The Shelf of Forgotten Dreams
Your absolute top priority when starting a new passion project should be this: finish it.
The most common destination for creative side projects is the shelf.
The project takes too long, momentum is lost, progress lapses. The result is something you were once so excited about languishes on your hard drive, unrealized.
Trust me: you will feel better finishing a bad project, than not finishing a good one. An unfinished project can’t be good. It doesn’t exist.
The solution: make your project easier.
Creative work is always harder than you think it will be. It’s a long road and you better like it. Whenever possible, reduce complexity, reduce friction, make things less scary and more fun.
Start with a goal you can confidently complete. If you're not experienced, see the bar so low you can walk over it. If you’re excited about the complete project and think it has further potential, create the bigger and better version next.
Answer these three questions to make your project easier without compromising on your long-term goals.
1) Can I make it smaller?
Big projects are intimidating. Start with the miniature version of your project. For instance, a book is a big project. Instead, start with an article. If an article is too big, write a series of short posts.
2) Can I chunk it?
It's not just books that have chapters. Find the chapters of your project, the component parts. If you can chunk it, chunk it.
3) What is the easiest media form I can use?
I know some of you are filmmakers, musicians, developers and more. You've got your medium already. But if it's possible to work in an easier medium, do it. If you can write an article, rather than make a video, start with that.
Here is the spectrum of media difficulty.
Text is easy… and also hard
Short text is easiest of all, but long text, like a book, is extraordinarily hard and will likely take years to complete.Non-music audio is relatively easy
I'm mainly thinking of podcasts. Podcasts can be much harder if they have a lot of writing and production.Still images are also relatively easy
Graphics, illustrations, and photos often take hours or days to produce.Video and code are hardest
Video is a lot of work. You need to write, edit, mix music, add sound effects, graphics, and more. It's like all media combined into one. Similarly, software can cross the boundaries of many realms and be even more complex. (I don’t code, so I’m kinda guessing here.) Live and conversational video can be easier, similar to a podcast.
Execute a version of the project in the easiest medium possible. Move right if the project seems promising.
My two momentous new projects
Nora and little K at the lighthouse museum in Victoria, PEI, Canada
Hello from beautiful Prince Edward Island, Canada, folks! I’m having a fantastic summer with my family and working on two exciting projects that I can’t wait to share with you. As part of this work, I’ve been doing a deep dive on the origins of Everything is a Remix and breakthrough ideas. Let me tell you about all this!
The Remix Method
New video course coming September 6
The Remix Method is simply the creativity course I’ve always wanted. It’s not a collection of tips and tricks (although I do deliver plenty of those too). The Remix Method is a simple, comprehensive, step-by-step system designed to guide you through every stage of the creative process.
This two-hour video course is hosted by me and presented in a relaxed, fun, and accessible style. Whether you’ve never completed a creative project or you need to freshen up your process, this course will redefine how you think about creativity.
Everything I Know About Making Videos
Workshop runs September 20 - October 25, 2024
Everything I Know About Making Videos is what it says: it’s everything I know about making videos. In this six-week workshop I cover the full production process, from writing and research to editing, design, mixing audio, and more. It’s two decades of knowledge about video essay production distilled down into a single class.
This is a rare opportunity to learn directly from me about creating compelling video content. I’ll address your challenges and tailor the course to students’ needs. I have no plans to repeat this event. Visit here to learn more and to secure your spot now.
I believe in making creativity accessible to everyone. That’s why I’m offering several scholarships for those who need financial assistance. If you’re passionate about video production but need a helping hand, reply to this email with a bit about your situation for a chance to receive a scholarship. Spots are limited and will be granted by lottery.
The Origins of Everything is a Remix (Part 1)
As a teen, I struggled with originality, as I’m sure any creative person does. I idolized artists, especially musicians, and fully believed in innate talent. Some people had it. Some people didn’t. And that was your lot.
I had some talent and assumed that was my lot. Sure, I thought I could raise my game, but not a lot because I wasn’t highly gifted.
