on experience and treachery overcoming youth and speed

[acroyear]

My comments on a blog post about an underachiever with a knack for making impressive youtube videos...

Lance Mannion: Falling in love with a life of adventure when the grown-ups want you to go into accounting:

I *mostly* agree with this (having spent some of my own teenage years trying to write my own program to duplicate the lifestyle of "Zork", 25 years ago one of the biggest software games ever).

However, there is something to be said for, well, endurance. making 6 minute videos is one thing, making a movie that holds for 90 minutes (or even a tv show that holds for 23 or 46) is something different. what is missing is that idea of attention span, and with it the ability to comprehend complexity.

Your Harry Potter examples prove my point. Yes, there was a lot of semi-fluff and character development in the tent scenes while we "wait until J.K. Rowling is ready for them to catch up with it again", but the point is that we could get into that detail while still holding on to all of those enormous details and characters and relationships that are going to drive this film's climax and drive the next film's finale.

Rowling may have only been writing a 7 part kid's story, but she couldn't have done it without the experience gained by reading epic novels that define storytelling itself. The same with C.S. Lewis or JRR Tolkien.

and for that matter, the same with the semi-amateur filmmakers that make it big like Tim Burton or Kevin Smith. The craft of storytelling that makes for a success requires an understanding of complexity and the ability to plant seeds that won't be cashed in for minutes (or years) to come, or the ability to take seemingly innocuous details and make them suddenly important (be it the inheritance from Dumbledore's will, or the one-off character details in an Agatha Christie mystery).

Those only come from experience, and no amount of early creativity can make up for the lack of it. A 6 minute mash-up might impress the classmates and the principle, but it is not enough to build a career, and therefore a life, from.

Of course, I'm only saying this because I'm a mere 5 years away from that magic 45 you refer to. Add salt to taste. :)

Comments

[thelongshot.livejournal.com]

The problem with this is you are basically saying that a novel is more challenging than a short story, when each form really has their own challenges.

As someone who has watched a lot of AMVs, finding a video that can entertain for 6 minutes can be a challenge, because some ideas can get old pretty quickly. It is why the philosopy is usually to try to keep videos as short as possible. Even the longest videos (Last year, someone did an amazing video to Stravinsky's Firebird Suite using Princess Tutu. The video is 9 minutes long.) are still the short stories to TV shows and movies.

And yes, creative endeavors rarely lead to careers. But, you don't make a career out of your dancing and music playing either. Is it any less valuable to you?