The following is an unfinished post from 2014 that is a motivational piece of writing that explores my personal narrative and its implications on the Ways 2 Interface research project.
The post also leaned quite heavily on the coverage of my my film blog, Something to do with Film; hence the inclusion of its hashtag, #2dowithfilm, in the post's title.
Some parts of the post are still very rough and unfinished and I have not bothered to complete the post for this posting.
There would have also been a follow up blog post to this one called Something #2dowithfilm, Part 2: My Brand, My Story and My Empire Business, but I never got round to writing it.
Something #2dowithfilm: My Story, My Path and My Research Web
Film Story: My First Education
Real life is a mess and, when we reflect on it, if our intellects could not turn day-to-day life into narratives we would never get anywhere. Stories enable us to grow because they give us closure, the resolution of one story allwos us to move onto the next.
Until I was fourteen, I could not read and I could barely write either. On the whole, throughout most of it, my formal education was severly lacking; as was the self-confidence that naturally comes with it.
People like me have something inside, something to do with film. It is as simple as that.
Films have always been my way in and while films are not the primary focus of this research project, they still act as a good doorway into it:
“Since its invention film has been compared to the mind, whether through analogy with human perception, dreams or the subconscious. The shock of seeing a world ‘freed’ by man’s imagination caused many early writers to see a profound link between the mind of the filmgoer and the film itself, leading them to understand film as a mirror of mindful intent. In a sense film offers us our first experience of an other experience… Film seems to be a double phenomenology, a double intention: our perception of the film, and the film’s perception of its world. Thus our understanding of our world can be informed and changed by this other way of experiencing a world, this other view of a similar world” (Filmosophy, Frampton, 2007:15).
I have always treated films as a very important componant of my life and of culture as a whole, I have always had a very special relationship with films. The reason for this is very simple: I could not read properly until I was fourteen and films occupied the space that would have otherwise have been taken my reading and my education through reading.
For most of my upbringing, my reflective understanding of the world did not come from the written word, it came from my experience with films. For most children, the ability to read and the nessesity to learn to do so is set above and beyond any other childhood vice. The reason for this is simple: if you can read, then you can write and if you can do those two things the world will treat you as competant, these are skills necessary for survival.
However, for me, this engagement was lacking throughout my childhood and, for a very long while, reading was something that I very actively avoided. Reading just did not interest me; I held what has sadly become quite a common and misguided view - that reading is boring and a waste of time.
For me, films absolutely came first and, as such, they recieved a great deal of my time, my attention and my appreciation. Films were my education.
I was incredibly stubborn as a child - The Mask (1994)
One of my firends says that I experience films like no one else he knows.
There is a larger significance to be had here as well: Toy Story is a film that was made from a digital source and which was a taster of the full digital re-birth only just around the corner. The seed for this project was planted a very long time ago.
It was through my relationship with films that I subconciously started to get a sense of the inherent role narratives play in our lives.
I have a special relationship with films, because I have not only been engaging with them for most of my life, I have also been deconstructing them for most of my life. This is the reason why I have always excelled in my academic studies of films. For me, films are not just grandiose entertainments, I see films for what they really are - embodiments of the situations in which we are living and in which they are constructed. When you consider film form's close afinity to our own cognitive processes, the importance of a film's testimony becomes all the more apparent:
"When I am talking about films, I am talking about humanity’s need for narratives and immersion in fantasy; its need for reflexivity and rationality; its need to expand, to explore and to extrapolate. These are fundamentally ancient yearnings and, when properly understood, they will reveal fundamental insights about reality, human nature and our continually changing ways of being therein. Understanding the spectator, the spectacle and their ways of interfacing is how we decode these fundamental insights" (Ways of being, 2013:29).
Live and Let Read: Educating my Education
However, my knowledge of narratives and their roles in our everyday lives grew beyond the focus of film when I finally picked up a book and read it cover-to-cover. The book was Ian Fleming's Live and Let Die and I have not stopped reading since.
Photo of Live and Let Die
Even here a film was my way in.
When I properly started to read with an actual invested interest, not only did I discover that my ability to read and write very quickly greatly improved, I also discovered that reading was something that I actually enjoyed doing! Furthermore, I discovered that I got a hell of a lot smarter as result of doing it and not just in my understanding of narratives. Through reading, I discovered this whole new and highly personal way of interfacing with a narrative and being actively involved in the creation of its scenery.
My creativity was very quickly sparked and I started to form my own stories; while dabbling with my own writing. I even went on to create something of an alter-ego character, Bailnine (I was never really happy with that name) I spent about three years building this character and his story universe: the Realm of Mountains and Mirrors. I had always been a day-dreamer, day-dreaming enabled me to cope with the monotomous boredom of school - it made maths vastly more enjoyable!
For the longest time he was my secret; in fact, outside of my head and my notebooks, this is the first time I have spoken of him.
It is still growing, still waiting to be told.
However, building the Bailnine stories transitioned my daydreaming towards a vastly more constructive purpose and the daily process of building the character and his story universe, coupled together with my reading of books and of films instilled an inherent understanding of stories and the fundamental roles they play in our day-to-day lives.
My engagement with writing insured that I surprisingly quickly rose up through the English sets and ended up in the top one. That actually proved to be hugely invaluable because it was taught by an English teacher who was really a film and media teacher in disguise. Not only did I find that I was finding my taught education more and more interesting, but English and Art very quickly became my favourite subjects.
It was not that I was a disruptive student, I just did not want to be there and being the stubborn person that I was I rebelled by burying myself in my daydreams. The gapping black holes that were present in my knoweldge used to cause me a great deal of anxiety and resulted in a lack of self-confidence in my abilities while I was growing up.
