Judging Your Own Creativity

beatnikchick300

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Sometimes when I think about some of my rookie Muppet fanfiction and artwork (not fan-related artwork, but just general stuff), I just have to kind of roll my eyes, but then shake it off and chalk it up to my not being very experienced at the time. But even now there are some things about my writing about which I'm not completely happy about or think I could have handled better. Creativity is all a process.
 

CensoredAlso

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I just got back from the 70th anniversary screening of Casablanca, they had this great intro about the making of the film and all the problems it had. The script was being written and the characters being cast as they were filming. The writers had no idea what the ending was going to be. The actors were going around saying, "Why are we doing this movie? Nobody here knows what they're doing!" And yet, from all this chaos and doubt came one of the greatest movies of all time.

It just goes to show that sometimes something you think will be a disaster ends up being your greatest triumph. :smile:
 

D'Snowth

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I just got back from the 70th anniversary screening of Casablanca, they had this great intro about the making of the film and all the problems it had. The script was being written and the characters being cast as they were filming. The writers had no idea what the ending was going to be. The actors were going around saying, "Why are we doing this movie? Nobody here knows what they're doing!" And yet, from all this chaos and doubt came one of the greatest movies of all time.

It just goes to show that sometimes something you think will be a disaster ends up being your greatest triumph. :smile:
That's kind of the way they did Stalag 17... and that was also one of the very few movies where they filmed in-sequence.
 

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That's kind of the way they did Stalag 17... and that was also one of the very few movies where they filmed in-sequence.
That's really interesting, I didn't know that. It's funny, sometimes movies plagued with problems can end up a winner. And sometimes the filming process can be very pleasant, yet the movie itself a disappointment. And vice versa in both cases. You just never know.
 

D'Snowth

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Apparently, it's just as much of a nightmare to film in-sequence as is it to film out of sequence, but for different reasons... such as apparently it's more expensive to film in-sequence because of the constant need to move elements of the sets around to reposition the camera and such.

My personal thinking is this: it's probably a lot easier on the wallet and the budget to film out of sequence, but probably a lot easier on the memory and the mind to film in-sequence.
 

fuzzygobo

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There's a book I'm working on now I've actually started ten years ago. I started with a middle sequence that was dynamite, but it took a long time to write the beginning and end and fill in all the gaps. And each page is illustrated and one drawing in particular was near impossible to nail down, but was satisfying when I finally got it right.

There are a number of pages that were drawn and painted I swore would have been in the final draft but have since been redrawn (and much improved). But I'm not going to drown or burn them. I want to keep them so future readers can see how far the characters have evolved from Point A to Point B.

Christopher Cerf (who published a lot of Sesame books through Random House, founded by his father) saw some of the finished pages and asked me if I had a publisher.
I didn't, and at that point was still a long way from being finished (still have a way to go, but getting there). But he handed me his business card and said "Look me up sometime."

I feel like Charlie Bucket and this is my Golden Ticket!
 

minor muppetz

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I like to be in both the "My work is perfect! I'm a genius!" mindset while also in the "Not everything I've done is great" mindset. Maybe it's because I'm a gemini. I also feel an egotistical attitude and a self-negativity attitude are good for comedy.

When it comes to my fan fics, I actually don't reread them often. I may reread each chapter right after typing them, but it is rare for me to reread old fan fics for no reason. Usually if I do it's because I'm trying to remember something or somebody posts a comment on something I forgot about.

There are some things I regret. For my Muppet Show/Jim Henson Hour/Muppets Tonight fan fics, I make the episodes take place in a speciffic season, and try my best not to contradict real facts. But when putting in songs, I've almost never bothered to do the proper research for the dates of songs (at the time I joined Muppet Central I wasn't using search engines much, and often didn't think to use wikipedia), often just assuming a song came before the show began. The only mistake in this regard was doing a season one fan fic, can't remember the guest star (one of these days I'm gonna have to get off my butt and post an index of my fan fics), with a sketch where the houses sang "Our House". But just recently I found out that "Our House" came out in the early 1980s. I thought the song was from the 1970s.

And I sort of regret doing Jim Henson Hour outlines before watching the episodes on YouTube (in fact I can't remember if I did write any new JHH outlines after all the episodes were on YouTube). At the time I hadn't seen MuppeTelevision since 1989. I watched The Secrets of the Muppets often and had a good idea of the characters personalities there, and got some more personality ideas when watching the appearance on The Cosby Show, but otherwise all I had to go by for reference were the two episode scripts posted at Tough Pigs and a Jim Henson Hour page which had limited info on characters but seemed detailed in what it was limited to. Not much of a big deal, as many of the characters didn't really fully develop personalities, but in one fan fic, I had given Flash a coherrent line. The Secrets of the Muppets shows him singing coherrently in "The Music Just Keeps on Rolling Along", but in the episode it originated in, it turns out he's hard to understand when he's talking and not singing. I did not know that. Not sure if that's a big deal or not (the only other episode he spoke in was the KD Lang episode, where he made a brief "Yeehaw!" sound).

