My music Project

Our Soundscape Project---Yuxi Li & Yichen Li

The way I see WAYS TO GET IDEAS

http://changethis.com/

Mitch Ditkoff’s “14 Ways to get Breakthrough Ideas

    This book is about how people have to learn how to expand their creativity to think of original great ideas. Great ideas can make good things happen. By the process of creating new ideas, people should learn to select the good and abandon the bad. One of the points that  Mitch Ditkoff mentions is that just because your idea does not work doesn’t mean it is bad, It just means switch it up and try something similar but change it. I read this article and have a deep feeling about this. This article basically tells you how to explore every idea you receive.

    In his suggestion #1, Follow Your Fascination. He explains to us how the fascination work in people’s mind. We should be will to let fascination grow in our head so we can be more easily to capture new ideas.  When I walk down street, ideas may be built simply because I see or hear something that have resonance with my mind. Things that can capture my attention must be those I am interested in. In order not to loose this inspiration, I used to take a note in my phone. There is once I wrote a film story, the protagonist is a romantic woman with fantastic ideas, when she happen to think of something new, she will text to her passed boyfriend. That’s the beauty of texting. So I think I’ll write my ideas down as soon as possible, before I loose it. Fascination could never be wrong. May be some of the ideas seems subconscious and has no logic, it is still your original idea, so why give them a judgment? I used to write dream diary when I was in High school. I write those absurd dream stories down because I think they can give me more inspiration to create new stories. In a word, there is no right or wrong ideas, ideas are precious, and like what Mitch Ditkoff said, “Out of the thousands of ideas with the power to capture our imagination, the fascination felt for one of them is a clue that there’s something worthy of our engagement. Don’t dismiss it as trivial. Give it room. Give it time to breathe. Honor it.”

    “Fascination, quite simply, is nature’s way of getting our attention.”

    In his suggestion #4, Make New Connections.  I think this part is exactly what I have the same voice with him. People won’t get creative if they always relies on solos. If there are no idea of combining wheels and containers together, there won’t be cars. Why don’t we make connections? There are more things that can be connected together than we can ever imagine. Think of doing your math question, how many ways can you combine these characters? Making new connections is probably the same thing.

    Make three parallel lists of ten words. The first list? Nouns. The second list? Verbs. The third list? Adjectives. Then look for intriguing new connections between them.

    First list: seed, grass, farm, cow, milk, bottle, Vitamin, baby, money.-----seed can be money.

    Second list: move, transport, jump, act, build, live, call, marry, study, travel.----have a house and live a life.

    Third: Small, ugly, cold, big, beautiful, wonderful, excellent, happy, entertaining, available---getting more happy life

    Different words can combine different meanings. Ideas can jump from the same to contrast, ideas varies, making connection never ends.

    What other thing I’m interested about is his suggestion #10, Hang Out With Diverse Groups Of People. I think this suggestion is really helpful to get new ideas. Sometimes the power of a single man is not enough. We need to meet friends, and different groups of friend can give us different suggestions. You can never know which type of suggestion is proper until you really listen to them. That’s why we should hang out with different group of people. Friends may have bias on your opinion, but that’s fine, nobody will think exactly the same, just don’t be afraid to ask for suggestions. People can never be too intelligent to learn from others.

     Here I’ll make a list of ten groups of people outside of my traditional “posse” who I can spend time with.

1.    The CSSA members. Since I work as the Vice president of Ad. Department, we usually have a lot of meetings to discuss what are the plans. And I can always get something new because we are different kind of people who think in different patterns.

2.    My video production collegues. Although we study the same thing. People’s idea varies. Just like there won’t be a same shooting style between directors.

3.    Cosplayers. We post our artworks online, make comments and communicate with each other.

4.   My teachers. Teachers can always teach you those things you don’t know.

5.   Families. There are never be more connections between family members.

6.   Roommate. She’s the one knows how you look like when you sleep…O.O

7.   Classmates. If you don’t know the homework for today, call and ask them.

8.   Boyfriend/Girlfriend. I don’t really know if it is a constant relationship to you, but mine... = =|||

9.  Boss. He is the person who can give you suggestions on work. Maybe sometimes too strict, but it is always good to listen to him.

10Those famous people online. Spend time on Facebook or sina blog will sometimes teach you how the world around you really looks.

Howl, and my favorite poem

http://changethis.com/

Johathon Flaum’s FIND YOUR HOWL. 

