The Idea - Your Inspirations

Your Inspirations

In this lesson, we will explore what it means to be inspired.

What does it mean to be inspired? 

Honestly, the feeling of inspiration is such an important motivator for me to create stuff. I need to feel fired up in what I’m doing (hence the name of this entire thing!), and I need that energy and excitement around the idea to take action and do it. That could literally just be thinking, “Ah yeah, this is gonna be so cool, no one’s doing stuff like this”. When you're feeling inspired, it can help you tap into that creative flow and produce your best work. 

One thing that helps me get to that place is when I see other peoples content that inspires me - whether that’s a feature length film, or another YouTube video. Personally, I get motivated by seeing other people’s passion for something creative. One documentary in particular about a very well known music artist who I won’t mention the name of, because he is a little controversial, but yeah, this documentary always inspires me to create something. The drive and determination, and talent in his music, when no one could see it, was so cool to see. It makes me think, wow, this is someone that knows how good they are and has big plans but is still struggling to break through, and I feel like I can resonate with that a little. I like seeing confidence in people, it can give off this infectious inspiring energy. 

Music! - Music fires me up like crazy. There are some tracks when I hear them, and I visualise something alongside it, with the edit and everything, it really inspires me to produce the video I have in my head. When I’m in that mode, I feel like “this has to exist, at all costs, this must exist”. HA is that crazy..

Experiences can also be great to inspire us to create. It could be a trip somewhere abroad. You know those travel videos that DJI release that make you think, "wow, I want to get that shot!" Or it could be a different kind of ‘trip’. I once fell off my bike and tripped over a curb, which inspired me to make a film about it - I thought it was a kind of mundane subject and something no one’s ever done. And naturally, my brain goes to genuinely thinking about why this 1 inch kerb actually exists in the way it does - what is its purpose?! Sometimes the most ordinary or mundane experiences can spark an idea for something unique and creative. It's all about exploring your unique perspective and being open to new ideas and experiences. 

Another thing that inspires me, is my old content. I used to post to IG Stories a lot a few years ago. I was making videos on my phone and just posting them to my story, but having a few people reply that weren’t friends or family was exciting, and it inspires me when I watch them. It's also interesting to see how much you've grown and improved as a creator over time. It fires me up. I remember a few months ago, I hadn’t posted anything in a while, and I was scrolling through my Archive, watching my old stuff, and I was like, “man, you had a thing going back then. Where’d it go? You never post anymore!”. 

That thought alone inspired me the next day to post about this dumb little projector thing I saw when I was driving home. I don’t know why, but that got me thinking about creating again. Maybe only for a bit, but sometimes a small amount of inspiration can be enough to trigger a chain reaction of other inspirations. And that process gave me the thought, “hmmm, how I can do more of that stuff”, which actually, in the end, led me to do this course, and who knows what this course could lead to!

Find the sources of inspiration that resonate with you and get you excited to make something - and surround yourself with these things on a day to day basis. You’d be amazed at the domino effect something like that can have. Those small things can snowball into medium things, and those medium things can snowball into other big things. It's great to keep an open mind and be inspired by the world around you, even if it seems insignificant at first. You never know where it might lead you! 

Task

Your task for this lesson is to think about what specifically inspires you, so you can incorporate that into your own creative process and come up with 3-5 things, particular people, certain parts of nature, music, basically anything that inspires you. What gets you pumped up to create? Who do you like to watch or listen to, to feel inspired? Why do you think that might be? What about it do you find inspiring? 

Take some time and write some thoughts down about your inspirations. Once you’ve done that, you can mark this lesson as complete and move on to the next lesson, which is Your Perspective.