Creative Process

What I learned about the creative process...

I've really learned a lot about time management this semester through both the sole experience of creating a huge project like a capstone but also through the course materials provided by CPSA250. Breaking down the large task of completing a capstone through the use of a workplan has been incredibly helpful. Smaller, weekly tasks are much easier to tackle than visualizing an enormous project.

"Killing one's darlings" is also something I utilized during my creative process. I brainstormed many ideas during the initial conception stages of my capstone but, of course, you can only manage and execute so many ideas at once. For my particular project, I at first planned on looking at the music in three of Araki's films, but eventually I settled on examining just one. Not only would it have been more work to do all three, but it would have taken away from the meat of my capstone.

To create my audio documentary, I utilized the program GarageBand mainly to collate my assortment of audio files that I either gleaned from albums (the songs) or recorded myself (the narration). I also used GarageBand to do minor mixing on my voice and the volume levels of each track, since there is variability in my tone of voice and the mastering of each individual song. Originally, I intended for sound effects and snippets to play a significant role in the audio documentary, but I found that they bogged down my narration and took away from the information I deliver on the piece.