Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Creating With The Ultimate Artist

Img_0553 Some of the most enjoyable creative moments I have are the result of my own incompetence or what some might call "accidents".


It's in those times that I have to give credit and my thanks to God for partnering with me in the creative process.


It can happen any number of ways. Maybe I forget to have a visiting actor record a line until they're out of town again. Maybe I accidentally put a different effect on a musical track than what I intended. Or sometimes an idea will simply pop into my head that I can't imagine how it logically could have arrived there.


Now, that's not to say that every "happy accident" becomes something that works perfectly. After all, God is still leaving the bulk of creative work in my hands to screw up as I may. But since I'm not the type to believe in luck, I have to give credit for the "golden mistakes" to whom it belongs.


I'll give you one real example. In "Spirit Blade", there's a big continuity error regarding which arm Raan lost in the attack from the Atlantean Shock Troopers. Do you remember which one it was? In two different scenes a different arm is referred to as being lost.


Too late to back and re-record. So if I want to make it work for those perceptive listeners and die-hards that notice, I have to explain it somehow in "Dark Ritual". I'll leave the explaination for how Raan loses BOTH arms for you to hear when "Dark Ritual" comes out. But the need to fix the error brought about some wonderful opportunity for Raan's character, who is becoming increasingly cybernetic and decreasingly human. It will be one of the emotional centerpeices for "Dark Ritual" and an element that would be less effective or possibly even absent, had I not made the mistake I did in the script for "Spirit Blade".


And that's just one example. If I kept track more faithfully (which maybe I should), I'd have a lengthy record of God's grace toward my creative efforts, along with multiple stories of God cleaning up my messes.


Of course, that's the story of our lives, isn't it? Our natural tendency is to make a mess of our lives and everything in them. Thank God, he's interested in cleaning up and being a part of every little thing we do. From the sin that destroys me, to a little "sci-fi thing" I'm working on. God's a part of making it all new. And he loves being a part of MY life! (Psalm 18:19)


Wow...


-Paeter Frandsen


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