We caught up with the brilliant and insightful John Phillips a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
John, so excited to have you with us today. So much we can chat about, but one of the questions we are most interested in is how you have managed to keep your creativity alive.
Creativity is such a mysterious thing: easily defined and recognized, but dynamically varied in its expressions. Some days it flows easily and infinitely, an aquifer unbidden and unstoppable. Other days…ehh, not so much! Creativity eludes us. We reach into the well and pull up sand.
Creativity is sorcery. We fight to maintain complex creative ideas, to capture them before they’re lost. We hurry to the computer to write down the dialogue while it’s still perfectly framed lest we lose it. Creativity finds us in the shower, it whispers one single line of brilliance just as we’re drifting to sleep. In this way, we are conduits of creativity and not its source. We stand at the mouth of the aquifer but do not contain it. We are wise to drink when the water flows.
I like to describe “following the pulse” or “following the fun,” which is basically just tracking my internal barometer of what quickens my heartbeat. Which take of the punchline should I use, what color is the banner of the website, how should I phrase _______? These questions, equally, have both one answer and a thousand. My favorite color is not your favorite color (unless you’re into forest green 😉) and we’re both right about it. Why do I like forest green? I don’t know. But it reminds me of the Texas hill country and of an oil painting my mother kept in our living room, and both memories fill me with a melancholic nostalgia I can barely stand.
When I’m stuck, I like to circle back to a moment in the project/script/performance to which I’m connected. If I’m an actor in a play, I’ll go to my favorite scene. If it’s an edit of a film, it’s the sequence I know flows best. It can be a single line, a single frame, a word — or an hour of footage. I go to the part of the project I know excites me, that draws me in and makes me ramble with a dozen new versions of it. The part I know works. Then I tuck into why it works, I steal the success of it, the emotional response — and sprinkle that emotion and energy into the rest of the project. Creativity, like a succulent, can be propagated.
In short, there are times in a project when you need to plow an entire field to plant deep rooted seeds and times in a project where you just need to sit down in the field and obsess over a single flower. Both are equally important. Find the fun, your fun, and use it throughout.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I am an artist that believes Artists Supporting Artists is requisite to the planet’s success.
I opened Echo Park DCP in 2018 to provide this support: an editing house that was oriented around the success of the artist. Hollywood quality without Hollywood prices, no exceptions.
We’ve grown to service over 650 filmmakers, and paired with multiple film festivals to assist in their onboarding and Digital Cinema Project (DCP) creation, and provided post-production support across California and Texas. In essence, we are the concierge’s service at the end of a filmmaker’s journey. You’re exhausted, you’re excited, and you’re several thousand dollars over budget. We are here to get you ready for your Festival run at the lowest possible cost.
It is important to me to be a collaborator, and there is not greater gift to me personally them helping to ease the “business” load of Show Business. We would love to help you on your next project, be it editing, coloring, or DCP creation!!
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Discipline, Curiosity, and an Uncle named “Spielberg.”
(jk, the last one is Confidence)
Discipline to keep the structure, to carve out the space an artist needs to create. Discipline to protect the morning before an audition, to make sure you’re writing at least three pages a day, to get up early enough to meditate. How discipline defines your success will be different than my version, but it is requisite to create the structure for long-term success.
Curiosity to sustain your interest, to find your perspective, to try that weird, skin-contact wine from Argentina. Curiosity is the parent of creativity, it bears creativity into the world. Curiosity is why we get off our couches or buy that cute stranger a drink: it is the beautiful and the unknown which galvanizes us.
Spielberg to get you work, an agent, a financial cushion, and a clout you don’t deserve. Truly, I can’t stress this enough: your Uncle needs to be Steven Spielberg.
IF NOT, then Confidence. Confidence to get you past all the shallow-minded, gate-keeping bastards. Confidence to know there’s a reason you picked up a brush, a reason you moved across the country, a reason the room draws in when you sink into the groove of a really good story. Confidence is often associated with brashness or cockiness, but that’s second rate stuff. Our confidence is the kind rooted in Knowledge of Self and honesty. Our competition is in the bathroom mirror.
How would you describe your ideal client?
Passionate, honest, and a good communicator.
If you want people to WANT to work with you, being an efficient and patient communicator will work wonders. Say what you mean, mean what you say, and communicate clearly with the people you’re collaborating with. Even if it’s a hard conversation, better now than later.
We’re all at the center of our own little melodramas, but what if you could be a supporting character in someone else’s? People love those characters!!! Be a sidekick, sometimes, and people will view you as indispensable.
Contact Info:
- Website: echoparkfilmfestival.org
- Instagram: jonny_raindance
- Twitter: jonny_raindance
- Youtube: coffeecops.org