I was mystified as to how anybody could come up with anything original. This itch I had about originality and talent was what pulled me over the years to Everything is a Remix.
How do great artists and thinkers create original work? I wanted that answer.
That’s where your best ideas come from – some itch in your imagination.
Music was the gateway
Music was the gateway through which I would make my discovery. As a teen, my main thing was music. One album in particular wriggled into my mind like a parasite and slowly grew. That album was Paul’s Boutique by The Beastie Boys.
When I first heard Paul’s Boutique I couldn’t truly grasp what I was hearing, but I knew it was a collage. I knew it was samples. I didn’t think they were playing all this stuff.
Here’s why that album was transcendent for me. It was like you were hearing so much more than just a band. Because it was this crazy array of samples, from all genres. It had an awesome breadth that a band couldn’t capture. It was like the greatness of human genius smooshed together into one thing.
It really stuck with me. And I basically never heard music like that again… until almost 20 years later. I’ll talk more about that later.
Back to life
Big detour after that, I went to university, worked as a graphic designer, published lots of zines and articles. I was just trying to get better at craft. Better writer, better designer, learn new software. I was trying to find my niche.
It wasn’t until my 30s that I started to feel like, okay, let’s make something good now, let’s do something new, something people haven’t experienced before.
I was making videos at this point, and I’m pretty good but more importantly, I’m improving quickly. And I’m getting some attention. There is momentum.
For a year or so I was making comedic video blogs, I was also researching my big idea: how do original things happen?
I didn’t know it at the time, but the Immerse phase of the creative process had begun. I’ll explain what that means next time.
Have a wonderful week and enjoy your summers, everyone!
Kirby
P.S. If you want to learn my filmmaking process directly from me, Everything I Know About Making Videos is your opportunity. Get your spot now.
What the Psycho shower scene teaches us about creative inspiration
Stills from the shower scene in Pscyho
Our knowledge of creativity is mostly very hazy, and so is the language we use. For instance, inspiration is a widely used term with multiple, mysterious meanings.
Inspiration can be a mood. You’re feeling inspired, feeling creative.
Inspiration can be that lightbulb moment when an idea suddenly appears.
Most importantly, inspiration can be when we experience someone’s creative work, then use it to create something new. How exactly this works is not something that gets talked about.
That’s what I want to delve into here. How do we draw inspiration from other artists?
The inspiration for “Good Times”
Nile Rodgers & Bernard Edwards of the band Chic
Niles Rodgers from the band Chic drew inspiration from a song called “Hollywood Swinging” to write the famous and often sampled, “Good Times.” I explore this further in Everything is a Remix.
Rodgers copied the bassline from “Hollywood Swinging,” but after the first three notes, he changes it entirely. The two songs have little in common other than these few notes.
That’s inspiration in action. You copy a certain, specific element of a work, transform it, and combine it with other material.
The inspiration for Bane
Tom Hardy’s portrayal of Bane in The Dark Knight Rises
Here’s another example, this one from the realm of acting.
Thom Hardy didn’t have much to draw from when conceiving the voice for Bane in The Dark Knight Rises. One of the few things he knew was that Bane is of Latin origin.
Hardy looks for a Latin character to emulate and finds a boxer named Bartley Gorman. But after Gorman’s voice gets filtered through Hardy’s imagination, there’s only a subtle similarity left. You can hear Gorman speaking here and Hardy’s Bane voice.
Without knowing this story, nobody would ever connect these voices.
Inspiration is simply this…
In all these examples, copying is the crucial starting point. Remove that bit of copying and they would have created something utterly different.
Inspiration is creative copying. It’s copying a specific part of someone’s work, transforming it, and merging it into your work.
One of the most extraordinary examples of creative copying is from the film Raging Bull. Martin Scorsese used the Psycho shower scene as the template for the storyboard for a scene where the character gets savagely beaten. Some of the compositions are similar and the pace is similar. But again, nobody knew about this copying until Scorcese revealed it.
That’s creative copying. Pick a specific element, copy it, merge it into your work, transform it to meet your needs.