As a way of coping with this, I would bury myself in my stories and that is exactly why my education suffered for so long because I was just burying my head in the sand. Admittedly, the head burying has actually hugely benefitted my understadning of narratives, but it has meant that I have had to invest in a lot of catching up in the other areas of my knowledge. It's funny what a lot time and a bit of persepective can do. Now that I look back on it, all that wasted time, was not wasted time at all!
then when I started to read my knowledge increased because I could now start to learn things on my own. However, as I had started reading and writing so late I still had a lot of catching up to do.
Fortunately, because I had started reading the last two years of my secondary education, the years that really count, I managed to get my knowledge and application up to a level where I was able to attain a set of useful grades that allowed me to progress into further education.
However, it is only really in the last year-and-a-half that I have got to a level where I think I am on par with my fellow peers. It has taken an awful lot of studying to get there.
The knowledge I now possess and my continual investment in expanding it is something that I value highly, precisely because I was devoid of a wide-ranging knowledge for so long. Obviously, my knowledge of film was always fully engaged, but not many people (boring people) rate that very highly. However, when I started to read and taught myself to read, through reading I became aware of something that is rarely taught in compulsory education - apply yourself and you can teach yourself anything!
It just takes a little time...
Forging a Foundation: Making My Degree Work for Me
For the longest time, I felt like I was wasting my time.
The study options I pursued in my higher education, first at A-Level (Film Studies, Media Studies, Photography and Philosophy) and then with my graduate degree, were all geared towards pursuing what I felt to be my best purpose - something lying between films and narratives. Fortunately, my enrolment in higher education not only allowed me to define what this 'something' was, this further study enabled my interests to grow beyond the two fields of films and narratives.
However, while I was doing my A-levels, I was exploring areas that interested me without any idea of how I was going to apply that knowledge long-term, career-wise and much was the same when I started my degree, which was originally just a BA (Hons) in Creative Writing. For a quite a number of reasons - a loss of belief in myself being a main one - I failed to fully engage with my Creative Writing degree in my very first of university. Furthermore, this lead to a great of deal of anxiety and depression about where I was then as a person and where it was that I was going. Therefore, when I was about three-quarters of the way through that first year, I decided to do something very bold - I hit reset.
When I started University in 2009, I came into it with the expectation that university would do everything for me and, while university can certainly assist you in achieving your goals, I lacked the proactive temperament necessary to make my degree work for me and my goals.
Additionally, there was emotional baggage connected to my past and my family that was weighing me down. Furthermore, in-between finishing my A-Levels and starting my degree, I had taken a gap year in which I had done absolutely, bloody nothing with my life and my passion. Well, actually, I had watched quite a few films, but, on the whole, I had become soft and complacent. Worst of all, I had brought it to university with me.
I had to stop dwelling on the faults of my past and my family and build a new foundation for myself. A foundation founded wholly on my own passions and beliefs in life and, no matter what, I would not quit until I had forged a foundation that I was happy to stand tall on.
Additionally, I was also doing a writing course while still possessing huge gaps in my understanding of basic grammar. I had reached a point in my life where I needed to start touchening up and refining myself. I needed to shake myself out of my respite and take charge of my destiny. I knew in that first year, if I did not do it then, I probably never would. There comes a point when the daydreaming has to stop: we are defined by what we do, not by who we are underneath.
Therefore, in March 2010, I dropped all of my studies and invested the rest of my initial first year into investigating myself. I had to figure myself out, I had to figure out where I was going wrong and how I could use my degree to work for me in the best possible way. The more that I looked into this myself, the more I realised that it was not just going to happen over night. I had been broken for a very long while and there was a lot of work to do on myself. When it comes to people, there are no quick fixes!
If I was going to do well out of my studies and out of life then I needed to change my outlook on everything.
When I first started university, as a result of my upbringing, I came into university as a complete moaning pessimist... and that had to go - I had to become the complete opposite of that terrified, despairing person.
Therefore, instead of re-doing my studies throughout the summer, like the university was suggesting, I decided to give myself some more time and completely restart my degree and my approach to life. If was I was going to make my life and my degree work for me, then I was going to do it on my own terms.
Retaking that first year was a statement and a promise that I made to myself: no matter what, I was going to invest everything I had into pursuing my passion and refining myself as a person. I was going to spend three years building my self-confidence, a foundation forged of my passions and my aspirations, a foundation which I had never possesed, a sturdy foundation upon which I could stand tall with a whole new positive outlook on life and live my life the way I had always wanted to live it.
Of course, while I am writing this now, it is very easy for me to say these things, but at the time I still heavily doubted myself. Foretunately, I have always been a very stubborn person and my attitude was in the right place, even if my belief was not. Like learning to read, I just said 'fuck it' and did it any way.
The first strategic change I made was to my course itself, I decided to restore the focus of my studies back to what had always been my primary focus; as such, in September 2010, I restarted university with a joint BA (Hons) in Creative Writing with Film and Screen Studies. If I was going to build a new foundation then it needed to incompass all of my interests.
Furthermore, If I was not doing well in Creative Writing due to the gaps in my knowledge of grammar and syntax, then I could use Film and Screen Studies to keep my self-confidence up.
The trick is to make the positives and negatives both work for you.
However, I tackled those gaps head on and the first summer I spent in Bath, I spent in the University library teaching myself grammar, two hours day, five days a week for three months.
Outside of that study time I read, I played Red Dead Redemption, I read, I ate a lot of ice cream, I read, I explored Bath and I read my arse off! Gradually, over the three years and all the reading, studying, re-studying and writing I have managed to make all of those tedious grammar rules stick. And, well, I wrote this, judge for yourself.
Staying in Bath over the summer was not something with which I had much of a choice. Due to circumstances out of my control, additional reasons for retaking my first year and another very long story, from 2010 onwards I was homeless outside of university.
