’ve written in months. Now, there’s a great montage of clips from Aaron Sorkin’s many major films and tv series that deals very much with the question, “What is one’s “voice”? (See: http://bit.ly/LMryRF )
The montage focuses amusingly on how many lines, expressions, questions, etc. Sorkin uses over and over his different works. Read more 
Book: LETTERS TO YOUNG FILMMAKERS
“Suber’s genuine understanding of how the film business operates makes his advice to young filmmakers sound, inspiring and, above all, useful.”
— Geoffrey Gilmore, Director, Sundance Film Festival, 1990-2010; Chief Creative Officer, Tribeca Enterprises
BUY NOW FROM AMAZON.COM Continue reading “Book: LETTERS TO YOUNG FILMMAKERS” »
What do you want to DO?
When all of us were young, adults kept asking the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” It gets drummed into our head so often, most of us pick up it up and integrate it into our lives and we keep asking ourselves the same question. That’s the process that helped lead you to decide you wanted to be a screenwriter, director, producer, cinematographer, etc.
But what you want to be may be different than what you want to do. I’ve known many people who want to be a writer but who don’t really like the process of writing, and directors who love being on the set with all eyes fixed on them waiting for commands, but who don’t like all that it takes to get to the set. I’ve even known producers who hate meetings, despite the fact that a producer who isn’t in meetings probably isn’t producing much.
When we’re young, we dread saying “no” because we fear we’ll miss out on something, but when we age it’s quite possible we’ll regret some of the things we said “yes” to. After all, when you say, “no” that’s the end of it and you move on, but when you say, “yes” you might find yourself in a bad relationship, a bad job, or something else that becomes a trap.
What we want “to be” when we grow up can become such a trap. The myriad biographies of “successful” people make it clear that once you become what you’ve dreamt of, you quickly habituate to it, and so you need something else — or more of the same thing, over and over again. Read more