There is no creative formula, but...
Creativity can’t be boiled down to a formula, but it can thrive within a system.
There is no formula for creativity.
Albert Einstein and Stanley Kubrick and Miles Davis and Toni Morrison didn’t follow formulas.
And yet I’ve created a system for creativity. It’s called The Remix Method and you can pre-order it now.
Yes, there is no formula for creativity… but I’ve made a system.
What gives? Am I just playing word games here?
A system is not a formula
A formula gives you a precise recipe for the same result every time. There is a secret formula for Coca Cola and they use it to manufacture a zillion gallons of identical product.
A system is different. A system provides a flexible framework that adapts to your unique style.
Steve Jobs famously called the computer “a bicycle of the mind.” A bike doesn’t pedal itself, and a computer doesn’t do your work for you. It makes you faster, more efficient, and more powerful.
That’s what The Remix Method does. It makes you a faster, more efficient, and more powerful creator.
One of the foundational tools The Remix Method provides is a map of the creative journey ahead. The creative process can feel mysterious and unpredictable. I orient you in the right direction, prepare you for the journey, and describe the milestones. But it’s your sweat that will deliver you to your goal.
The phases of The Remix Method
Here are the phases of The Remix Method system.
Immerse
Draft
Build
Return
The phases of The Remix Method
Phase 1: Immerse
Dive into diverse experiences and capture your insights.
Allow your mind to wander and play.
Phase 2: Draft
Develop rough drafts and iterate on your ideas.
Treat each draft as material for remixing.
Phase 3: Build
Construct your project with a focus on execution.
Shift your mindset to prioritize shipping.
Phase 4: Return
Reflect and market your work.
Prepare for the next creative cycle.
The Remix Method is a loop. Once you complete all four phases, you rest and renew, then return to phase one.
The Remix Method is a loop
The more times you run this cycle, the more you progress, grow, and build a library of notes and ideas. You can then develop the strongest material from the archive you’ve created.
Have you ever felt like your creative potential is just out of reach? Pre-order The Remix Method now and start your journey to becoming a more efficient and powerful creator.
The Substance of Style, by Matt Zoller Seitz
Still from The Substance of Style by Matt Zoller Seitz
The 2009 video essay The Substance of Style by Matt Zoller Seitz was the biggest video influence on the original Everything is a Remix, which began in 2010. This series about Wes Anderson is a significant milestone in the evolution of the video essay, but it’s been largely inaccessible for years. I’ve taken the liberty of uploading it to the Internet Archive to preserve it for posterity.
If you’re a Wes Anderson fan, you will love this.
Thanks to my friend John Vella for his help with this!
An Introduction to The Remix Method
My upcoming video course The Remix Method is the product of nearly 20 years of creative experience. This is the very method behind the Everything is a Remix series, numerous personal projects, and commercial work for clients like The New York Times, Bloomberg, Discovery, CNN, and more. This course represents a lifetime of creative insights.
What is The Remix Method?
Simply put, The Remix Method is a system for capturing pieces from your experiences and transforming them into creative works.
These experiences can be:
Your lived life: your personal history, your conversations, your travels, your relationships, your job, your struggles, etc.
Media: the net, movies, books, podcasts, games, documentaries, etc.
The Remix Method is about taking material from life and media and remixing it into new creations.
It’s a system of frameworks, tools, ideas, and even some tips and tricks, that cultivate creativity and help you see projects through to completion. It’s delivered in the format of a two-hour-plus video course, along with an assortment of resources like worksheets, infographics, and documents.
Who is The Remix Method for?
The Remix Method is designed for anyone working on solo passion projects across any media form. I believe the simplest and best way to create projects like these is to make them for yourself. As John Romero, the co-creator of Doom, put it.
We were making games that we wanted to play. We weren’t worried about audience. We were the audience.
John Romero
Make it because you want to make it and believe there are more people like you. This course is about creating in your spare time, to the best of your abilities, without going off the deep end of perfectionism.
The Remix Method is about creativity in all forms. With this method you can create projects, big and small, in whatever medium you like.