Therefore, between February 2010 and September 2013, Bath Spa University and the City of Bath became my home. Furthermore, due to a lack of capital, it was a home in which I spent the entirety of those three years, minus a few days at Christmas.
I can think of worse ways to spend a summer. The City of Bath played a strong role in my reformation - it taught me the serenity and virtue of mindfulness.
As university quite literally became my life for over three years, I developed something of a monasterial investment into my studies and my foundation benefitted greatly from this monk like existence (I even abstained from alcohol in my final year).
As a way of coping with this, I would bury myself in my stories and that is exactly why my education suffered for so long because I was just burying my head in the sand. Admittedly, the head burying has actually hugely benefitted my understadning of narratives, but it has meant that I have had to invest in a lot of catching up in the other areas of my knowledge. It's funny what a lot time and a bit of persepective can do. Now that I look back on it, all that wasted time, was not wasted time at all!
then when I started to read my knowledge increased because I could now start to learn things on my own. However, as I had started reading and writing so late I still had a lot of catching up to do.
Fortunately, because I had started reading the last two years of my secondary education, the years that really count, I managed to get my knowledge and application up to a level where I was able to attain a set of useful grades that allowed me to progress into further education.
However, it is only really in the last year-and-a-half that I have got to a level where I think I am on par with my fellow peers. It has taken an awful lot of studying to get there.
The knowledge I now possess and my continual investment in expanding it is something that I value highly, precisely because I was devoid of a wide-ranging knowledge for so long. Obviously, my knowledge of film was always fully engaged, but not many people (boring people) rate that very highly. However, when I started to read and taught myself to read, through reading I became aware of something that is rarely taught in compulsory education - apply yourself and you can teach yourself anything!
It just takes a little time...
Forging a Foundation: Making My Degree Work for Me
For the longest time, I felt like I was wasting my time.
The study options I pursued in my higher education, first at A-Level (Film Studies, Media Studies, Photography and Philosophy) and then with my graduate degree, were all geared towards pursuing what I felt to be my best purpose - something lying between films and narratives. Fortunately, my enrolment in higher education not only allowed me to define what this 'something' was, this further study enabled my interests to grow beyond the two fields of films and narratives.
However, while I was doing my A-levels, I was exploring areas that interested me without any idea of how I was going to apply that knowledge long-term, career-wise and much was the same when I started my degree, which was originally just a BA (Hons) in Creative Writing. For a quite a number of reasons - a loss of belief in myself being a main one - I failed to fully engage with my Creative Writing degree in my very first of university. Furthermore, this lead to a great of deal of anxiety and depression about where I was then as a person and where it was that I was going. Therefore, when I was about three-quarters of the way through that first year, I decided to do something very bold - I hit reset.
When I started University in 2009, I came into it with the expectation that university would do everything for me and, while university can certainly assist you in achieving your goals, I lacked the proactive temperament necessary to make my degree work for me and my goals.
Additionally, there was emotional baggage connected to my past and my family that was weighing me down. Furthermore, in-between finishing my A-Levels and starting my degree, I had taken a gap year in which I had done absolutely, bloody nothing with my life and my passion. Well, actually, I had watched quite a few films, but, on the whole, I had become soft and complacent. Worst of all, I had brought it to university with me.
I had to stop dwelling on the faults of my past and my family and build a new foundation for myself. A foundation founded wholly on my own passions and beliefs in life and, no matter what, I would not quit until I had forged a foundation that I was happy to stand tall on.
Additionally, I was also doing a writing course while still possessing huge gaps in my understanding of basic grammar. I had reached a point in my life where I needed to start touchening up and refining myself. I needed to shake myself out of my respite and take charge of my destiny. I knew in that first year, if I did not do it then, I probably never would. There comes a point when the daydreaming has to stop: we are defined by what we do, not by who we are underneath.
Therefore, in March 2010, I dropped all of my studies and invested the rest of my initial first year into investigating myself. I had to figure myself out, I had to figure out where I was going wrong and how I could use my degree to work for me in the best possible way. The more that I looked into this myself, the more I realised that it was not just going to happen over night. I had been broken for a very long while and there was a lot of work to do on myself. When it comes to people, there are no quick fixes!
If I was going to do well out of my studies and out of life then I needed to change my outlook on everything.
When I first started university, as a result of my upbringing, I came into university as a complete moaning pessimist... and that had to go - I had to become the complete opposite of that terrified, despairing person.
Therefore, instead of re-doing my studies throughout the summer, like the university was suggesting, I decided to give myself some more time and completely restart my degree and my approach to life. If was I was going to make my life and my degree work for me, then I was going to do it on my own terms.
Retaking that first year was a statement and a promise that I made to myself: no matter what, I was going to invest everything I had into pursuing my passion and refining myself as a person. I was going to spend three years building my self-confidence, a foundation forged of my passions and my aspirations, a foundation which I had never possesed, a sturdy foundation upon which I could stand tall with a whole new positive outlook on life and live my life the way I had always wanted to live it.
Of course, while I am writing this now, it is very easy for me to say these things, but at the time I still heavily doubted myself. Foretunately, I have always been a very stubborn person and my attitude was in the right place, even if my belief was not. Like learning to read, I just said 'fuck it' and did it any way.
 |
| The power of fuck it - do not underestimate it! |
The first strategic change I made was to my course itself, I decided to restore the focus of my studies back to what had always been my primary focus; as such, in September 2010, I restarted university with a joint BA (Hons) in Creative Writing with Film and Screen Studies. If I was going to build a new foundation then it needed to incompass all of my interests.
Furthermore, If I was not doing well in Creative Writing due to the gaps in my knowledge of grammar and syntax, then I could use Film and Screen Studies to keep my self-confidence up.
The trick is to make the positives and negatives both work for you.
