Pinky Miranda Productions

Ideas are like soap bubbles- look at them directly and they seem to pop under your gaze. And coming up with ideas for videos- well that’s a whole different metaphor. The point is, when you find an idea, don’t overkill it with a rush of thoughts. Let it simmer for awhile and then put it to use.

On the other side of the coin, sometimes ideas come best from constant attention to a glimmer. Although my recent idea, came when I was eating breakfast out of nowhere, my entry to the Heinz Youtube contest was discovered from hours of thinking and idea research.

Idea research is using inspirational quotes, photos, or any kind of media whatsoever to develop a thought. An example is a short film idea of using inanimate objects to tell a story, any story. So, to develop this idea, I went on Google Images and searched ’sock puppets’. I spent ten minutes flipping through pictures of them and decided that I didn’t want inanimate objects. Realizing that I had three kittens and two cats in my house- I tend to forget about everything when I’m doing my idea research- I grabbed my trusty video camera and started filmed every action of my twelve-day old kittens. That project is still in the making, but I have a feeling that it will turn out well. Even though sock puppets and kittens are completely different, somehow my subconscious mind linked them together. Or maybe it was the fact that my cat Rika jumped on my keyboard at that moment.

Idea research can occur during our daily lives too- we just need to be more alert for them to come to us, more meticulous on describing random details in our heads. Simply describing a yogurt bottle can lead to the conclusion that Yoplait’s Passion Fruit yogurt container is the worst container designed ever and that whoever created it should reexamine the design and come to another conclusion that the so called passion fruit looks like a mutilated limb.

All mutilated limbs and soap bubbles aside, this is simply my method of dealing with a form of ‘writer’s block’ that cripples ideas before they ever get the chance to change into something good. (Writer’s block isn’t just for writers, folks) Every piece of advice you gather for helping you get better ideas all boil back down to idea researching.

Next time you see that faint glimmer out of the corner of your eye, turn your head and let your mind wander. Chasing down ideas military-style will get you in the same place that the yogurt bottle designer ended up.

-Rika