Category: Uncategorized

So because there’s no directive this week I’m going to give myself one: Flashbacks. I always liked flashbacks as a literary and cinematic plot tool so why not make them a tool for creativity too? I know I have plenty to write about for this directive (duh, that’s why I chose it) but I’ll start with a little fiction. Confession: I can’t drive. Which makes writing about cars for an entire semester a little weird because I have basically no driving experience. Anyway, I thought it’d be interesting to do a flashback that isn’t actually real (for me at least): learning how to drive. most people in the world (okay, the US, I’m not sure about elsewhere) know how to drive and had to learn at some point so it would definitely be relatable. Here goes.

It was snowing out. School was cancelled because the weatherman was calling for at least six more inches by sundown. Us kids were ecstatic of course but dad was none too happy about our snow day excitement waking him up on his day off. He came down into the living room and pointed at me with a sour look on his face. I was sure I was about to get a talking to for not keeping the younger siblings quiet when he said, “Get ready, we’re going out.” “In this?” I wanted to know. I would almost have thought he was joking but for the glare he gave my inquisition. I got up and went to put on my boots and coat without another word. When I got outside he was standing in the driveway on the passenger side of his old Bus. I shot him a look of confusion and to my pure shock, he tossed me the keys. “Really?” I was seriously expecting him to come over and snatch them right back out of my hand but instead he said, “yes, really, now get in and start it up, I’m freezing my ass off.” and got into the car. I stood there a beat, still not believing he was doing this, then hurried to get in before his sanity returned and he changed his mind. He never let me drive, even though I’d had my permit for three whole months. But why a snow day? Of all the times he could’ve chosen to teach me..or had he been planning on teaching me today, his one, sacred day off, and it just happened to be snowing? I’d never know because I sure as hell knew better than to ask. I closed the door and glanced over at the surely beast that is my father and we almost have an actual meaningful exchange, I can feel it, but no, he just asks if I know what to do first. I know this one. “Seatbelt.” I know all of them really, I’ve been practicing secretly, running through the checklist until I say it in my sleep (at least that’s what Tommy claims, but he’s full of it, so I don’t believe him). I do everything until I’m sitting there with my foot on the brake and the car in reverse. I glance over at him again and he gives me a “what the hell are you waiting for?” look and the message is so clear I swear I can hear him thinking it. He says nothing as I slowly back out into the street. “Where are we going?” I ask. “Just driving.” Is his cryptic response. “Just go down Main.” And so I drive. It’s unbearably slow because the Bus doesn’t have snow tires or anything and I know better than to go over 10 miles per hour with no friction for brakes, but it’s driving. There’s not a single car in sight because anyone would be a fool to drive in this weather. I’m sure I’ve been grinning like one when he finally breaks the complete snowy silence. “Pull into that parking lot.” I do and he tells me to get out. I’m sure I’ve done something wrong, made some mistake and now he’ll never let me drive again. I’ll graduate and then grow old and never get to drive. He comes around and taps on the window so I get out, crushed. Before I even have a chance to walk around the side of the car he gets in and revs the engine so hard that I’m sure he plans to run me over for being a failure of a son. I leap back but the engine dies down just as soon as it roared and he gets out again. I glance around in confusion, as unsure as I’ve been all morning but he just says, “now fix it” and walks around to get back in the passenger seat. As I look at my shoes, I suddenly understand what he’s done. He got the van stuck in the snow. He wants me to figure out how to do this. He’s helping me learn. This realization hits me like a brick and all I can do is stand there in the driving snow dumbfounded by my father’s willingness to give up his day to help me learn how to drive. I glance up and see his blurry glaring face through the window and scramble back into the driver’s seat.

 

So this was weird. I haven’t written ‘for fun’ in a really long time and I’d forgotten how much fun fiction writing could be. I don’t do short stories very often but I think this one does a decent job creating an emotional connection between the reader and this father-son duo. I like it. I just don’t know that it counts as an idea. How do I relate it to the brand? It’s a bonding experience and yes, the van plays a major part, but I don’t know. Is it enough?

Write what you know.