However, I tackled those gaps head on and the first summer I spent in Bath, I spent in the University library teaching myself grammar, two hours day, five days a week for three months.
Outside of that study time I read, I played Red Dead Redemption, I read, I ate a lot of ice cream, I read, I explored Bath and I read my arse off! Gradually, over the three years and all the reading, studying, re-studying and writing I have managed to make all of those tedious grammar rules stick. And, well, I wrote this, judge for yourself.
 |
| The key to utilising your willpower is in the nurturing of good habits. |
Therefore, between February 2010 and September 2013, Bath Spa University and the City of Bath became my home. Furthermore, due to a lack of capital, it was a home in which I spent the entirety of those three years, minus a few days at Christmas.
I can think of worse ways to spend a summer. The City of Bath played a strong role in my reformation - it taught me the serenity and virtue of mindfulness.
As university quite literally became my life for over three years, I developed something of a monasterial investment into my studies and my foundation benefitted greatly from this monk like existence (I even abstained from alcohol in my final year).
 |
| The monk takes a break from writing Ways of Being. |
When I returned as a re-fresher in 2010, somewhat awkwardly mulled about as a 're-fresher' with the new first years, I did not mess about with getting to work
very quickly I started to see that my new attitude was having an influence on my studies: my writing had greatly improved, as did my feedback. I also raided the library's DVD department throughout this year and accordingly, I excelled in Film and Screen Studies, with my tutor, Stephen Manley, commenting: "you're on fire this year, Pete." I burnt through rest of that second first year as as well - I came out of it with many firsts and finished it with my Charlie Chaplin presentation that went down very well and still does with the film department.
When I reached my second summer, I went back to the library, back to my grammar books. Like the summer before it, I was walking to and from the university because I could not afford the bus; it was an hour walk each way (fantastic scenery) and, as such, like the summer before it, I took to listening to Doctor Who audioplays and audiobooks. It was on these daily commutes that I fell in love with the audio medium and discovered yet another highly intelligent storytelling form and means to interface with narratives.
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| Round Hill, Bath - the mountain that sat between my house and the University. |
This was also the summer I discovered LOVEFiLM, for which I had a three months free sign-up voucher - I was watching at least two films a night for over two months - pure heaven. I also experienced Mark Cousin's seminal The Story of Film and this set me up perfectly for my second/third year of university, because it nurtured a vastly more critical temperament in myself.
When I entered second third year, I was confronted with a year in which my practical inclinations were greatly encouraged
I began my 366 project, I rediscovered my love of editing and filmmaking, I stumbled onto a new found love of cycling to and from university (when I had a working bycycle),
The Dark Knight Rises in IMAX, binging my way through Twin Peaks, I started my 5:2 fasting diet, I experimented with meditation.
all the reading and research of that summer was geared towards setting me up for my final year.
I met up with Matt Coot (who would eventually proofread Ways of Being), he asked what my aim was for my final year and, before I had even realised I had said it, I said: "to get a first."
My course was set and my final year of university proved to be the hardest thing I had ever done until that point
And then in my final year, I just had this explosion of creativity and personal innovation.
In every way, my final year was the year I felt it, it was my year of transcendence.
It was a seven month period in which I experienced a vivid explosion of creativity and personal innovation. Where every single day was felt and an adventure. It was a seven month process of transcendance. The best way I can explain the journey of my final year is by illustrating it with James Webb Young's A Technique for Producing Ideas.
If you follow the five step process and I do, if my first three years of university were a continually repeating process of stages one, two and three, then my final year is stages four and five. The year I cracked the formula for my foundation: my final year was just one great big seven month EUREKA!
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| My first class foundation. |
For the longest time, I had no love of life outside of films and their presentations of ideals. I could not stand the people or world around me.
That is what happens when you are made to feel like you are wasting your time. However, what I have come to realise is time is the single most powerful entity you can invest into something.
Time weathers us and through the narrative footprints it leaves retains, it gives us meaning and purpose. Time is our master and it is the single most valuable thing that we possess. Too many people waste theirs lives and their opportunities by not accepting that the clock is ticking.
perspective. Narratives give us perspective and when you can see your own narrative, when you write it down, you can see your own life in perspective: where you have been, where are and where you are going - they all become as clear as a path. This is why narratives are so intimately interwoven into the human intellect - they allow us to make the most of our time and re-experience our time that has already past.
Stories make things meaningful and we always remember the meaningful moments of our lives.
Narratives are timeless constructs that keep manifestly themselves across time and cultures exactly because they transcend time. Narratives are what gives time its meaning.
tick, tock - that is the very simple story of time.
Above and beyond time, narratives are the single most valuable thing human beings possess, because they give meaning to time and they allow us to make the most meaningful things of it.
When come to understand narratives, you begin to see something of the cogs that are ticking beneath the surface of reality.
To a human a world without narrative understanding is inconceivable
We are seeing consciousness encapsulated, uncluttered and objectified for our own scrutiny.
Well, I got my first, my practical dissertation got the highest mark of its module and my theoretical dissertation got the highest mark that has ever been awarded to a dissertation on my course. Additionally, through the process of doing all of this my personality, my intellect and my outlook have gone through a complete revamp.
As a result of my upbringing, when I started university I was a through-and-through pessimist and now I have only an opportunistic outlook on a life in which I know I can create whatever opportunities that take my fancy.
In my final year I came to realise a love of life that, from my point of view, transcends films and reality itself - it is the transformation of the narrative inside of me, something of it has been written down in this post. Now, it has become a fusion of spectator and spectacle. That was always the point of my foundation of finding a way of loving life. For the longest time, I was broken.
In Ways of Being, I used Bruce Wayne ascent from the pit as an illustration of climb our of the cave.
