inspiration information

aka #FilmStack Inspiration Challenge #177

This post is Day 177 in the Filmstack Inspiration Challenge on Ted Hope’s Filmstack Daily Digest. A hundred and seventy something days ago Ted tossed out the challenge initially to spotlight each other and grow the community. Then came the stretch goal, to show the Substack hierarchy that the FilmStack community here is vibrant, necessary, motivated and it needed a Film & TV category. A hundred something days later that goal succeed and we have the category now and the challenge continues as an ongoing community project to keep the spotlight shinning. If you’d like to help keep the streak going and write an inspiration post, reach out to Donny Broussard. He will get you all set up.

Ok so where does my inspiration come from?

🚀 This isn’t rocket science.

I get inspiration from the world around me.

I haven’t read all the Daily Inspiration Challenge posts yet, but I imagine a lot of people probably say something similar.

It’s always been pretty simple.

I get inspired by experiences.

I remember years when there would be at least one movie I’d see in a theater that would send me out into the night buzzing. I’d leave thinking I want to make something like that. Or at least, I want to go make something.

Fallen Angels and Chungking Express showed the city I grew up in so vividly AND moved me.

Casablanca, Touch of Evil and Lawrence of Arabia captivated me with their scope.

Along with films like There Will Be Blood, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, Magnolia, The Brutalist, and many many more.

They all made me want to make something.

I remember seeing Run Lola Run for the first time in West LA. Walking out of the theater electrified. Or seeing Inception in Glendale and just sitting there afterwards trying to process what I’d just experienced. Or much earlier, my dad taking me to see Full Metal Jacket, probably in Leicester Square, and realizing movies could hit you in ways you didn’t expect.

Sometimes it’s film.

Sometimes it’s music.

Sometimes it’s other people.

Sometimes it’s just life happening.

About fifteen years ago, I was driving home across Los Angeles late at night. Top down in the car, warm air, and city lights (I wish I could romanticize I was winding my way through Mulholland but it was Wilshire or 6th street most likely).

I was listening to a Gilles Peterson compilation, Sunday Afternoon at Dingwalls, jazz tracks, beautifully curated. Somewhere on that drive, an idea formed.

By the time I got home, I had a name and a concept.

playjazzloud

Because that’s exactly what I’d just been doing — driving across town, playing jazz, loudly into the LA night.

That idea turned into a website (that link isn’t the original one but below is a screenshot from the original landing page). And that turned into a radio/podcast series I’ve basically kept doing for the last fifteen plus years, curating music and sharing it with people online and in person.

*the original landing page for PJL.

Great things inspire other things.

You don’t know when it’s going to happen. You just have to put yourself in situations where it can.

I teach documentary producing at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts a couple months a year. In the final class, I usually stop talking about producing altogether.

Instead, I spend an hour talking about going out into the world.

About having experiences.

About protecting your mental health and your curiosity. About balancing work with life. But also about something practical, you have to be open, and you need experiences to have stories to tell.

You can’t create in a vacuum.

For me, ideas come from being outside, traveling, meeting people, walking around cities, spending time in nature, listening to music, going to shows, seeing art, reading, soaking up what others are interested in, talking to strangers, listening to stories.

There’s no formula. No guaranteed outcome.

But if you put yourself into the world, inspiration shows up more often.

Every time I have had a problem, I have confronted it with the ax of art. Yayoi Kusama.

Art is just trying to make sense of the world around us. And you need to actually experience that world to interpret it.

Last night, I was at an event for a mentorship program I’m a part of. A kickoff gathering with mentors and mentees — filmmakers at all stages.

I was on a panel, and I found myself looking at my mentee, and then looking out at this room full of people excited about filmmaking.

And I realized: they were inspiring me.

Inspiration isn’t just movies or music. It’s people.

Connection with other people is maybe the biggest source of inspiration there is.

We’re all trying to make sense of the world. And we do that through connection — with people, stories, experiences, culture.

Connection gives meaning. Meaning creates inspiration.

I was reminded of this recently when I showed my fiancée a short film I directed from film school, Blue Haven. We talked about where the story came from, what inspired it.

At the time, I was watching films like Run Lola Run, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and a run of Wong Kar-wai films — Days of Being Wild, Chungking Express, Fallen Angels. Skate videos too, because our characters were skateboarders and I wanted to understand that world.

Then someone referenced Dog Day Afternoon, so I watched that again.

Each influence pushes you to explore something else. Which inspires something new. Which sends you down another path.

It’s a cycle.

But not a closed circle.

It grows.

I was describing this recently to a composer friend using the idea of a sandbox.

A sandbox gives you boundaries. Rules. Limitations. Budget, schedule, story parameters. Constraints.

And within that sandbox, you play. You build things with other people. You experiment.

But over time, that sandbox doesn’t stay flat. What you build grows upward. It becomes three-dimensional.

Your possibilities expand.

The constraints don’t limit you — they help you build something.

And the process continues.

So where does inspiration come from?

Curiosity. Movies. Music. Conversations. Teaching. Mentoring. Traveling. Curiosity. Walking through cities. Driving home late at night with the music too loud. Curiosity. Watching other people chase their dreams. Trying to understand something unfamiliar.

Connection.

That’s the through line.

And the only real trick is to keep putting yourself where those connections can happen.

Let me know how inspiration finds you.