Those people who influenced me to be a creative person

PART 1: 

          John Woo, the director and producer of Hollywood. He produced many influential films like Reign of Assassins and Blood Brothers and got several worldwide awards. He is the media professional that I mostly admired. His achievements represent many aspect of media success. He has a strong branding knowledge in media study area, which is the basic but important components for media success. Besides, he always desires to know more. There would never be an ending for media study career, because the technology and the taste of public are changing all the time, which we could see through his productions, that the budget never falls and the audience have positive comments about his work. A successful media professional is required to learn about the latest technologies and information to catch up with the quickly updating features. Secondly, he is proactive and always patient with what he is working on. He starts from Hong Kong, China, and then aimed at the international market, that later on push his career to Hollywood. United States is a competitive country for media career, is all about a land of opportunities, he struggled and proved he is a successful media profession of the world. He is my model of achieving media success. In his film Reign of Assassins, he invited many famous international actors to star in his film and turns out to be a successful film. Under the text, the audience actively has to search for the subtext of the plot. When Xiyu gets hurt and speaks to her husband, that’s the part I loved most. Woo made me feel going abroad to study film is a right thing to do, I can have a wider view of the world and certainly make my artworks more diversify than ever.

PART 2:

     The second people who inspires me was the most creative director in China, Xiaogang Feng. His original narrative filmmaking style inspires me so much. Compare to other directors, his film has a common touch with the public. People call him “The father of HeSuiPian”, which means "New Year's Celebration Films" in Chinese cinema. He probably achieved his full fame as the director of the movie Dream Factory (1997). Having achieved success in the face of competition from Hollywood within mainland China, University of Minnesota professor, Jason McGrath, believes "The entertainment cinema of Feng Xiaogang represents a new model of a Chinese national cinema that positions itself vis-à-vis Hollywood." There are never a constant model for Feng’s film, he’s so creative in scripts that his film stories varies from comedy to ancient tragedy.

     Feng is also excellent of making his scene very creative using tension and release. The scene is before the shock begins, the music suggested a big disaster is coming, and he uses reverse chronological order gimmick to give the audience a full tension before the disaster breaks out. One reason I love his film so much is because when watching his films, people can always feel a thing deep inside their heart. Feng knows the thoughts among the audience, what do they really want, and shoot the dream of his audience.

PART 3: 

     Yimou Zhang, he’s the most famous director in China. I love his filmmaking styles, usually conflict stories with extremely beautiful scenes. He inspires me so much not only because he is a great director, but also he involves in many fields of directing and make full use of his incredibly talent. I always follow him as my model of struggle for success. We born at the same place, and have the same hobby, photography, painting and writing scripts. In his early career, Zhang was sent to work for the Guangxi Film Studio as a cinematographer. Though originally intended to work as director's assistants, the graduates soon discovered there was a dearth of directors so soon after the Cultural Revolution, and gained permission to start making their own films.

     Usually his films have wonderful cinematography, I guess it’s own to he’s a photographer.

     His film uses the Objective and Subjective pattern. Most of his films have been colored by the character or writer. They often has a basis in reality, but reflects the perspective through with the speaker views reality. It cannot be verified using concrete facts and figures. And at the same time, his characters are more rational than the normal people, which give audience more space to spread their feelings.

Why do I choose video production

     This is probably the same thing as my personal statement. The media world is all around us and tied closely to people’s daily lives. I’m always in admiration, and at the same time, curious about how media professionals make such visually stunning videos. Studying video production techniques is like learning the process and tricks behind the scenes.

     I want to be a director in the future, hopefully I can be an actress for my film at the same time. I’ve engaged in animation, game and film activities since high school has shaped me into a person best suited for a media career. I have  always had a blueprint in my mind about what I want to do, and my blueprint has helped me build my imagination, and my imagination will help me make beautiful and meaningful videos.

     I used to be a Cosplayer in China. Being a Cosplayer, what I love to do is to direct stage plays, design costumes, make-up, acting, shooting photos and photoshop. Most of my interests are closely related to animations and films. Within my college life in the past year, I have participated in some photography and animation activities. In 2009, my friend and I shot a set of photography for NETEASE website, and recently we are working on a project for Google Fashion. I love to watch films on the weekend and write film analyses because that helps me gather the style, idea and aesthetic expressions that I might want to create and expand while making them my own.  Besides, I love reading fiction and writing Chinese poems. After so much reading as the foundation of my literary knowledge, I started to write scripts. Some scripts come from my dreams, and some scripts are recomposed from real stories that come from the people around me. One can feel that being listened to by others is a really interesting thing to do. I enjoy the lifestyle called “recording”. If the little things from life are valuable to me, then I just record them and write them down, storing them for future use in my scripts. I’m trying to get in touch with all the areas that I am engaged in to make my media career a better prospect.

     I’m working as Vice president of the Chinese Scholar Student Association, Publicity Department, and my work makes the best use of my ability. I’m working on designing posters and flyers, shooting politics videos of CSSA, and doing the editing and Photoshop work. In the past, I learned Editing and Photoshop all by myself, and now I really feel I need to learn more.

     I consider myself to be a responsible, patient, and creative person. I have well-planed what I’m going to do when I graduate. I will try to learn my major techniques as well as possible, and hopefully pursue a film minor. I will also use my video production techniques to shoot some short films on my own using a 5D Mark II Camera. In addition, I will apply for some valuable internships in NY and LA. Those are my ideal cities and places to release my thoughts.