May 15, 2013
Question: “Is there a big gap between the movie you make in your head and the movie that gets made?”
Answer by David Fincher, Film Director: “Everything seems really simple on paper until you take a camera out of the box. Then 90 people are offering up solutions to the problems those pages create. You’re trying to make something very clear in this maelstrom of activity with all this anxiety about how much money is being spent. I don’t think you can ever make it the way you have it in your head.”
Source: “10 Questions for David Fincher” by Belinda Luscombe for TIME
Labels: Creation
May 15, 2013
Leo Lionni, Children’s Book Author and Illustrator: “To shape and sharpen the logic of a story, to tighten the flow of events, ultimately to define the idea in its totality, is much like a game of chess. In the light of overall strategy, each move is the result of doubts, proposals, and rejections, which inevitably bring to mind the successes or failures of previous experiences.
Inspirational raptures may happen, but most books are shaped through hard, disciplined work. Creative work, to be sure, because its ingredients come from the sphere of the imaginary. But the manipulation of these ingredients requires much more than mere inclination or talent. It is an intricate process in which the idea slowly takes form, by trial and error, through detours and side roads, which, were it not for the guidance of professional rigor, would lead the author into an inextricable labyrinth of alternatives.
And so, to the question ‘How do you get your ideas?’ I am tempted to answer, unromantic though it may sound, ‘Hard work.’ ”
Source: Random House Kids
Labels: Ideas
May 10, 2013
Metaphors impart concentrated narratives—which are meaningful, like perfume, when you know or like how they smell.
John Maeda
President, Rhode Island School of Design
Source: @johnmaeda
Labels: Storytelling
May 6, 2013
As for my style, for my vision of the cinema, editing is not simply one aspect; it’s the aspect.
Orson Welles
Actor, Director, Writer, Producer
Labels: Style
April 26, 2013
“… You are just hanging out, listening, feeling, having the place resonate a little bit. And then all of a sudden, ideas come naturally. I don’t know when and where. I think this is a very natural process. Everybody—all of you, all of us—we experience this. And what I discovered was that when I have these feelings, it is like being a boy again. All of a sudden, I think this is me when I was 10 years or 12 years old. I’m dreaming. I’m there and something comes to me, but it’s not, of course, naïve dreaming. Everything, which …
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Source: 2009 Pritzker Prize Ceremony Acceptance Speech
Labels: Architecture
April 24, 2013
I am always in the picture somewhere. The amount of space I use I am always in, I seem to move around in it. And there seems to be a time when I lose sight of what I wanted to do, and then I am out of it. If the picture has a countenance I keep it. If it hasn’t, I throw it away.
Willem de Kooning
Artist
Labels: Art
April 13, 2013
When asked, “Do you typewrite?,” Eudora Welty, Author, answered: “Yes, and that’s useful—it helps give me the feeling of making my work objective. I can correct better if I see it in typescript. After that, I revise with scissors and pins. Pasting is too slow, and you can’t undo it, but with pins you can move things from anywhere to anywhere, and that’s what I really love doing—putting things in their best and proper place, revealing things at the time when they matter most.”
Source: “Eudora Welty, The Art of Fiction No. 47” by Linda Kuehl
Labels: Writing
April 11, 2013
John Maeda, President, Rhode Island School of Design: “My one thought would be that we all love the story of the underdog. But specifically the underdog that is humble, and still remains humble even when the unlikely thing happens that s/he succeeds. Because more often than nought, the underdog’s role is to fail. Asian values are about humility—humility is a calming and welcome force in our chaotic world today, I believe.
Humility is always re-ingrained in me when I remember how I am the son of a mom-and-pop tofu maker from Seattle, and I worked along side them as a child. I learned what hard work is about—and it made me realize that no matter how high I might rise professionally, I will never be someone that could have worked as hard as my parents did at the tofu store. They taught me humility, just by being who they were and are.”
Source: “On Humility”
Labels: Humility
