The Creative Life: Day 3

The Creative Life met in the dining hall at 8am to discuss our plans for the day and to learn about our first assignment. Our first warm up assignment was a 20 minute writing exercise where we had to find an isolated spot on campus, and write whatever came to us. We will then use this later in the week to workshop and turn into a longer or more refined piece.

Film Analysis/Storyboarding 

Next, we went to Lane to begin our cool project! Today was the most exciting day for me because our theme was "Movie & Music". Firstly, we watched an interesting film called "Stranger Than Fiction." The film was about a writer and the character she created who happen to both live in the same world. However, they did not notice that until one day the man found out that there was always the voice of a narrator in his head that no one else could hear except for him. After a few days, the narrator said that he was going to die. Through the help from an expert professor, he found out that he was the character in a story, but he wasn't sure whether it was a tragedy or a comedy. Finally, he was able to meet the author for a face to face conversation. Ultimately, the writer decides to spare her characters' life and rewrite the conclusion. This was a really special film for us, as we all exchanged ideas and talked about the power of literature and film.

The group having a Skype conversation
with Hamilton Leithauser

Then, we had the chance to Skype with a famous singer, Hamilton Leithauser from the band The Walkmen, and ask him questions we came up with after listening to five of his songs. We had the chance to interview him about his career, the music industry, the writing process, and even learned about how his band got its name. His opinions were pretty different from the poet we interviewed yesterday, but it was cool to learn from a different perspective.

Film Prep

Storyboarding

In the afternoon, we had to use what we learned earlier in the day to make a one minute film in small groups. Everybody was itching to try it. We talked about what kind of film we were going to do, and chose places to take video after storyboarding. We did not only develop our creativity today, but also improved our writing our skills. Tomorrow we will finish our films and share them with the group.
- Hex L.