"If Film Studies ever going to stand a chance of uncovering the meaning of the increasingly multifaceted relationship of the spectator and the spectacle, it will need to nurture progression and it must not be afraid to ask naive questions. Children ar every good at asking fundamental questions and a child-like curiosity is exactly what film theory requires" (O'Brien, 2013:72).
Triggering intellectual growth with the naivety of a childlike curiosity, in Ways of Being, I was not just talking about the intellectual growth of the film and media field. The reality of my ways of being is that for the last three years of my degree I was climbing out of a pit.
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| The final page of the conclusion of Ways of Being. |
Defining my Fundamental Focus: Realising my Path and my Life Journey
Beyond referring to a hefty academic summative project (and it is astounding the amount of people who do not know this), the word 'dissertation' actually means 'path'. To this end, both of my dissertations, Ways of Being and EYES, they are the amalgamations of the intellectual temperament I developed throughout my time at University; as well as acting as proclamations of my fundamental focus. They represent the essential creative and academic temperaments that are integral to who I am and the life-journey I am going on. Ways 2 Interface, even more so, is an embodiment of that relationship.
For the longest time I did not know what my fundamental focus was; of course, now that I look back on it all, it seems blindingly obvious, but it took the whole my final eureka year and the writing of this post to adequately define that focus - stories.
It was always there, hidden just beneath the surface
EYES is an experimental, dramatic, surrealistic, cognitive web series concept proposal package that is a reflexive expression of contemporary networking [storytelling] attitudes and their implications on our ways of being. With this project I have endeavoured to create a highly progressive concept for a web series story-world; in addition to providing an example of the storytelling potentials offered by the emerging web series medium and of a larger transmedia entity.
Drawing on a plethora of empirical and non-empirical research, [Ways of Being: The Spectator and the Spectacle] is a highly progressive expression of how film experience [and storytelling as a whole] has always been about transcendence and, as a result of its digital re-birth and diversifications, it is now becoming even more so.
over and over and over
In every shape and form
and they always have been.
Stories are my fundamental focus and they are my expertise
and they always have been
I do not know about other people; all I know is that this is my focus and it always has been.
how ever that eventually fully manifests itself will be based around this fundamental focus
"I worked with Peter over the second two years of his BA and I was impressed with his focus and attention to detail. He reads widely and engages readily with his work, which is evidenced clearly in the depth of his research and his understanding of it's context." (Mike Johnston, Senior Lecturer in Creative Media Practice).
I m lucky enough to live in an age where technology has empowered me to do so, so why not do so?
Ways 2 Interface is a space I have created for myself to explore these pursuits. It is a limitless space which is very fortunate considering the amount of topics that can be discussed and subjects that can be reviewed. If I do go on to do a Masters (something that I am currently looking into, see MSc Creative Technologies and Enterprise), then I fully plan to carry this project over into it.
“Pete, you have a fantastic dissertation which deserves the highest possible grade. Really, it is brilliantly written which displays your thorough research and passion for the topic and, most importantly, it is original and not something that people have written about tens of thousands of times. You've done something new and fantastic.” (Matt Coot, Proof-reader, 03/06/2013).
My two dissertations and their high levels of investment and achievements represent my dual investments of creativity and academia - they are pronouncements of my path and my fundamental focus. My fundamental focus is that 'something inside,' that something to do with film. That is my purpose, my path, my passion and a full manifestation of that is how I want to live my life.
Live Life on Your Own Terms: Refining and Fulfilling my Purpose
Ways 2 Interface is only one component of a much larger research web and life project. The research and investigation I am currently conducting is not just concerned with the theoretical and practical study of the interface's role in our ways of being, the research is also concerned with attaining the life I want to live through grasping the practicalities of becoming a Entrepreneur.
"An entrepreneur sees an opportunity which others do not fully recognize, to meet an unsatisfied demand or to radically improve the performance of an existing business. They have unquenchable self-belief that this opportunity can be made real through hard work, commitment and the adaptability to learn the lessons of the market along the way.
They are not diverted or discouraged by skepticism from 'experts' or from those from whom they seek backing and support, but willing to weigh all advice and select that which will be helpful. They are prepared not just to work seriously hard but to back their judgment with personal investment at a level which will cause problems if they are wrong about the opportunity. They understand that achievements are the result of team work and knows how to choose the necessary blend of talents and inspire them with their vision."
Dan Martin, Business Zone, 2010. http://www.businesszone.co.uk/blogs
/dan-martin/dan-martin-editor039s-blog/what-entrepreneur-brilliant-definition
Although, more specifically, I want to become a creative entrepreneur.
"a Creative Entrepreneur is one who undertakes the creation and or production of an original creative work and is able to establish a business structure in the delivery and distribution of such works."
Nathaniel Prince Lewis, Under 30 CEO, 2010
http://under30ceo.com/what%E2%80%99s-a-%E2%80%9Ccreative-entrepreneur%E2%80%9D-and-how-you-can-succeed-as-one/
The process of becoming an entrepreneur nurtures skills and characterizations that guarantees a form of job security that is fast disappearing from the job market and will continue to do so as technology and outsourcing continues to make internal job roles of large corporations more and more so redundant. When you have an entrepreneurial ingenuity you possess a skillset that makes you much better suited to adapt and re-adapt to the changing professional landscape.
In today's world you have to make your own living through creating your own opportunities; thankfully, the digital rebirth has supplied us with an array of tools which make this process vastly more accessible than it has ever been before, it just takes a little research and a lot of fiddling to figure out.
Since July, 2013 I have been investing all of my time and energy into figuring out everything I need to know to make this a reality for myself. Not only do I now possess a vastly stronger grasp of the practicalities required and of how I can generate capital, but now that I break it all down, I can see that the entrepreneurial journey is something that I have been engaged in for quite some time now.