Well, what do I know? I have experiences that are totally unique and different from anyone else’s and I’ve been thinking about this for a few weeks now. Since about a fortnight ago (two weeks, for anyone in this century) I’ve been dwelling on grief more than usual. I found out that Monday that a friend from high school had passed away suddenly and my reaction was not one I had dealt with very often. I was confused and shocked and sort of angry at myself for being so upset. I almost immediately invalidated my own feelings because I told myself, “you didn’t know him well enough to be crying about this.” But here’s the thing: that’s stupid. All feelings are legitimate. If I’m feeling sad or hurt or happy, no one, not even me, has any right to say those feelings are unacceptable. Emotion is normal, it’s human, we all have feelings. Accepting and dealing with emotion is not only healthy, but it’s sort of necessary to be happy. Anyway, that’s too much about my life, here’s my idea for this post:

Focusing on the emotion involved, we’re going to illicit some ‘feels’ about the enduring value of VW (both physical and emotional value). A vintage-looking home video of a grinning married couple leaving the church and getting into an old fashioned Beetle with all the “Just Married” trappings on the back. Shots of the groom shooting nervous excited looks at the bride in the passenger seat and she throws her head back and laughs then blows him a kiss. Scene change to the same car, more modern but still not the present. The husband is driving and there is a bouquet of flowers in the passenger seat. He pulls up to a cute house and gets out with the flowers to ring the doorbell. The wife answers the door dressed for a date and rolls her eyes but smiles and they kiss. He gives her the flowers and escorts her to the car. He opens and closes the door for her and when he walks around the car to get in she blows him a kiss through the drivers’ side window as he is opening the door. He gets in and kisses her and they drive off with the same camera angle of the back of the car as from the first scene. Flash forward to present. The same camera angle of the same car, now an antique, but still in great working condition. The now elderly husband is once again driving with flowers in the passenger seat. He glances over at them and smiles a small but genuine smile. He pulls up to a small gated cemetery (cue feels). He gets out and walks up to a modest but beautiful gravestone with a kiss mark subtly engraved on it and places the flowers smiling but slightly misty-eyed. We see him stand there for a moment, then blow a kiss and walk back to the car. Fin.

I am really terrible at this. Even with the concerted effort of setting an alarm for the same time every morning I fail to get up, sometimes sleeping through the alarm altogether. I haven’t had a daily teatime or regular homework hours or anything of the organized and scheduled nature (aside from classes, but I even had a problem with that this week; I was late to curiousness for the first time ever on Thursday). I have been doing things but not in a ‘this time is set aside for this’ way. The further into the semester I get, the more I struggle to find structure in my day to day routines. I ignore assignments, putting them off and letting them pile up until I get so worked up over how much I have to do that I can’t get anything done so I give up. It’s a terrible vicious cycle. It leads to anxiety, fatigue, depression, insomnia and loss of motivation. I need to drag myself out of this rut and onto a path of productiveness. The first step in that direction is getting back on track with these posts. I’m behind but I KNOW I can catch up. I sometimes look at classmates blogs but I’m simultaneously fascinated and disheartened by everyone else’s cool ideas. I know this is bad, I shouldn’t compare my work or ideas to anyone else’s, comparison is the enemy of creativity.

I’ll do something with that. I’ll call it “enemies”.

A fleet of 2014 VW cars are spread across a big open field in a military-esque formation. Across the field is a mishmash of old fashioned, out of date junkers (Maybe even a hint at this being part of a humans vs zombies theme by playing up with headlights missing, cracked windshields, rusted out bumpers, etc?) They could have epic battles of chicken and races and the shiny new cars would obviously win, and drive circles around the junkers.

I’m hopeless with photoshop so I just drew it. It’s been a while since I did something with colored pencils so it’s eh. Also, I have childish handwriting.

I can’t help but feel like this is cliche. Blah.

The directive this week is to “explore my process” but my problem is that I don’t really have ‘a process’. I’m not a creature of habit. I don’t really have many set routines. I relish chaos and thrive in a chaotic environment. I enjoy doing something different every day and the thought of monotony bothers me. I don’t wake up at the same time every day or even eat the same amount of meals from one day to the next and I hardly ever have regular patterns of  sleep or exercise. I enjoy trying new things and having new experiences and I dislike having to do things repetitively. I do have a few habits, which maybe tell a lot about me.

