It’s called “Writer’s Block”.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re an author, a composer, an artist or a filmmaker: this ‘affliction’ is fairly equal-opportunity. The biggest challenge isn’t so much the ‘how’ – technique is covered in countless YouTube videos and the web is replete with tutorials – no, it’s so much more about the ‘what’.

I’ve started on a new “sketch” in Musescore. It’s just a simple piece of indeterminate time signature for piano, at the moment. No idea where that’s going: it’ll probably take on its own identity.

Video / filmmaking? well, just getting my head around this Lumix GH5, which replaced the Sony A6000 only because of Panasonic’s superior in-body image stabilisation technology. The focus for the time being will be on the technical as opposed to the creative, but in order to become versant in the use of this camera, a lot of footage will be generated. Essential to the process is a somewhat more enlightened attitude to footage: if it’s crap, delete it. Gigabytes of footage has already ended up in the recycle bin… anything over/under-exposed, shaky or meaningless is ruthlessly discarded. A new dawn of creative critique has arrived, meaning footage shot in the past with the Sony or the Canon will similarly be scrutinised and if found wanting in any respect, be discarded, freeing up gigabytes of storage. It’s got to be done.

Back to “writer’s block”… what to create? Well, at this point in time, it’ll be sort-of home movies, I guess… what life is like for us, efforts in gardening, our chooks. Dunno… it probably won’t interest a lot of people… certainly not YouTube stuff at all. As I sit here and type, I’m struck with the notion perhaps I need to actually write a script… like, a film script. A shooting script. At least, that way it’ll be easier to nail down a purpose to the video.

Right. The next post will be my script.