Does it add up???

Inspiration>Idea>Concept>Trial>Refine>Product

This is the equation that we were given in class.  I think this way of looking at projects is a fresh perspective and outlook.

For inspiration in my own opinion the basis of this comes from a person's own background and upbringing.  I think we can all have similar inspiration from something but it is how our own life memories and background that we can use this to create ideas and art.  I think I find most inspiration from audio and visual based media outlets.  I'm always listening to music and grew up playing music so that aspect of creativity and inspiration always helps me create ideas.  I'm also a huge movie fan and I think my background of watching movies helps lead to inspiration in my own video projects.

For the idea, in my opinion this is a direct result of the inspiration.  An idea can be big or it can be small but all creative projects need an idea to create something.  I might move concepts in front of an idea since concepts can be in a person's mind and really do not need to be a physical idea.  Maybe concepts and ideas are interchangeable more then individual placements.

The trial and refine steps in my opinion can be grouped as one.  When I plan out projects I would use more a test phase then trial and refine.  I test out certain ideas and see how they work with the concept and idea I originally had in my mind and on paper.

Product is the obvious final stage in the above equation.  I disagree that this is the final and end all step of any creative project.  I think truly creative ideas can never be finished since everyone has a different outlook on an idea and could give additional inspiration to make the original idea even more complete.

My revised equation would be 


Inspiration>Concept/Idea>Testing>Product......

I just bought the Back to the Future Blu-Ray trilogy a few months ago so I've been watching those movies lately so my inspiration came from that.  My concept idea was an idea that was also inspired by the clothing company The Hundreds that is based out of San Francisco.  The Hundreds does a lot of stuff with pop culture to inspire their different clothing lines.  My idea was to take the characters from the back to the future movie and place them in an add that The Hundreds could use to promote their line of clothing.  I had to work thorough different pictures and after that I decided a black and white look would be the best for the concept and idea that I wanted to put across.  After testing my ideas the product that I came up with is this:

Thoughts on the field trip

I thought the field trip was pretty interesting and it was good to get out of the classroom and be able to walk around.  Although I had already been to both of the rooms that we toured it still was interesting to see from a seeing sideways perspective how both rooms could be used.  When I originally toured the rooms a year or so ago the tour was more focused on the academic stand point of the rooms rather then the creative seeing sideways aspect.  Overall I think looking at the rooms slightly differently was a fresh outlook.

Class response/discussion 1-31-11

For the idea of concept vs final project I think that they always directly influence and impact each other.  I think for any quality final project good planning and concept that helps direct the final project for an intended audience is required in the long run.  I think all of the ideas of concept, final project and intended audience all go together in coming up with a complete quality idea.  I think that going into a project having an intended audience in mind helps create a specific concept that leads to a final project aimed at that intended audience.

I think people in the class are starting to start thinking more out of the box so to speak.  We have all been trained by the education system to think certain ways and I think as the semester progresses all of those traits will be broken and the class discussions will be more interactive with the whole class.  I myself have started to start thinking more then the accepted way that I would have thought before.

Break those rules, but stay safe and legal.

This topic of breaking rules frustrated me a lot.  I wasn't really sure how to tackle the topic at hand.  I thought about it for awhile and decided I would deal with the human senses.  I decided to try to complete a sound mix without using multiple audio systems to preview my mix.  The consequences for not doing this are that I would not be able to get a true representation of my mix by just using the computer.  I went ahead and mixed the project by just using the computer to listen to the mix and leaned that when I listened to the final mix in my car the sound was not how I originally thought it was.  I learned that listening to a mix on multiple systems lets the human ear hear any differences in mixing.