Ultimately, this is an endeavor that is vastly more fulfilling for the entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship allows you to create a livelihood based around your passion
This is deeply ingrained in myself and I have already endured too many hardships and setbacks to be dissuaded from seeing this reach its full fruition.
Stories are central to successful entrepreneurship and, well, I know a thing or two about stories.
I assure you they are ALL connected; everything that I am currently doing - everything -is invested towards my eventual goal of entrepreneurship.
a
summarized definition of a Creative Entrepreneur is one who undertakes
the creation and or production of an original creative work and is
able to establish a business structure in the delivery and distribution
of such works
Read more at http://under30ceo.com/what%e2%80%99s-a-%e2%80%9ccreative-entrepreneur%e2%80%9d-and-how-you-can-succeed-as-one/#LUPZFVsm5QQrokPC.99
Read more at http://under30ceo.com/what%e2%80%99s-a-%e2%80%9ccreative-entrepreneur%e2%80%9d-and-how-you-can-succeed-as-one/#LUPZFVsm5QQrokPC.99
I made my degree work for me.
Over and over and over and, now, I am making that skill work for me.
I figured out the concept of time and how to tell it - digital and analogue, to ride my bike - without stabilizers,
I even figured out how to tie my shoelaces - it only took about five minutes sat on the kitchen floor. I have always figured out things for myself and I will always have to figure things out for myself - at heart, I have always been an explorer. That impulse and strength has is hardwired into me and Ways 2 Interface is a one very big expression of that strength.
Everything that I am currently doing, all the research I am currently doing is building on the foundation I forged at university and I have done exactly what I did in my final year of university, I making every single endeavor that I am currently engaged in not only work for each other, but to work towards my cause, my fundamental focus.
as being pure insanity.
When you are engaged in something that you are truly passionate about, not only will you become more fulfilled as a person, but you will be vastly better at doing that particular something and invest more time and energy into doing it, than somebody who is not really that passionate about it. In the long run, if you are better at something and happier about doing it, the likelihood is that you will generate bigger returns from it as well, so why would you do something that you do not care about? In regards to the bigger picture, it does not make any logical sense.
However, there is a universal answer to this question and it is one that not everyone likes to admit to - fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of 'but...', fear of leaving our cave-like comfort zones. And what is the most sadistic thing about a comfort zone? The clue is in the name - the longer you stay in one, the harder it becomes to leave.
Comfort zones are the most ruthless serial killers the human race has to contend with - day-after-day, they throttle the life out of our dreams; they chain us to our sofas and our arm chairs and they force us to watch our dreams being played out... without us.
This is exactly what happened to me while I was at university in Bath; yes, personally and academically, I grew a great deal while in that comfort zone, but when I graduated I reached a point were I realized that this particular comfort zone could nurture be no longer. Bath itself was a problem, because it is lovely. Bath is an idyllic location, no doubt about that, but it is comfortable, it is vastly too comfortable.
deep down, I knew that if I stayed there, I would become comfortable doing something, but that something would not be something to do with film. And right about this time I had just binged my way through the initial four-and-half seasons of Breaking Bad and Walter White, himself forced to leaved his comfort zone, proved to be an invaluable help:
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| That is exactly what I did to my comfort zone. |
I kicked Bath in the teeth - rather painfully, I might add, I did not want to go, but I had to go, I had to climb out of that cave, so I moved to Bristol. Like re-taking my first year, I had to do something dramatic and painful to shale me out of my respite.
However, this I did after quite bit of research and contemplation to ascertain where I would be best suited to go to achieve my goals and Bristol came up as the best option; it is also only fifteen miles from Bath, so I was easy able to retain the advantages of Bath in my back pocket. So comfort zones are not all bad and they do have their advantages, the trick is to make your comfort zones work for you and if that means stepping outside of it - so be it.
I needed somewhere that did not look like Bath, I needed somewhere where everyday I would get a harsh reminder to keep going, no matter what, keep going, keep working towards your goal and for five months now, that is exactly what I have done.
Unless you are willing to make sacrifices, to kick something in the teeth, forget it. You need that element of ruthlessness to stay the course and to build an empire.
I want to live life on my own terms and if this is what I have to do to make it a reality, so be it.
I'm in the Empire Business: Refining and Growing my Brand
When I first moved to Bristol, I joked that it was my pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and that: "the streets [of Bristol] are lined with gold, just waiting for someone to come along and scoop it up" (Walter White, Breaking Bad). I referred to Bristol as being my empire and all the work I have been doing here as building towards my empire.
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| There was no pot of gold, but I got the rainbow. |
In actual fact, however, when I was referring to my empire, I was not referring to the physical geographical location of Bristol; rather, I was referring to a partly-physical-and-partly-digital entity: me, I am my empire - my empire is my brand.
After examining all the entrepreneurial materials I have sifted through over the past five months, their is one constant that kept popping up, it is the one vital component of every entrepreneur's success - their story. Beyond their capital, their connections, their endorsements and their expertise, the most powerful thing an entrepreneur possesses is their story.
Their story is what they use to inspire consumers to connect with their particular business and to buy into their expertise. The really successful entrepreneurs are individuals who have sewn together a story-spectacle of themselves into a first class, trustworthy and reliable brand:
"One of the best ways for an entrepreneur to get a leg up in this competitive climate and distinguish yourself from the rest of the pack is to tell your brand story.
Story is how we connect with one another. Wonder why the emerging social networking sites are so popular? The answer is because people crave the emotional and powerful connection that comes through telling a story.
The best brand stories are irresistible, compelling and provocative in a way that your target audience is going to hear, seamlessly and effortlessly. Telling that kind of brand story will position you and your company as a leader in the marketplace.
The most memorable brand stories tell the unexpected, speak directly to the heart or dare you to live life to the fullest."
