I’m boring. How do I know that? My first draft of this post included the dictionary definition of the word ingenuity. Oh yeah, and Seth Godin told me so.
Everyone wants to be exciting, on the cutting-edge, forward-thinking and all those other overused words. Mr. Godin suggests we “lean out on the edge and become interesting, noteworthy and yes, remarkable.”
If boring is our natural state, and there is no greater sin than boring our audience, how do we avoid this and create remarkable visual storytelling? How do we find and use ingenuity?
INGENUITY DEFINED
The cool thing about ingenuity is that it can pertain to anything–from a more efficient way to perform a heart transplant, a better way to cook an egg, or a faster pinewood derby car.
It always leads to things becoming better. Whether it increases efficiency, raises quality, or improves performance; you have elements combining to produce solutions to a problem.
Here’s an example:
Now you’re saying, “Wait a minute? What problem did that solve?” In this case, it was a problem most of us didn’t see. But DJ Steve Porter did. He observed that each of these interview clips has been out there floating around the internet, entertaining us for years. And he had the tools to improve upon them.
On the importance scale it may be more like a faster pinewood derby car than a more efficient heart transplant, but it employs ingenuity nonetheless.
This may not be your style of entertainment, but there are a couple of elements that I feel pushed this beyond your standard internet compilation. 1) He modifies their voices so that they are singing their rants 2) He creates a narrative flow with the clips; one leads into the next and creates new meaning as it does.
Those two things set this apart in terms of quality. It is clear that someone who knows what they are doing is at work here.
This is just one example. Got others? Add them in the comments. How would you define ingenuity? How does ingenuity relate to your work/craft/world experience? Click here to read Ingenuity in Storytelling Part II: Friends and Foes.
Tags: ingenuity, philosophy
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