I am a habitual procrastinator, putting things off often until the last minute, leaving myself feeling overly rushed and stressed most of the time. I have go-to activities for when I need to decompress, mostly manual tasks that help my brain unwind; things like cooking and working with clay. I have certain people I turn to when I need to talk or share (although that is changing as I expand my social sphere). I have a favorite song that I could listen to over and over and never get tired of (Definitely Maybe by FM Static) but that’s about where my habits end. My favorite food changes regularly, as does my favorite color. I’m in a constant state of fluctuation; I can be craving social interaction one day and a virtual hermit the next. My life goals may be different depending on the day of the week or the amount of sleep I have and there’s no telling what mood I’m in, because the events of my day might have no effect or an overblown impact on my outlook. I am incredibly dynamic and I enjoy that about myself because I am always evolving or devolving, for better or worse, and that’s interesting. I think that for the sake of this assignment I’ll actually try to maintain a few habits this week. Maybe that means having a cup of tea and doodling at the same time every day, or maybe I can eat my meals at the same time (don’t think that will actually happen). Maybe I can talk to the same person every day or repeat the same activity five times. Who knows?

Anyway, the idea for today (playing on the dynamic nature of my person I guess): A slideshow of all the different manifestations of a VW. Show it in a rainy city, a sunny countryside, a snowy mountain road; play up the “innovative design” that creates a versatile car that can be as dynamic as the person who drives it.

(Okay, quick note, good idea but lame-ish execution. I know there’s way better ways to express VW’s versatility but as of right now, I can’t think of anything better.)

Alright, so I’m not going to do a mind map this time because I know I have enough ideas from the three I’ve already done. In a way I’m almost saving some for later because as many ideas as I have now, I still have this strange fear of ‘running out’ later on. As much as I really want to just print some pictures of VW cars and draw on them with crayons, that was my idea from last post, so that isn’t really productive. (Doesn’t mean I won’t do it later anyway.) This time I thought I’d focus on the ‘adventure!’ aspect of fun (fun being the aspect of everyday motoring pleasure that I’m exploring).

For whatever reason I can’t get the Disney Pixar movie “UP” out of my head when I try to think about adventure. They go together, obviously, because what bigger adventure is there than flying your house to South America? Basically, I just want to capture the adventure in that movie somehow. What other sorts of adventures do that? I think I can say traditional ‘treasure hunting’ is out because it isn’t like Indiana Jones would really use a Jetta to escape from angry natives. But maybe urban treasure hunting? I personally think that discovering good street art is like finding treasure, so maybe I could play with that idea… Scavenger hunts are really fun and can definitely be an adventure…

Okay, so making a story out of this: VW is for adventures.

A group of fifteenish young people (let’s say college kids) get together for an urban scavenger hunt. Rules are laid out as such: for each found item, take picture of it, including the group in the picture. Whoever finishes first and gets back to the starting point wins.The winners get free dinner, courtesy of the losers, and we all know how college kids are about free food. They break up into groups and rush off to their respective cars (a beetle, a jeep, and a suburban). We get some glimpses of the list and see things like an equestrian statue (dude on a horse, fyi), a fountain, a mural, a guy in a sandwich board, etc. As all of the groups hurry to find items on the list, we see the chaos involved. The radio is too loud in one car and everyone is arguing over it, in another the navigator is squinting at their phone and everyone is gesturing frantically, in the VW, everyone is talking excitedly and an upbeat song plays in the background. The person in charge of locating the next item yells out and points as the car brakes in front of a narrow alley. The driver maneuvers into the alley and we see a beautiful mural come into view beside the car. Everyone pops their heads out the window out and the driver snaps a picture over the roof. As the passengers get settled back in, we see the rival team in the suburban drive up to the end of the alley and try to turn into it. We see that the car is too big and they have to move on to another mural. The same sort of thing happens again when the beetle drives under a low branch on a fallen tree that is blocking a back road into a park with a fountain. The jeep is a few inches too tall and has to turn around. As the victorious VW pulls up to the starting point, we see the other teams still down the street. The winning team gets out and leans against the bug. Posing, they snap one last picture: a selfie with their key to victory.

I really like this because it appeals generally to a lot of people and also makes a jab at other, less ‘innovatively designed’ and maneuverable vehicles. It’s basically saying VW is for winners, and everyone loves winning. The connection to ‘everyday motoring pleasure’ is also clear because duh, scavenger hunt adventures are super fun and pleasurable.

So talk about procrastination. As I was sitting in my room at 12:30 last night (this morning) doing this mind map and questioning my life choices, I started thinking about childhood. I remember having so much fun as a kid that I never wanted to come inside when it got dark. I remember not caring about how sweaty I was or how my hair looked or if I had grass stains and scratches everywhere form playing outside. Why can’t I do that anymore? When did I lose the ability to cut loose and just be a kid again? I think every person has those moments where they wish they could go back to when having fun was an all-day-every-day activity. Growing up, we lose that freedom. Even worse, we take it away from ourselves. We confine our ‘fun’ to specified times and revoke permission to enjoy ourselves. For whatever reason we have concluded that ‘being an adult’ means pretending we aren’t children. I was looking at someone else’s posts about the rain recently and just can’t help but wonder why we stop seeing rain as an adventure and start seeing it as an inconvenience. We’re so busy dodging puddles we forget to play in them. Part of happiness is the ability to have fun and I think VW as a brand can explore finding your fun again.