- Mary van de Wiel, Entrepreneur.com, 2009
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/203748
Not too long ago, I was always very secretive about my past and my story, because I was ashamed of it. However, after all the research I have conducted and everything that I have been through, I can now see that I suppress my story at my own peril! Therefore, fuck it, I am going to tell that story. I am going to use my story to grow my empire and I am going to use my story to inspire people to be a part of my brand.
Ways 2 Interface is another component of that story, that brand, that empire.
Furthermore, returning back to the main focus of the Ways 2 Interface research project, this is what makes the components of my larger research web and my personal journey such powerful components of Ways 2 Interface as a whole. The entrepreneur is a construct that very much sums up the essential nature of the times in which we live. The entrepreneur is the ultimate manifestation of how the consumer has become the creator.
If there is a figure that
perfectly represents how the spectator and spectacle are outwardly, more
and more so, becoming muddled and the same thing, then today's entrepreneur is surely that figure.
On
the surface, an entrepreneur is representative of what has always been
our reliant and muddled relationship with narratives beneath the
surface. They are the creators and participators of stories, of spectacles, experiences that allow them to get by in the world. The entrepreneur and the practicalities of becoming one are wholly representative of our contemporary ways of being the spectator and the spectacle.
Successful entrepreneurs build an empire.
This is why Ways 2 Interface will benefit so strongly from
the full breadth of my research and my personal journey.
content creators, social media experts, they have found a way to be all pervasive. Entrepreneurs very much embody the bigger picture of the age of the upgrade.
The School of Greatness, Think Entrepreneurship, The Entrepreneur Effect, Preneurcast, #thinkdigital
I am taking full advantage inherent network of the internet because it allows me to take all of my endeavours, connect them together make them work for each other.
putting off for tomorrow what I am empowered to do today.
We live in an incredibly empowered age, but only if you are willing to do it.
Successful brands tell and sell a compelling a story that entices the consumer to connect with it. Ultimately, the very best stories are the ones that persist: their stories are timeless. In short, the trick to becoming a successful entrepreneur and brand is to transcend into timelessness.
A brand is a testimony.
I have been experiencing them, building them and deconstructing them for most of my life. Stories are my expertise and they always have been.
Am I in the creative business or the academic business? Neither. I'm in the empire business! Therein lies my entrepreneurial temperament and drive.
Nothing Stops This Train: Exploring my Research and Telling my Story
Nothing. That has been my blog, Something to do with Film, for most of its life. Since I first created it three years ago, it has not received much of my attention. However, this was not out of lack of interest; rather, it was down to three problems:
- Lack of confidence in my writing abilites (you know why).
- Lack of a comfortable stylistic tone.
- Lack of a clear content focus.
- I can now write!
- While authoring the EYES of a Storyteller blog, the spontaneous necessity of just having to get things written, due to a lack of time, exposed my best blogging style: where you treat your blog like a sketch-and/or-scrapbook and write with a spontaneous, thoughtful and quirky tone. A tone that works superbly for...
- Life writing. My life in relation to my experiences with films (and to a deeper extent, stories) and how I see life through a filmic/narrative lens, because that has been my life! This is a clear content focus that very much interests the aspiring life writer in me and through which I can explore a number of different topics in relation to the considerations of Ways 2 Interface. Perfect.
In the same way that Ways of Being and EYES greatly benefitted from rifting off of each other, as this post should have demonstrated, the same will be true of Ways 2 Interface and Something to do with Film. They are both heavy weight components of my brand and the best way I can sum up their approaches and relationship to one another is this way - if Something to do with Film is Dr Watson, then Ways 2 Interface is Sherlock Holmes (I am thinking more in terms of the modern day interpretations of Sherlock, see The Sign of Three).
There is a third component, a practical web series project that will essentially be a fusion of both Holmes and Watson and, more so, it will employ the practicalities of entrepreneurship I have been researching. I first hit on the idea for this project when I was orchestrating EYES and I have been leaving that idea to bake ever since, but more on this later.
In fact, I intend to keep the tone and style of this website about halfway between (dusty) academia and (high quality) blogging.
I have already started to write several posts for my blog that are off-shoots of some of the topics I have referenced in this post. In fact, my blog has been put on the back-burner while I have been getting this website ready.
Ways 2 Interface is where I will explore my research focus of our ways to interface as spectators and spectacles and what that has to say about our ways of being with a more critical eye.
There is a third component, a practical web series project that will essentially be a fusion of both Holmes and Watson and, more so, it will employ the practicalities of entrepreneurship I have been researching. I first hit on the idea for this project when I was orchestrating EYES and I have been leaving that idea to bake ever since, but more on this later.
In fact, I intend to keep the tone and style of this website about halfway between (dusty) academia and (high quality) blogging.
I have already started to write several posts for my blog that are off-shoots of some of the topics I have referenced in this post. In fact, my blog has been put on the back-burner while I have been getting this website ready.
Ways 2 Interface is where I will explore my research focus of our ways to interface as spectators and spectacles and what that has to say about our ways of being with a more critical eye.
It will be more detached and objectified.
It will be more heart felt and subjective.
It will be more heart felt and subjective.
If you are to build a successful online brand, then nothing of your online imprint should be left in isolation, it should be a network-narrative based around a fundamental focus, everything should feed into everything else. Everything feeding into each other, this is how I did so well out of my degree and this is how I am going to do considerably better out of my life.
Humans are very good at building networks and connections - our brains do it everyday.
For a number of years now I have been dabbling my online presence and experimenting with my brand -
It my biggest hope that my endeavour will go on to inspires to achieve their potential.
I can figure this out and, already, over the past six months I have already figured out quite a bit.
