Platforms like YouTube and Instagram and many other have given people opportunity to show
their talents and a chance to become a creator of some kind. But , all my fellow creators out
there know that it is not a smooth ride and face a lot of problems in their way to create.Out of all
the problems the Creators face the most vital is ORIGINALITY! And why originality? Well, read
along!
ORIGINALITY is the biggest problem that creators face, be it professionals or amateurs.But the
difference between the two cases is that,the professionals understand how to work with it and
understand the broad duration of achieving that. In my opinion the greatest misconception that
people have is that they can make their original work from the very start. Now don't get me
wrong, some people do find it but majority don’t . Now there are two types of people in this
majority. One , that wait and keep looking for that one original thing and force themselves to
THINK more creatively and thus later doubt their own creative ability and second, who first try to
master that skill with the intention of value addition rather than thinking of it being original or
not.What is the result you may ask? Well, the second type gain more experience in that skill and
thus know the aspects to work on,whereas the first type,they just keep waiting for it to
happen.Where the 'it' is an uncertain entity.They don't get any experience in that skill and thus
get demotivated to create. As the people who were with them once have now gained experience
way more than them ,leads them to quit the job and get lost.
My Experience
I was once the first type of person.I wasn't making anything because i wasn't finding any original
content .Now, I was a 17 year old kid , who did not have any skill in filmmaking and was
dreaming about that original concept which will just "wow" everyone who will watch it.Never
realizing that i was missing out on the most important part of the process which was the skill to
actually bring that so called 'original idea' to life.I can't stress more on the fact that i lost so much
valuable time thinking about that one ORIGINAL IDEA,Which in my observation brought one
more serious problem for me. It made me LAZY....and you know what they say.
“If you think something is impossible , you are just lazy"
Actually nobody said that in my knowledge, that is something in which i believe .So that
overthinking about the original idea made me lazy.i started to procrastinate on everything i did
because the thing i loved the most, the thing i was most passionate about was something on
which i wasn't working at all. It slowed my creative thinking and made me feel i wasn't fit for
it.That was the time i was working on ny short film 1202 part || , this was the story that took
almost a year to form just because i wasn't feeling so good making it as it had nothing original. It
was a very very slow process and i knew I had to bring this to a stop. So once i was looking up
videos about procrastination and i came across a TED talk by Tim Urban who is a blogger/writer
and talks about procrastination in a way like never before.I highly recommend you guys to check
out that video.Since procrastination is such a huge topic to talk about I would really like to make
a video about it followed up by a blog about how I see procrastination and how I deal with it. So stay tuned for that..coming back to my part,After watching that video I was hyped like any
person would after watching a motivational video and started working on my short film just to
realize that it was something else that was bothering me which had made me lazy and I was
thinking being lazy was the problem.
So, again my YouTube surfing started watching random videos about being creative or facing
creative block and all the things which I assumed I was facing while writing the short film.That’s
when I came across a YouTube channel and well, I don't mind saying this but that person is the
reason I am writing this right now.Her name is Audrey Ember (Channel name) and she has a
video on the importance of copying other creators.Which I assume a lot of creators have made
a video on, but I could relate to this person so much. She made a video on recreating the intro
clip of another YouTuber called ‘Dan Mace’ and her experience while making it and how she
learned so much from it. That had opened my eyes. I realized that , people see copying as a
bad thing because we look at that word with a plagiarism view point and well it's only called
plagiarism if you earn money from it or you call it your own original work. You are not blamed of
plagiarism if you did copy it for learning purpose.I understand that artists have that creative ego
that all they do should be not like anyone else,Trust me I also had that once, But you will only
be better if you understand what the pros or the established ones do,To understand that why
they do what they do and that's the best way to learn, because I believe that
“ Learning is Imitating”
That's how you Learned, even in school when you used to learn math, you used to first right
down the formulas and then solve the problem where the formulas were already created by
some mathematician in the past .There we were not expected to look for our original formula to
solve the question! And that was till we understood the main concept behind it and then we
were given challenging questions that involved our own critical thinking .So do you see my
point?
“Finding your original work is not a destination, It's a process”
You only find originality when you know every corner of that skill and that only comes if you
have enough experience.If you have the knowledge of that skill so much that you know way
more than the majority, that's when you would be able to come with something which is original!!
That's why, my take on this is that ,first be so good at something that you have way more
knowledge than the majority and then whatever you do would be ORIGINAL. So go out there
keep creating and keep on gaining experience and find people with the same interest who can
elevate you in it and also support you through it.
And most importantly
KEEP LEARNING!!