So this may or may not have turned out being mostly a reflection of what I want to do with my life right now, but regardless, I don’t know if I want to use this mind map. I see some of this stuff as sort of sacred. I don’t want to make an ad idea based on fairy tales because I don’t want to ruin fairy tales for myself. Which I guess means I have to do it anyway.

Here goes: let’s take some pictures of VW cars and give them to kids. Tell them to draw whatever they want on them. My guess is, if you pick the right age range, where they still have unrestrained imaginations, for every family photo you get, some kid is going to draw ears and a tail on that car. Kids see things differently. A car can be a tank or a battleship, a horse-drawn carriage or a flying spaceship. there can be laser beams instead of headlights, flames coming out of the tailpipe, wings and big fuzzy antennae on a VW Beetle. Let’s reimagine what a car is and make it something fun.

Sharing my secrets. I don’t talk about my family. I love them, obviously (hell, I live with my sister by choice), I just don’t really share that part of my life with people. I guess that kind of makes it a secret. So yeah, I’m going to share a story about my family in the form of a work of narrative fiction. (Story time!)

We went on a lot of road trips when I was a kid. We even drove all the way to Walt Disney World in Orlando once. And all the way up to Niagara Falls. So I don’t know if you know this but a twelve hour car ride with four kids can get not-fun really quick. My mom, the wise woman she was, knew this and always had fun things to distract us. We would sing songs, listen to audio books, play card games, and play car games. Car games were always a favorite, especially with my brothers. We would play I Spy, searching for what seemed like hours for a McDonalds sign or a red car or whatever, when in reality we probably didn’t try for more than fifteen minutes before getting bored or distracted. We would play Cows (the person who saw the most won) but that always ended in arguments and yelling so dad wasn’t really a fan of that. The favorite though, our all time favorite car game is actually something we still play jokingly to this day: “punch-buggy no punch back”. The goal of the’game’ was to be the first to see a Volkswagen Beetle and then yell out “PUNCH-BUGGY NO PUNCH BACK” and punch the person or persons closest to you. Now I don’t know where we learned this particular form of sibling violence, certainly not from our parents, who strongly disapproved of us punching each other. We, of course, loved it because it was a minimum-repercussions form of revenge. If we were angry at one of the other kids we could do this knowing that according to the game rules, they couldn’t hit us back. Of course they then tried that much harder to find the next Beetle so they could ‘get back’ at their original puncher. We were secretly quite vindictive and would sometimes hit each other quite hard when playing this ‘game’. It sometimes ended in tears and time outs, but somehow we all still love each other and like going on road trips together.

I seriously have no idea where I was going with this. like, yay, happy ending, but is it a good ad? I don’t even know how I would make this into an ad.. I do know though that it relates to the ‘everyday motoring pleasure’ theme though. To this day I still look back on family road trips with nostalgia and even though the game wasn’t as much of a thing in our family as in the story, we do still play it.(See, I know THAT would be a better idea than the weird fake story because it’s genuine. Maybe that should be my idea instead. It was kind of where I started with it too and I just got muddled when I tried to add detail.)

I put this one off for a little longer than I should have so come Saturday, I found myself sitting in a crowded cafe doing a mind map while simultaneously trying to eat breakfast and hold a conversation. I also had to stop once the meal was finished and change venues to a quieter setting more conducive for homework so it might be a little disjointed.

This is the second concerted attempt at mind mapping and I’ve noticed some patterns. I started with “Everyday Motoring Pleasure” and my first inclination was to break up the motto into parts and took those in a few different directions. I actually found one of my branches incorporating my attempt to multitask, with it following the same train of thought as the conversation I was having. Once I started getting stuck with each separate word as a branch, I explored the phrase as a whole and what it conveys which led to a whole host of other promising “buds”.

This mind map is abounding with great ideas (mostly still in fetal form) and I wouldn’t suprise myself if I got at least all three of this weeks’ posts out of it. I can also see opportunities for other mind maps (exploring play, for example). I highlighted a few branches I saw potential in, more to remind myself later than anything else. For today though I’ll stick with the go-to method for an interesting ad: drama. While I won’t be retelling the story of Romeo & Juliet (this time), I am playing with a love story gone bad.

