Today's Inspiration — Lost Olympic Sports

Nowness featured this delightful collection of short films by photographer and filmmaker KT Auleta:

Lost Olympic Sports on Nowness.com.

She shot all three shorts on Super 8 — the medium of choice for yesterday's cheesy family movies and hirsute stag films.

Ms Auleta told Nowness, "With the grain of Super 8, there is a real visual depth, a sexiness... I wanted a carefree feel from the models, allowing playfulness and the interplay between the sexes to shine through."

Great stuff.

There's also a behind-the-scenes video on Facebook.

Too close for comfort?

As anyone in the business can tell you, advertising is pretty conservative in nature. Sure, we wear jeans to work and have the vintage action figures arranged on our desks in obscene tableaux, but we're not in the business of exposing our clients to great risks. For that reason, advertising seldom leads popular culture, but rather reflects it. Because, like Hollywood (which is also now driven by investors and focus groups) the ad industry usually wants ideas that it knows will work.

This pressure to deal in known quantities doesn't just lead to advertising cliches. As agencies mine our increasingly recycled pop culture for cool memes, it can also lead to some rather troubling infringements of creative rights.

Just last night, I caught a Microsoft ad on TV that looked a lot like a commoncraft video, with simple paper cutouts manipulated by on-screen hands, deadpan voiceover delivery, and all.

I can't for the life of me find this ad online, but here's what I can only assume was the "inspiration":



We worked with commoncraft to do a social PSA for one of our government clients last year, so it's possible Lee was involved in this. But I doubt it.

You see, copycatting in advertising happens all the time. Just last week, Cundari Group in Toronto were accused of ripping off U.S. pop artist Thomas Allen in an ad for a Vancouver bookstore. The evidence below comes via Agency Spy:



The artist was so mad at what he calls the "theft" of his trademark cutout style, he decided to put the case forward to the court of social media, starting with his blog:

"I contacted a friend who is a well-known and highly respected figure in the world of design. Since this wasn’t a real campaign, he advised me not to waste any more time pursuing it. Instead (since Cundari’s chosen to walk on the wrong side of a very fine line), he suggested that I publicly shame them because 'they should know better'."

Another, perhaps less severe, form of copycatting I've noticed lately is HSBC's ad featuring the Chinese man fishing with trained birds:



Which, with the exception of the oddly out-of-place Canadian dude, is a pretty clean lift from the cormorant fisherman scene in BBC's Wild China.

So, what is inspiration and what is theft? In his correspondence with Thomas Allen, Cundari SVP CD Andy Manson retorted:

"Inspiration can come from anywhere. We were inspired by your technique just as you were inspired by the artists who painted the original pulp novel covers. So nobody is stealing anything from anybody. Think of all the executions that Andy Warhol’s lithograph technique has inspired. Or that celebrates Shepard Fairey’s style. Or Peter Beard’s. Or Barbara Kruger’s. Or Robert Indiana’s. The list goes on and on. Advertising routinely reflects the society around it and, as a result, what is popular.
Nobody was trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes."

What do you think?

The other creativity

I'm sitting here this morning putting together a puzzle. No, it's not a scene from Star Wars (I wish!). It's just a normal part of my job.

You see, yesterday we received a request to re-script a commercial that has already been shot and edited. For those of you who have not been involved in TV production, this is kind of a big deal. Weeks of planning and hard work, and hundreds of thousands of dollars, go into producing a 30-second spot based on an approved script. It's usually step one. (Luckily, there's nobody speaking on camera!)

So here I am, figuring out two options: re-edit existing footage to match the new script, or edit the supplied script to existing footage. Both require a fair bit of resourcefulness.

Resourcefulness is not always given due credit in creative circles. We thrive on inspiration, resourcefulness' celebrity older sister. But as exciting as inspiration is (what could be more scary thrilling than a blank page?), resourcefulness deserves its due.

What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
- Ecclesiastes 1:9

We have a joke among Copywriters, "I need a new word for 'new'". The desire for novelty is what keeps us fresh. At the same time, once you've been doing this for a few years, "Seen it!" becomes a more and more frequent reaction. That shouldn't mean we give up trying, but realizing that inspiration is just recombining — or building on — many other people's ideas is actually liberating. Knowing that inspiration is not magic, but rather natural evolution of ideas, removes the fear of that blank page. You just let the ideas happen. And if they don't, you start looking around for inspiration.

Understanding that you never really have a blank page also gives an insight into the nature of inspiration. It's really just unconscious resourcefulness.

On the other hand, when faced with challenges like today's puzzle, the unconscious just isn't enough. Instead of inspiring myself, I'm problem-solving.

We've all been there. The super-awesome, brilliant, earth-shattering idea that you had at the brainstorming pub lunch five Fridays ago has now been reviewed, approved with changes, focus tested, and generally altered. Some Creatives give up and bemoan the loss of their prodigal daughter. Professionals get resourceful.

Resourcefulness is about taking what you have, evaluating the situation calmly, and using every skill, tool and talent at your disposal to come up with the best possible solution for the situation.

It may not always be art. But resourcefulness is what let humans take over the world.



Now, back to work...