This isn’t about rules
There are no rules to creativity. The Remix Method helps you create the conditions from which creativity will emerge. The creating part you do on your own. And there are no rules for that. As Rick Rubin put it.
Rules direct us to average behaviors.
Rick Rubin
There is no formula. So I don’t have a formula.
But I do have… a framework.
See what I did there? 😉
But seriously, this is a different approach, and in a very important way. I'll explain why next week.
THIS WEEK ONLY
Pre-order The Remix Method and save 60%
Plus! Get the Everything is a Remix Toolkit Bundle FREE ($70 Value)
Offer expires Friday, July 19th.
What's one YouTube video that has changed your life?
Here’s a grab bag of lovely goodies friends have sent recently.
Thanks to my friend Jordan Terry who sent along this lovely Reddit thread.
Head on over to Reddit and give me an upvote!
My thanks also to my friend John Vella who sent me the video files for Matt Zoller Seitz’s 2009 Wes Anderson video essay series, The Substance of Style. This series was the biggest video influence on the original Everything is a Remix. I uploaded it to The Internet Archive for posterity. Enjoy!
And lastly, my friend Jay Acunzo has an excellent new podcast, How Stories Happen. Go check it out!
The glorious mediocrity of parenthood
Here's an aspect of parenting I never conceived of until I got here: the glorious mediocrity of it all.
By mediocre, I don't mean that it's lacking. I mean most everybody gets the same extraordinary experience.
My experience, which I would describe as "perfect," is no better than most anyone else's. Sure, our personal or professional lives might be better or worse, but our lives as parents are equally great.
Babies are babies. Toddlers are toddlers. Yes, they're all unique, but mostly they're the same. Some are harder, some are easier, but they all deliver the same bliss.
That's why parents of small children can commune with anyone who has one or has had one. It doesn't matter if that person is a cashier at Walmart or a thirty-something who’s already retired thanks to some undisclosed windfall.
Parenting small children is a communist utopia: an equal sum of joy gets doled out to us all.
As children get older this changes. The gaps between them widen, tribes form, advantages and disadvantages compound. They become just as different from each other as the rest of us. They don't play with anybody who just happens to be around.
But for now, I'm still in the same boat as most everyone else.
I've spent most of my adult life priding myself on not being like everybody else. And now that I'm the same as every other parent, I'm amazed at how much I love it. It feels good to just be another member of the tribe.
Striking a Balance: Creativity vs. Productivity
The Creativity-Productivity Spectrum
Creativity and productivity are oppositional forces.
The more creative you are, the less productive you are.
If you are highly creative, you might be productive by the standards of creative people, but you will absolutely not be productive compared to someone working in a non-creative realm.
If you are highly productive and you can crank out lots of work all day every day, there is little to no creativity to your work. This is not a dig – creative work is not better than productive work.
In creative work, sometimes you drive down long and winding roads only to discover they’re dead-ends.
Sometimes you slowly come to realize you just drove in a big circle.
And yet other times, you get lost in a maze of crisscrossing roads and eventually run out of gas.
Creativity is inefficient by design. It requires experimentation. That means failing a lot. But these setbacks are part of what leads to innovation and new ideas.
Also: creativity needs slack. It needs mind-wandering and daydreaming. It needs playtime. It is play. Creativity is play.
There’s a reason lots of creative people have toys around the office and love playing with their kids and still seem to be kids. That childlike sense of play is the origin of creativity.
If you phase out the play, you kill the golden goose.
And to be clear, it’s easy to go too far with playing. It’s easy to wander too much, to have your head in the clouds too much. I’m certainly guilty on all charges.
But even more often, the forces of modern work will slowly but surely push you to the productive end of the spectrum.
It’s up to you to keep that flaky, frivolous, impractical, unproductive part of yourself alive. If you push your creative work too far toward productive work, creativity dies.
Creativity is play. You gotta work hard, you gotta ship, but protect that core of play because it’s the heart and soul of creativity.
I’m building a system for creativity.
