Forging a compelling media sequence in the fires of creativity and urgent deadlines is a craft that requires meticulous planning, seamless transitions, and an instinctive understanding of storytelling. Whether for film, animation, or video game cutscenes, the process of arranging and organizing media assets poses formidable challenges. Interestingly, these challenges are the four exact obstacles encountered in general problem-solving:
- Assumptions
- Functional fixedness
- Mental set
In this blog post, we delve into how creators face these obstacles and how innovative new features like ftrack Review’s ability to reorder clips and enter into synced presentation reviews can help overcome these obstacles to create a more efficient and imaginative workflow.
Assumptions
Media creators, like problem solvers, often make assumptions about the constraints and obstacles that limit their options. These assumptions can hinder the exploration of alternative solutions and prevent creators from fully realizing the potential of their sequences.
The ‘Play All’ Sequence Management feature in ftrack Review allows users to instantly re-order clips and switch between asset versions on the fly. This intuitive method eliminates the assumption that the initial sequence or order of clips is best or fixed. The ability to do this quickly will remove friction to exploring other ideas and consider more possibilities without disrupting your creative flow.
Functional Fixedness
Functional fixedness is what happens when you have a bias about how something should be used because you primarily think about it in the usual use case. Creators can be trapped into one way of viewing a sequence and become limited in their ability to consider alternative arrangements and explore fresh storytelling approaches.
By providing the ability to switch between asset versions seamlessly, ftrack Review encourages artists to break free from functional fixedness. Instead of being limited to viewing the media sequence in one way, you can seamlessly experiment with different clip arrangements to see how each configuration plays into the next clip, and do it at the speed of your curiosity. The end result can leave you pleasantly surprised with something unexpected and better than your first idea.
Mental Set
Creators, like anyone else, can become locked into mental sets—relying on solutions that have worked in the past and limiting their exploration of new possibilities. As lazy as it sounds, our brains try to work as little as possible, so they cover our first ideas for a given problem in chemicals that feel good—”This is a great idea, I’m done!”, says the brain.
You can challenge your mental set by getting more brains into the mix with collaborative problem-solving. By bringing all participants into a synchronized session, they can share new perspectives, passing new ideas to you that your brain didn’t have to work for, and it likes that too. This group review in a synced session can be accomplished with ftrack Review’s Presentation Mode feature.
With the ability to make creative decisions fast, explore new ideas, and include more people’s perspectives, creators can overcome the mental barriers that stop us from stretching to greater storytelling.