The (mostly) fleshed out idea goes something like this: A girl and guy (in their twenties or thereabouts) are fighting inside a house or apartment and it’s a hell of a fight. They are obviously a couple living together, and as the guy storms out, the girl follows him, still yelling and screaming. As he gets outside, she starts grabbing at his arm. He shakes her off and gets into his car, locking the doors. As he is trying without success to start his junker, she continues yelling though the window, and hits it once or twice with her hand. She then turns and grabs a lawn gnome off the lawn and swings it two handed at the windshield full force. The scene freezes with her mid swing, the guy looking up panicked, still trying to turn the engine over. A voice over says something along the lines of ‘don’t be this guy’, and then commercially things happen (VW logo and something about reliability).

Looking back, I think this idea was better as a baby. Fleshed out yes, it’s somewhat humorous, but it doesn’t really relate to any of the VW brand things. It also might be sort of awful in regards to social acceptability. Is it okay to tell viewers to ‘not be’ a guy with a crappy car? Is it a snub of poverty or something? I don’t know.

I still feel like I’m doing this wrong.

Showing people my art. Showing people my art feels akin to stripping down in public and being like, “what do you think?” It’s scary it’s vulnerable, but I’m going to do it anyway. My idea for this post was to think outside the box, what hasn’t been done? (Well, nothing, but maybe I can find a new way to do something.) I had a number of ideas and I challenged myself to draw all of them. Some of them suck, some might be cool if someone else did something with them but either way, here they are:

So the ideas themselves aren’t bad but none of them are done. This is sort of just a visual list of things related to the project that have been rattling around in my head for a while now. I definitely want to explore some of them, maybe I’ll actually make the flip-book thing. My problem with these though is how opposed the whole class is to “getting ‘commercially’.” Like it’s the one thing no one is allowed to do with their ideas. I’LL MAKE A COMMERCIAL IF I WANT TO DAMMIT, STOP STIFLING MY CREATIVITY.
If you look at the picture, I’ve actually started censoring myself and abandoning ideas that might be great because I have the fear that I might be too close to making an advertisement. I need to remember that it is OK if I chose to express my idea as an ad. If it’s a good idea, it doesn’t really matter how I present it. Sooo, I’m going to present my commercial idea:

I kind of love the idea with the punchline being that the narrator of a commercial is the car itself and that it has something as ridiculous as false eyelashes on. Not many car commercials have female voice-overs so I think that would make it more interesting, and obviously it can focus on any (or all three) of the aspects of the VW brand. She can talk about her great gas milage (which is what’s in the storyboard) or her spacious trunk (insert junk-in-the-trunk joke here) or how you can’t tell her age by looking at her (enduring value and quality) or whatever. Regardless of what the commercial is about, and there are a lot of things it could be about, it would be funny and fresh and interesting so THERE. It’s a commercial. AND a good idea.

So I have a problem. I’m doing these wrong and I know it but I don’t know what to do about it. I find myself having a hard time focusing on just the IDEAS. Everything I come up with immediately becomes a commercial in my head or worse, it starts as a commercial in my head. This is a problem because I can’t focus on the brand when I’m doing this.

But all is not lost. I have a solution! (I hope.) I finally went and looked at some blogs from last semester’s brand and I saw this thing called mind mapping. Basically it’s starting with a word or concept and doing sort of an active stream (or streams) of consciousness on it. I love this! It allows me to focus on where the flow of idea is heading and divert it when it starts moving towards making advertisements.

Anyway, here is my first attempt at a mind map:

I am very uncomfortable about this because this is like grabbing a thread woven into the fabric of my thought patterns and tugging. If you follow that thread you see how I think, what I think about, where my ideas come from and how dumb most of them are. I feel incredibly exposed. I guess that’s a big part of getting out of the comfort zone though, and something I need to work on. I see my comfort zone as a bunch of blankets wrapped around myself, I am safe inside and hidden from the world. These posts serve to peel away some of those layers which makes me more visible, but more importantly, brings me closer to the world outside my comfort zone. There are less layers between the observer and the experience.

I don’t know that this counts as a post but I do think it’s a place to start. I didn’t end up with any IDEAS, maybe just a few “ide”s. I know there are things here I can explore more later, I just don’t know if I need to have one totally fleshed out every post.