And I sort of regret putting in self-referential humor for the fans, stuff that the viewers wouldn't get. Stuff like in the same fan fic, making a reference to the fact that the Solid Foam Drummer's name was never mentioned. Because we don't really know if she was unnamed or not (I later learned that many seemingly nameless characters DO have proper names, characters like Lyle, A. Ligator, and many of the commercial characters), but if she did have a proper name they wouldn't have teased fans, would they? The Simpsons may do these kind of gags, but I don't think the Muppets have (the closest being in Elmo's Sing-Along Guessing Game, when Elmo admits he doesn't know who Mr. Johnson is, likely to avoid naming him... While that characters name had been mentioned before, it wasn't until a few years ago when Sesame Workshop started making it his official name). A similar gag I sort of regret is in a Muppets Tonight fan fic, where Wayne and Wanda are about to perform, but then something happens to end their act before they can even sing, which would have been an excuse to avoid giving them new voices. I don't know if they would have really teased fans like this.

When it comes to the videos I made on my YouTube channel, mwermuthland, I feel many are good, but also feel many are hit-or-miss (especially with me having made more than 600 videos). I don't really know how to determine popularity on YouTube, since the number of hits applies to whenever it was viewed on a computer, not how many people literally viewed it. And besides, I've tested this a few times, but the hit count will go up if you rewatch the same video, as well as if you don't watch the whole video (say, if you decide you don't want to finish watching, or if you happen to click on another video before the last second). But this thread isn't about our popularity, it's about how we judge our creativity.

There are a lot of videos I made that I'm real proud of, and there are some I'm less-than-proud of, and some I sort of regret, but don't plan to delete. Many of the most successful people have made flops (back in 2002 I often joked that you can't be a success without some flops), including many of my idols, and I'm not George Lucas. There are some particular videos I am proud of, some more than others, and thankfully a number of the ones I am really proud of don't have any "dislikes" yet (some don't have any "likes" or comments, either, but I am referring to some of my videos I feel are achievements which DO have likes and/or comments). The number of time between thinking up an idea, writing a script (and there have been videos where I just improvised without writing), and then making the video often varies. There have been videos where I thought the idea, wrote, and then made the video all in the same day (sometimes even uploading in the same day), while others I took a bit of time before writing and a bit of time before shooting. Some ideas I had but didn't get around to writing for a year or two.

I know this is about us judging our creativity, but there are things I'm not too proud of that aren't really affected by my creativity. I am usually the only person who works on my videos, I don't get paid to make the videos, and of course I don't have a budget, so I rarely purchase things for the sake of making a video. I am limited by what I'm capable of. Sometimes the lighting can be too bright or dark. When I made many of my earliest videos I didn't rehearse much and normally did the scenes in one take, but over time I'd feel the need to start over if I felt I needed to (like if I missaid something, or felt I made too long a pause between talking). And I think in the past year it's been more common for me to practice certain videos before making them, particularly if I felt they were sure-fire ideas.

Regarding the topic of filming in-sequence vs. not, whenever I do videos as multiple characters, I don't do them in sequence. I'll appear as one character, shoot all that characters scenes first, and then I'd change clothes, reposition the camera angle, and then shoot every scene with the next character, and so on. On a few occasions when editing I'd realise I didn't have a certain character say a certain important line and so I'd go and record what I forgot. If I'm playing every character it'd be annoying to do it all in sequence, since I'd have to keep changing clothes and setting up camera angles and such.
 

D'Snowth

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Maybe it's because I'm a gemini.
Heh, that's my problem as well, lol.

There are some things I regret. For my Muppet Show/Jim Henson Hour/Muppets Tonight fan fics, I make the episodes take place in a speciffic season, and try my best not to contradict real facts. But when putting in songs, I've almost never bothered to do the proper research for the dates of songs (at the time I joined Muppet Central I wasn't using search engines much, and often didn't think to use wikipedia), often just assuming a song came before the show began. The only mistake in this regard was doing a season one fan fic, can't remember the guest star (one of these days I'm gonna have to get off my butt and post an index of my fan fics), with a sketch where the houses sang "Our House". But just recently I found out that "Our House" came out in the early 1980s. I thought the song was from the 1970s.
I think I made a similar mistake with my TMS outline by including "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go"... I think, I can't remember, and I really don't want to look it up. :smirk:
 

CensoredAlso

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quote="minor muppetz, post: 874788"]But when putting in songs, I've almost never bothered to do the proper research for the dates of songs (at the time I joined Muppet Central I wasn't using search engines much, and often didn't think to use wikipedia), often just assuming a song came before the show began. The only mistake in this regard was doing a season one fan fic, can't remember the guest star (one of these days I'm gonna have to get off my butt and post an index of my fan fics), with a sketch where the houses sang "Our House". But just recently I found out that "Our House" came out in the early 1980s. I thought the song was from the 1970s.

I think I made a similar mistake with my TMS outline by including "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go"... I think, I can't remember, and I really don't want to look it up. :smirk:
Actually I don't see too much of a problem with that. TMS didn't really have a "proper" ending so you can certainly create fanfiction that involves the show lastly longer than it technically did.
 
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