Hello, this week I am back in Phnom Penh! I spent the majority of the week editing videos – a handful of shorter videos with motion graphics and a couple of longer ones. This is a great time of year for me, because EnergyLab run their annual Clean Energy Week I get asked to create campaign videos for them. This is the third year running that I’ve gotten this privilege and I love it because I get to get caught up on the industry and create something I really care about.
A couple of the videos have been released, which you can check out here:
Here’s a few tidbits that I’ve learned about this week:
🎧 Podcasts
“#121 Walter Isaacson: Curiosity Fuels Creativity” from The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish
https://www.airr.io/episode/615bfc80a7c2f500107af229
Very interesting interview with Walter Isaacson, the author of massively successful biographies on Leonardo Davinci, Albert Einstein and Steve Jobs. As a career journalist, he’s extremely good at studying people and writing about them. He shares some really great insights into creativity that he learned while researching these great thinkers. I like what he said about Steve Jobs was that you shouldn’t read the biography and think that it’s an instruction booklet on how to be like him. There’s only one Steve Jobs, there’s only one Davinci, one Einstein and only one You. You’ve got to figure out what you’re most comfortable with. What are your goals? What’s your mission?
One interesting fact I learned was that the Mona Lisa contains microscopic layers that were added to it over years by Davinci to give the illusion of depth, mystery and a changing expression when viewed from different angles. I wish I had known that when I craned my neck to see it at the Louvre years ago!
📺 Videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doaQC-S8de8
I stumbled on this great filmmaking Youtube channel and this video in particular, breaking down movements used by one of the greatest filmmakers of all time (who I just learned about here). The video makes a cheeky comparison to the Avengers and the lack of movement used despite their insanely high budgets. Pretty cool example of how great filmmaking can be timeless and outshine some aspects of modern films.
📃Articles
Input as collage – Austin Kleon
https://austinkleon.com/2021/10/05/input-as-collage/
The work you output depends on your input. So in order for your brain to output some funky, interesting and creative stuff, you need to feed it a healthy diet of interesting, thought-provoking content. The challenge with this, is that if you spend all of your time consuming content, you don’t leave your mind any space to actually create. It’s a great balancing act, one that I’m still trying to figure out.