What you’ve just read is a work-in-progress excerpt from my upcoming on-demand video course, The Remix Method.
Pre-order now and save 50%, plus get the Everything is a Remix Toolkit Bundle FREE ($70 Value).
The gentle way to kill your darlings
The phrase “kill your darlings” is widely attributed to the author William Faulkner, but it’s actual origins are more complicated
"Kill all your darlings" is another oft-repeated quotation of complicated origin. It’s gone viral in recent decades because it concisely relates the ruthless edge you need in order to finish high-quality projects. You need to cut, crush, and mutilate your own beloved work.
The most vital area where we all need to get ruthless is with our ideas. In particular, which ideas do we choose to develop into complete projects? Which do we consign to oblivion? And how do we avoid losing material that might prove useful later?
Let’s start with the obvious.
File and flag your great ideas
Duh, file your great ideas. Tag them as “great”. These are your top draft picks.
But beware: ideas can give a great first impression and actually be mediocre. This happens a lot.
The best sign that an idea really is great is that it will immediately start growing and take on a life of its own. If that happens, ride the wave and see if it will carry you through to a small completed project. If you still see more potential in that material, turn it into a new or bigger project.
File the good ideas… and the okay ones… actually, file anything not horrible
You not only file your good ideas and your okay ideas, you file all not-terrible ideas.
You don’t do this because you want a massive pile of okay ideas, but because okay ideas can turn into great ones. They do this in three ways.
An okay idea later can be transformed into a great idea.
An okay idea can lead to a great idea.
A series of okay ideas can combine into a single great idea
Be generous. If an idea’s not garbage, it goes into the system.
But if an idea is garbage delete it. It’s obvious when an idea is junk. You know these when you see them.
Arrange your ideas into tiers
How do you tame your notes so that the best material stays in focus and the lowest quality stuff stays in the margins?
I arrange notes into a simple 3-tier system.
A Grade
This is where top candidates for new projects live. I tag these ideas as #A and keep them at the top of my list of notes. Anything that hangs around for a while without turning into a project gets demoted to B Grade. These will be a tiny minority of your ideas.
B Grade (Default)
B is the default grade for every note in my system. Everything that is good or alright or better-than-bad is automatically assigned a B. These notes are not tagged. B grade notes will likely be over 90% of your notes.
C Grade
These are the not-terrible ideas that could somehow later prove useful. I keep these notes at the bottom of my file list and tag them as #C. Very little of this material actually will develop into anything, but very occasionally, it does, and that justifies keeping this stuff. Like A grade, these will be a small minority of your notes.
I find this system quick and easy to use. Three tiers are plenty and the vast majority of notes don’t get labeled at all.
The AI Lawsuits Will Fail
This week the RIAA, a trade organization representing the recording industry, unloaded two whopper copyright infringement cases targeting AI music generators, Suno and Udio. (And yes, those names are preposterous.)
Let me be clear right away: I am not a lawyer. But I have extensive experience with fair use and copyright issues over the past fifteen years. This opinion is based on intuition and practical knowledge rather than detailed legal theory.
It seems pretty clear these AI music cases, along with most generative AI cases, are going to fail for one simple reason: they’re not showing us the infringement.
This stuff ain’t that complicated
Copyright infringement is pretty straightforward. It’s either:
This is the same as that. That’s piracy.
Or…
This is too much like that. This is more ambiguous to decide, but the claims still cite specific works. For example, “Blurred Lines” was claimed to sound too much like “Got to Give It Up.” “Thinking Out Loud” was claimed to sound too much like “Let’s Get It On.”
Examples of specific and widespread infringement by generative AI software would be a game-changer for these cases, but it seems the evidence simply is not there.
The highly theoretical cases against Suno and Udio
The plaintiffs in the RIAA cases explicitly concede they’re not making claims of specific infringement, although they do provide a shockingly meager list of examples of “copying of iconic music.” They provide 3 songs from each platform. And two out of three of the Suno tracks don’t even cite particular songs. So really, there’s just one example, a Jerry Lee Lewis-like track, which yes, I would say is infringement. (Udio made the dubious move of removing the three tracks the RIAA cites.)
