A Haunting Tour

"By resisting the beginner's mind, you make yourself more prone to repeat yourself than to create something new. The attempt to avoid failure, in other words, makes failure more likely."                                                                 ~ Ed Catmull - Creativity, Inc. 

On December 27, 2017, I embraced the beginner's mind. I signed up for Xanthe Berkeley's Make Films class that starts January 9, 2018.

I gave myself plenty of time to think about the class, almost a whole month, and I couldn't stop thinking about it, so I knew that I was making the right decision.

In preparation, I took this class on how to use iMovie so that I had some clue what I was doing before the class starts. I know that Xanthe will teach us on iMovie, but sometimes I get so hung up on the technical stuff that I never get to the creating part.

Thanks to that easy to follow class and a trip to Traverse City a couple of weeks ago with my husband; him for work, me for pleasure, I visited the insane asylum with my iPhone and shot some clips to put together into a short little video.



This captures a sense of the buildings that captivate me, more so than a still photograph or even a series of stills could ever do. You feel the eeriness of the broken windows, the tattered curtains blowing in the breeze, the warning signs.

I think I failed in my previous film making attempts for two reasons:

1. I was already pretty good at photography, so I figured I should be pretty good at making films as well. When I wasn't, I viewed it as failure and quit, and went back to what I was good at.
2. I invested money to learn, but I didn't invest time to learn.

Pride and impatience, two things that don't belong in the world, and especially in the creative world.