Reflections on doing stuff

Doing stuff is hard.

Well, getting started doing stuff is what's hard.

For the past week and a half, my thesis work — which has been mostly steady albeit a bit slow — has completely plateaued. I've felt like the real making-of this visual outcome is an impossible task. And before thinking about the outcome too much, I've been writing off all of my ideas as failures. It's a little premature, since I've now only just worked out my storyboards.

And I should be clear: It's not the failure of the project that I'm worried about. That's nbd. I can happily critically self-reflect till the dogs come home.

I'm worried I'll fail at creating something that (tries to) says something new. And I'm worried I'll fail at developing an outcome that puts the stuff I do best to their best use.

For a long time, before I really knew what I was doing, I had figured that my thesis outcome would take the shape of a book. I'm comfortable with books. I like them. I like making them. I make all kinds of those things from start-to-finish. But ballet in a book doesn't work. Especially, considering where I'm at now. Not only is a book the wrong form for this project, it's just too easy (or at least that's what I've told myself). And by easy, I mean, the easy choice. My fall-back option.

And plus, I'm pushing the review to see how much more of the experience can be shown through images rather than words. What could this review look like outside of letters? Ballet, like I've said before, is experiential. It's multi-sensory. I'm arguing that the review needs to be that way also. Or, at least, it should have a toolkit to allow itself to be that way if it feels like it.

A ballet review can't be static. It's got to move. And words can move too. I believe that. They can move a reader. They can move the story along. But so can film. And sound. And I think that all of these — text, sound, film — can be joined (not only slideshow + article) to do a few things:

1. Report on the event.

2. Convey an opinion.

3. Preserve the performance for posterity.

I'm arguing that my visual outcome will do all of these things, which reviewers say reviews should do anyway. But I also think that this type of visceral review will:

1. Extend the life of the performance by using the performance itself as a prompt for a performative review.

2. Use the performance as a way in to address the big questions the performance raises. You can't film in ballet. But there are other ways to convey what you saw (animations, archival footage), and by using what's outside of that performance to explain the performance, you are able to put it into a larger context — one that might matter to more people.

I've just rushed through that explanation because I've only allowed myself 45 minutes to reflect (If I spend much longer on the reflections, I tend to get way too waffly). Hopefully it makes sense when I read through it later.

Anyway, back to getting started. I had to write all of this out for you because yesterday I had a meltdown. I had forgotten why I wanted to try to review through film and sound. Without even starting the project, I had done what I had done to my book thoughts: I had cast this film off as easy. I needed to find something more difficult to do. A tablet device? Something completely interactive? Something with lots of dynamic choices that moved for the readers. Something that showed them what happened and showed off my awesomeness.

But I couldn't begin to know how to think about making something for a tablet. And unlike my film idea, which had seemed so straightforward and right to me, I couldn't think of a reason to make the review touch-screen ready.

Mostly, though, my conversation with Anna and Teal had inked through all of my thoughts. Do something that puts your skills to their best use — that's what I heard in our conversation. Probably the only thing I could remember. And I assumed that making a film was what Teal and Anna thought was not the best use of my skills. I started thinking that if I made a film, it would just be a crappy YouTube art film.

So yesterday, with that thought in my head, I went the whole cycle of ideas.

I cut down my original text to only basic ideas.

I did a list storyboard to think about possible images.

I storyboarded a sound review.

I drew some tablet things.

I drew crazy animation ideas.

But I never knew how to get from one idea to the next. I had formed an opinion on the ballet, and I had ways of backing it up. But none of the things I explored were pushing along my opinion. They were working as reportage, but not a review.

But when I allowed myself the option of making a film, I got excited. I knew — and saw — exactly how I wanted that story to be told. What sounds to include. What images to bring in. What text to lay over the images. What archival footage to introduce. It was all there. And I got excited. I could see it.

And unlike when I thought I was going to barf (from anxiety) over making some stupid touch-screen, I got that nervous feeling I always get when I write something I know is good: I always start shaking, and I get cold. And I know you can't only do your thesis on instinct alone, but I have to go with my gut on this one. Yesterday was a matter of getting the doubt out so I could get going.

In a way, maybe the film is an easy choice. Or, it should be an easy choice for critics. If ballet is really experiential — and for me, it's about way more than the performance on the stage — why haven't ballet reviews looked like this in the past? Maybe it seems easy because it seems like such an obvious thing to try. Something that could be interesting and work well. Like, duh.