- Geeks are known for their passion for obscure knowledge.
- Andy opened up signing us the song “Picture in a Frame” by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan
- What makes works of creativity excellent?
- What are he ingredients of excellence?
- One of most extraordinary movies on the idea of creativity is “Ratatouille.”
- Pixar is the only major studio producing feature films that has a number of Christ followers in positions of executive leadership.
- This studio consistently produces incredible movies that break all kinds of boundaries.
- A movie without 20 minutes of dialogue…
- We need to study what they are doing if we are going to hope to be creative ourselves
The Structure of a Story
- Every story is driven by a sender that wants to deliver something [the object] to a receiver.
- The fundamental engine of story is at quest to get the object from the sender to the receiver.
- The sender sends someone, the subject.
- The subject is what we traditionally call the protagonist.
- The sender is more like a quasi, God-like figure. Not always present, but necessary.
- In Lord of the Rings, the object is the ring, the subject is Frodo, the sender is Gandalf, the receiver is Mt. Doom.
- In the course of the story, the subject encounters oppositions, so there are two other forces that enter into the story: the helpers and the opponents.
- Every Pixar movie is asking the question, “What does it mean to be a human?”
- Our job isn’t to make culture safe for people.
- Christian music says it’s “Safe for the family.”
- Great culture is rarely safe for people
- In every story, Act 1 ends in frustration.
- In Act 2, the subject becomes the receiver.
- In Act 3, the situation of the first act comes back, but all of the ingredients are in place for the quest to be fulfilled.
- Act 3 brings new opposition.
- Some people only know how to criticize culture.
- Christians don’t just like culture, we love it so much we hate it.
- We never show that we love culture.
- The role of a critic in creativity is to articulate and defend what is new.
- Gains that are won without opposition are no gains.
- If you win without an opponent you haven’t actually won.
- We demand real oppositions from our stories because our life is about real opposition.
- If you don’t have a credible, real opponent in your story you don’t have a story at all.
- How often do Christians tell a truncated story that doesn’t do justice to the real opposition in our world and in our own lives?
- The greatest opposition to creating what we were meant to create comes from inside us.
- The reason we don’t create what we were meant to create isn’t because of anything outside of us, it’s because of ourselves.
- Our inner critic can convert from being our opponent to being our helper.
- To create good work you need an inner critic.
- The conversion fo the opponent and the happier ending are what make the difference between formulated stories and great stories.
- Stories always have an enemy and an opponent.
- There are often enemies that don’t convert.
- All you can do with an enemy that doesn’t convert is to eliminate them.
- The opponent begins in opposition but ends as an ally.
- A happier ending… more happily than you could have ever anticipated.
Story of the Gospel
- Why is this the structure that we expect?
- It’s because this is the structure of the cosmos.
- What is our story?
- There is a sender, the creator of the world who wishes to deliver something to the receive.
- God wishes that the world He created will be filled with His image-bearers.
- That we would be fruitful and multiply.
God sent His image into the whole world. - He send us, humans, His image-bearers.
- Act 1 ends in frustration because we have an opponent but no helper.
- The opponent was the voice of opposition.
- In Act 2, the original subject has to receive something.
- A new subject enters into the story to deliver something we could not acquire on our own.
- God sent the Incarnate image of God… Jesus.
- Jesus delivered to us what we needed to fulfill what we were meant to be.
- Act 3 ends with a happier ending.
- If it were a formulaic story, we’d go back to the garden… to the way it should have been.
- God works differently.
- In Act 3 of our story, not only are God’s image-bearers restored and filled… there is a new city.
- This is the story human beings are hungry for because it’s the one true story.
- Every story has a “Jesus” figure.
- Otherwise, people won’t be satisfied with them.
Andy ended with Prelude & Figure #1 from Bach
The Ingredients of Excellence
- A happier ending.
- Is the culture you are creating giving people a glimpse of something glorious beyond what they would expect?
- The best culture in the world deosn’t deliver expected resolutions, it takes you beyond the expected and into chaos and noise, that it provides a happier ending.
- The full catastrophe.
- The only way to deal with long-term chronic pain is to experience the full catastrophe… to focus on the pain.
- Most human beings try to avoid the full catastrophe.
- The human story is dissidence.
- Great art always acknowledges the full catastrophe.
- Is what you are creating do justice to the full catastrophe?
Faithfulness to the Form
- Great works do not break most or all of the rules.
- Be faithful to the form before you improvise and create.
- Our creativity should cultivate our world.
- Until you know the form you cannot create excellence.
- Innovate in form.
- Respect form but innovate.
- God is a creator of order and abundance.
- In the order of creation, God has given us to the work of filling the world with good things.
- The greatest works of art eliminate what’s not necessary.
- Great art calls you to listen.