If generative AI consistently spat out works that infringed copyright then the law would step in. It doesn’t appear to me that it does this. Instead, the claims being made are abstract and theoretical and focus on training. My guess is that without clearer claims, cases against generative AI companies will fail.
We’ll decide, not the courts
The more likely scenario is this hornet’s nest will gradually be tamed by norms, not by law. Companies will willingly create limits because of social pressure.
For instance, a consensus has emerged that generating works in the style of specific living artists is wrong (even if it is mostly not illegal.) Neither Suno nor Udio permit this.
Using lyrics from copyrighted songs is also wrong, and further, I think it is copyright infringement. Udio does not allow this, but Suno does. I was able to generate this track using the complete lyrics from The Beatles’ “Yesterday.”
Suno had better close this door before they get legally stomped.
Overall, I don’t expect the law to settle this issue. Instead, it’ll be settled by all of us – as much as possible anyway.
(There are a lot of moving parts in these cases. If anything here is incorrect, let me know and I'll fix it.)
Where My Big Idea Came From
I’ve often been asked where the idea for Everything is a Remix came from. But I’ve never given a detailed answer because it came from such a wide and wild melee of sources.
For my upcoming creativity course, The Remix Method, I will answer this question once and for all. But here’s some of the explanation.
Everything is a Remix came unbidden
Everything is a Remix emerged. There was no plan and I wasn’t pursuing anything in particular. This was the process in a nutshell:
I discovered interesting segments
I saw a connection between them
I merged those into a narrative
I gave that narrative a theme
The individual breakdown sections came first: Apple Macintosh, Quentin Tarantino, Star Wars, and Led Zeppelin, along with William Burrough’s cut-ups. I’d likely known about the Mac’s origins for years but realized it could be a good video. Kill Bill came out a few years earlier and I was film nerdy enough to know that it was packed with copying. The Mac and Kill Bill were the bits that got the ball rolling.
All I intended to do with these segments was release them as separate short videos. I didn’t even know they had any relation other than being examples of creative work. But once I had a few of them, I saw a deeper theme, although I couldn’t quite name it.
Along comes remixing
Mash-ups were exploding at the time and I saw the connection between that and these older, classic works. But I didn’t like that term mash-up and it seemed too specific to music. I never considered using it as the framing.
The term remix came from Larry Lessig’s 2008 book Remix. That book was the biggest single influence on Everything is a Remix. This was the first time I’d ever seen the word remix used to mean anything more than a music remix. I remixed Lessig’s use of the remixing concept.
From remixing to hip hop
Music seemed the best way to start telling this story. Hip-hop was the clear way to bridge mash-ups and my first break-down, Led Zeppelin. Hip-hop required almost no research. I’d lived through its rise and knew its history.
The actual phrase Everything is a Remix was one of the last things I did. It was conceived quickly and I ran with it. It just seemed a succinct way to sum up the video.
The source of the style
Mash-up culture and hip-hop were the major stylistic influences on Everything is a Remix, but a couple early video essays took root in my imagination.
The primary influence was The Substance of Style by Matt Zoller Seitz, which was about the stylistic influences of Wes Anderson. Seitz’s breakdowns and split screens strongly influenced me. (That video seems to be offline. If anyone can find it, please send it to me!)
Another big influence was Red Letter Media’s Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Review. I didn’t especially like the Plinkett character or the gross comedy, but I liked the analysis and the format. That series also showed me that you could make a video about older stuff and people might care. (The Phantom Menace had been out for nine years.) Aside from mash-ups, there was nothing topical in Everything is a Remix.
Those two series were major, early innovations in the evolution of the video essay format.
The Everything is a Remix concept had been brewing for many months, but the first Everything is a Remix video was made quickly. There wasn’t much editing or even research. The Led Zeppelin segment came together fast and was mostly sourced from this.
There’s way more to the origin of Everything is a Remix and it’s taken some time to unravel it. Pre-order The Remix Method to get the full deep-dive.