When I break it down, I have already been working for myself and my own ends for most of my life. And I have lived long enough now to see a consistent trend running through my life - whenever I go off and do my own things, follow my fundamental focus amazing things happen and amazing results are produced. While I am no expert, I am certainly not a novice. This is going to happen whether I want it or not and, fortunately, I do.
"The most motivated individual I have ever had the pleasure to meet. Not only is he incredibly driven, which can be acknowledged at just a glance of his achievements, but his desire for success overflows to the point that Pete will encourage the success of those around him. I have never met an individual so driven and so likely to succeed and push the boundaries of which ever field he chooses to go into."
- Tim Bradshaw, friend and fellow student.
Ultimately, it is my biggest hope that I can use my endeavour to inspire others to achieve their potential.
The prospect of going down this path did terribly me at first, the fear was absolutely there. However, lately, I have started to forget fear, because when I look back on myself and all the people I used to be, I can see that I am already a good way ahead in this journey, because I started this journey a very long time ago...
Becoming Timeless: Twenty-Four Years in the Baking
It is central to my ways of being, Ways 2 Interface lies at the heart of the research web I am currently orchestrating - it is an expression of my fundamental focus. Everything in that research web can trace its roots back to the six year old daydreamer sat on the living room floor watching Toy Story.
However, now that I look back on it, I can see that this fact is obvious because it has been a constant running through my whole life: I taught myself to tie my shoelaces, I taught myself to myself to ride a bike, I taught myself to tell the time, I taught myself to read, I taught myself grammar, Ways of Being was a great bit pot of figuring out. I am a person who goes away and figures things out. And I can figure out this project as well, I know I can because I am already a good way ahead,
I was consciously aware of being taken into an experience, like I had never been taken into one before.
wondering why he was so taken in by a film that only a little while earlier I had been so adamantly determined not to watch or enjoy.
Fascinated with the power that narratives have over each of us. Spectators and Spectacles.
I have since surpassed my 1000th film
I have since surpassed my 1000th film
and children are able to do this much more so, because the wiring of their brains means they are not as able to easily separate reality from fiction.
They have the power to change us, to inspire the deepest aspirations of ourselves to come to the surface and achieve their realisation, regardless of how many years it may take. Nearly twenty years later the same curiosity of that same six year old wrote everything you see before you. And I am far from done!
The doubt I had towards my own intelligence and ability is still there, but far from it being a hindrance, I have learnt to use it as a tool. I have discovered that self-doubt acts as a surprising good proof-reader and fact checker, because it makes you go back and re-examine what you have done.
It is going to be a piece of cake and Ways 2 Interface is only one piece of that cake. Fancy a piece?
When we look back on it, when you really think about it, we do not see people, we see stories, hundreds and hundreds of stories all a part of the you-franchise, the you-brand.
On its own a person, a human being is an incredibly hard thing to define, so we let a collection of stories do it for us.
"We all change, when you think about it, we're all different people, all through our lives."
Because, as should be clear now, storytelling is central to my entreprenuerial aspirations.
That's what happens when we become narratives - we become timeless: "the souls made of stories, not atoms"
Even our memories turn us into narratives.
Everything is understood through a perspective and see what happens when you change a perspective - it is almost like a pessimist becoming an optimist.
The storytelling of religions have this down to a fine art - that is why they are able to hold such a powerful grasp over believers.
I already have a lot of life behind me
Everyday for the past eighteen years as been building towards this.
video of the tortoise and the hare.
The person you are looking at what do you know them as?
You can not know them in their entirety, because only they have access to their entirety
or do you know them as a collection of stories?
It's going to be a piece of cake.
He has spent nearly twenty years running to get here, a little slow at first, but quicker later on. He has stumbled a few times, been discouraged considerably more and very nearly quit once or twice, but always he has kept going, kept learning and re-learning to pick himself up.
Through all the despair and doubt and hatred and lost opportunities, he has kept running, kept reading, kept watching, kept pushing, kept fighting, kept questioning, kept climbing, kept hungry, kept imagining, kept rising... and falling with style.
Film-after-film, story-after-story, 'what if'-after-'what if', he has traversed a solitary path. He has been cooking for a very long while and now at 24, I have arrived. A collection of stories all building towards the story that I am now - the one with which you have just interfaced.
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| He has become me and I am the person he always wanted to be: 11/12/2013. |
Every second that passes, you are one second closer to your death. So stop wasting time, stop moaning, stop making excuses and set the standard. Figure out your master plan and start living the life you want to live. Be the author of your own life, we are all stories in the end and, in the end, only time will tell, so leave time with a good story to tell.
- Through Ways 2 Interface (more specifically, this post) I have set the standard for my ways of being, as motivational speaker Les Brown has pointed out: "when you are not pursuing your goal, you are literally committing spiritual suicide."
- Through my research web, I am figuring out my entrepreneurial masterplan and in the words of Douglass Trumbull, the innovator to whom I dedicated Ways of Being: "I'm a pioneer. That's my life. I'm just going to keep doing it, until I do it..."
- Finally, in terms of living the life I want to live, as author, marketer and entrepreneur, Seth Godin has quite rightly pointed out: "the internet has freed us from the tyranny of being picked." The fact of the matter is, that life I want to live - I am already living it!
Without realizing it, I have been living the life I want to live for a shockingly long while now. For the longest time, I could not see the path I was traversing, but I can definitely feel it now.
As I continue down that path, year-by-year, day-by-day, second-by-second, I get a little closer to something that has aways been there, something central to my ways of being and an expression of our universal ways of being, something inside, something transcendental, something timeless, something to do with film.
Ways 2 Interface is my promise and my foundation re-affirmed. Do I doubt myself? Of course, my proof-reader and fact checker is always nagging me! But, fuck it, I am just going to keep doing it, until I do it; I am going to rise... and fall with style. No more half measures, spectator and spectacle unified, it is time to become timeless.
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