What is excellence? It's been a hot word in creative circles for a long time. Many creators and producers quip that excellence is a personal core value. But what is excellence? Is it a word, like "awesome" that has been overused to such a degree that it has lost its meaning?
Dictionary.com defines excellence: "to surpass others or be superior in some respect or area; do extremely well" That doesn't really help me that much.
In creative circles, I don't completely agree with the concept that to be excellent means that you must be superior in some respect or area. That means that nothing that comes in second can, by definition, be excellent. Are the actors nominated for Oscars all excellent, or just the person who wins. Does my 11 year-old daughter have to be superior to all the other 1st-year violists to be excellent at her skill level and experience?
Instead of defining excellence in terms of how you compare with everyone else in the world, I believe that we should define excellence in a much more personal way. There are, in fact, degrees, of excellence. What rises to the level of excellence for me now is much higher than 5, 10, 15 years ago. Excellence is much more of a personal journey than it is a competition.
This post is called "10 Minutes of Excellence" because I am in the middle of a 10-minute project. We were three days away from our first rehearsal. Debbie Durso, our drama productions director and I had a discussion about this project. In the end, we both agreed that we should go back to the drawing board and have a scratch track recording ready for rehearsal. Now, in all honesty, our original concept was fine; it was good enough; no one in the seats would have known the difference. But I knew in my heart that it would not be excellent.
I spent the whole evening rearranging songs and rewriting lyrics. The next morning, I showed it to Debbie and we decided on a few edits. Then, I spent some hours recording a 10-minute rehearsal track in time for rehearsal. We made the deadline, but my work had just begun. The piano track would only cover for rehearsals, I had to go back to he beginning and produce a final orchestrated track for the performances. Again, I could technically throw something together and get close enough. How many people would truly know the difference?
Producing this performance track is time consuming. I estimate that it takes me about 2-3 hours for every 30 seconds of finished music. As I write this, I'm at time stamp 5:05 in the project. Why work this hard? One word: excellence.
Aaron
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
First Idea?
Last week, the Creative Team at Calvary Church set out to brainstorm our next series: Fixable. After hitting a home-run on a relatively easy series title (Behind Enemy Lies), I knew that we'd have to struggle through a set of topics that were quite a bit more vague.
The morning before brainstorming, I kept thinking to myself, "Don't settle for the first idea."
Usually there's nothing "wrong" with your first idea. But we've been taught all our lives as school children that you should always go with your gut instinct on a test; don't over-think yourself out of a right answer.
But successful creators are successful because they force themselves to exercise their creative muscles--to push themselves through and explore many different paths.
So what happened at our meeting? Our first idea was a close adaptation of something we had done before. We knew how to do it. It would "work". So we forced ourselves to brainstorm an entirely different idea from scratch. Then a third. Then even a forth emerged. We brainstormed for two hours, but it was clear to me that our team wasn't really sold on any stage design and didn't fall in love with any of the three logos. We could push for consensus, and leave the room with the box checked.
But we decided to sit on it for a week. In my mind, it was better to find the best answer than settle for a quick one.
Later that week, several guys from the team drew on my board a completely new idea (#5). It was elegant, symbolic and could stand on its own for ten weeks. It was passed around the team. Today the entire creative team approved the design.
Don't ever take your first idea first. Force yourself to brainstorm others--not adaptations of the original. Explore several different paths. In the end, you may select your first idea. But you'll never know if it was the best idea if you have nothing to compare it to.
A
The morning before brainstorming, I kept thinking to myself, "Don't settle for the first idea."
Usually there's nothing "wrong" with your first idea. But we've been taught all our lives as school children that you should always go with your gut instinct on a test; don't over-think yourself out of a right answer.
But successful creators are successful because they force themselves to exercise their creative muscles--to push themselves through and explore many different paths.
So what happened at our meeting? Our first idea was a close adaptation of something we had done before. We knew how to do it. It would "work". So we forced ourselves to brainstorm an entirely different idea from scratch. Then a third. Then even a forth emerged. We brainstormed for two hours, but it was clear to me that our team wasn't really sold on any stage design and didn't fall in love with any of the three logos. We could push for consensus, and leave the room with the box checked.
But we decided to sit on it for a week. In my mind, it was better to find the best answer than settle for a quick one.
Later that week, several guys from the team drew on my board a completely new idea (#5). It was elegant, symbolic and could stand on its own for ten weeks. It was passed around the team. Today the entire creative team approved the design.
Don't ever take your first idea first. Force yourself to brainstorm others--not adaptations of the original. Explore several different paths. In the end, you may select your first idea. But you'll never know if it was the best idea if you have nothing to compare it to.
A
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