Creativity

What do you understand by ‘creativity’ and to what extent have you been creative? I understand that creativity is a means of expression and allows an individual to be original, make something new and have an emotional release. I understand creativity is an attempt to ignore restrictions and think outside normal boundaries. I believe I have been creative as all my products are unique to anything else. However all my products are in other respects the same as any other, as they are following conventions an copying current trends. Therefore they are not truly original and so contain creative elements.

- How have you tried to facilitate and encourage your own creativity? I tried to encourage my own creativity by analysing current products for ideas and with the formation of my mood boards and animotos I established key themes and gained inspiration. I tried to always alter initial ideas and test several options before deciding on my final work. For example with my A2 ancillary products I created several very different draft Digipak covers to test what looked best and experiment with a variety of designs.

- Did you experience limits/blocks on your own creativity? With my magazine the key limitation I faced was with the brief outlining that the magazine had to be of a music genre, which dismissed possible options of making, for example, a fashion or film magazine. Then when deciding on the model to be on the cover of my magazine I was limited by the friends or people I knew who would be suitable, and when they were available. Finally the Photoshop software I used to create my magazine allowed me to be creative, but still did not offer all the editing options of a more advanced piece of software.There were many limits to how creative we could be with our music video. This was due to restrictions we faced with the locations available to use, actors we could use, costumes we owned or could buy, equipment and software available for filming and editing, the time restraints and the conventions we were trying to follow of current music videos.

- How easy/difficult was it to be creative while still working to the brief? The brief gave me a sense of focus and channelled my creativity. If no brief had been given it would have taken longer to decide upon the elements of my products and they would not have been comparable to others. However the brief also restricted the broadness of my ideas and capped the diversity of creativity within our class.
 Talking to others did aid the formation of ideas as everyone interpreted the briefs differently and had varying approaches. For elements such as the name of magazine I would ask others for their opinions and change my creative path accordingly. When making our music video myself and partner Shannon really benefited from the support of each others as we could build from and improve each others suggestions to form an overall creative piece that was more appealing and professional. Sometimes I preferred not to look at others work or discuss ideas with other people as I wanted my work to have a feel that was unique to me and formed from my own mind. With too much influence everyones work ends up the same and I wanted mine to have a unique edge. Such as with our A2 ancillary products. Mine and Shannon's were made separately but using the same pictures and for our shared artist. However they were both different as we embarked on them alone.

How much of your creativity was about trying to picture things in your mind’s eye? Most of my creativity was spurred from current inspirational pieces. Although this may be considered attempting to copy others I did not take exact ideas from current products, but used them to broaden my sense of what is possible or acceptable. The presents of our brief made me feel restricted and narrowed in the availability of what I could do, so looking at other videos and magazines etc. proved this wasn't true. After the viewing of current pieces I was able to adapt them and change them in my mind to think up new versions and combine multiple elements from various sources.

- How much of your creativity was about trial and error? A lot of my creative journey was the attempting of new ideas and then adjusting what didn't work, and sometimes scrapping things all together. Sometimes ideas that seemed good in my head just didn't work in real life and so it was important I could be honest with myself and not pursue an idea that wasn't working. Also the opinions of others highlighted issues and unappealing elements to my work. Such as with our video that received lots of feedback and constructive criticism. We had to make mistakes, such as zooming to fast and having poor lighting, to understand what we could do differently and get it right.

- To what extent was a lack of confidence an issue in terms of your creativity? When working with others confidence was an issue for creativity as to achieved to intended outcome, such as the pose or shot we wanted, we had to direct and express concepts to other people. However with the majority of my products I wasnt scared to attempt different things and did not feel confidence restricted my work.
- To what extent was a lack of technical competence/confidence an obstacle to your creativity? For AS my technical ability was very restricting. My abilities on photoshop were very poor and so the formation of my magazine was a real challenge to achieve what I wanted. Sometimes the ideas I had in my head or had drawn out, I then did not know how to create using the software and so formed more simplistic versions to my target. However by A2 I felt far more able with photoshop and so for my ancillary products I could quickly achieve what I wanted with minimal help. Although the editing of our video raised new issues with new software. As neither myself or Shannon had prior experience of final cut pro and so were unable to achieve all the things we wanted to such as effects and stylising our work.