"Film Biz Feng Shui"

Fung shui, is a Chinese system of geomancy believed to use the laws of both Heaven (Chinese astronomy) and Earth to help one improve life by receiving positive qi.^[3]  -- Wikipedia

"Film Biz Feng Shui"

It's an all American system of catalyzing ideas (scripts, books, dreams) believed to use the laws of both the real world and the bizarro world, to improve the end product and receiving of positive cash flow or true world of art (ideally both).

I pride myself on being a master of it.

It's all about the little things, like setting up office furniture in just the right way, for ideal business flow.  Or a well placed plant or well timed surprise treat can pay for it's self many times over in productivity. It's about understanding the mix of personalities and how they are working or not working.  It's about connecting all the little things, the rain drops into the big things, the river, aligning your project with the right people, and with the larger patterns and movements of the Hollywood Stars and the Hollywood system as a whole.

I know how make a flow, go with the flow, and eventually guide the flow.

Film making is a very collaborative process, it takes bringing together of many different "elements" and people.  To make a feature film you need (sometimes crazy) creative Artists, unpredictable crew members, accountants, non-creative or "money" people, IP lawyers, and more...   You will need to know how to mix and blend these elements in just the right way.  It's a lot harder than it seems.  If you didn't know the proportions of the ingredients of a cake, your cake would not be edible most likely.  Sometimes, if you mix "elements" (people, energy) in the wrong way, it'll blow up in your face.  With the right FBFS, you can make a film production flow almost effortlessly... and save millions.  You can have your cake and eat it too.

It's why I know I will be a great Producer or Production consultant one day.

It's all about Film Biz Feng Shui.

Areté

Make Art with arete.

Be an Artist with areté.  

Just by saying areté you will have it.

Arete (Ancient Greek: ἀρετή), in its basic sense, means excellence of any kind. In its earliest appearance in Greek, this notion of excellence was ultimately bound up with the notion of the fulfillment of purpose or function: the act of living up to one's full potential.

Areté is explicitly linked with human knowledge, where the expressions "virtue is knowledge" and "Areté is knowledge" are used interchangeably. The highest human potential is knowledge and all other human abilities are derived from this central capacity. If Areté is knowledge and study, the highest human knowledge is knowledge about knowledge itself; in this light, the theoretical study of human knowledge, which Aristotle called "contemplation," is the highest human ability and happiness." -Richard Hooker  *** thanks Wikipedia ****

And from Areté we get Art.  Art in the purest essence of the word, in every expression.

Equity

"For every wrong there is a remedy"

In Latin, "Ubi jus ibi remedium" ("where there is a right, there must be a remedy").  It's a maxim of law >> Equity will not suffer a wrong to be without a remedy.

"The maxims of equity evolved in Latin, and eventually translated into English, as the principles applied by courts of equity in deciding cases before them."

"Equity is commonly said to "mitigate the rigor of common law", allowing courts to use their discretion and apply justice in accordance with natural law."

"Natural law, or the law of nature (Latin: lex naturalis), is a system of law that is purportedly determined by nature, and thus universal.  Classically, natural law refers to the use of reason to analyze human nature -- both social and personal -- and deduce binding rules of moral behavior."

The Aristotelian approach to practical reasoning is based on the notion of a virtue, and generally avoids the separation of 'moral' considerations from other practical considerations.

Morality thus came out of the very idea (the essence) of civilization itself.  Aristotle tutored Alexander the Great, who used these principles, morality, ethics, logic, to create law -- EQUITY -- and a civilization we call "Western Civilization".  The civilization Alexander (and his wise men) created was the basis of the empires of Greece and Rome, which Europe and English are derived from, and which the American Republic was built on.

Laws are there to assure that those without morality are punished, wrongs are set right, so society/civilization can prosper.

Disruptive Innovation = Postmodernism

A friend of mine told me she wanted to find and read an article in the New Yorker.  It was the May edition, last month, so it might be hard to find a hard copy.  She Googled it, and showed me the cover.  It was a play of Magritte's surrealist faceless businessman.  I was instantly interested. Surrealist imagery and style that resonates very strongly with me, as you can tell by my avatar.  I quickly noted, "We don't need to find a hard copy.  I'm can just download it onto the iPad."

There's an app for that...

I was told the article was about "disruptive innovation", which of course also immediately sparked my interest.  First the cover I loved, and now an intellectually titillating subject like "disruptive innovation" for the article?   Disruptive innovation strikes right to the core of my two great passions, Science and Art.  I wanted to find and read the article as well.  My attention had been captured.

The article was:  "When Giants Fail:  What Business has Learned from Clayton Christensen"

Remind me to look into his books.  His ideas about the steel mill still hold value in the theory they construct, but "disruptions" are far more complicated now than the steel mill analogy can define.  I think of it as derivatives being a disruption on Wall Street... the steel mill analogy helps get the idea across, like the Bohr model of the atom, but it's only where you start your understanding, it does not account for the quantum mechanics involved and is thus difficult to produce answers from, directly.

The article was nice profile of him.  Christensen is a very interesting person, with a very good story and observation.  It got me thinking.  First, "disruption" is always relative to the disrupted.  Not everyone is disrupted, by every disruption, in fact sometimes people are better off from disruption, it is only the bottom line that is not.  Sometimes the bottom line is far better off with the disruption, it is the consumer, their health, or another specific industry that is disrupted -- starved to death and obliterated.  Manufactured food is disruptive to organic farming.  Rome was disruptive to Hellenism.  Modernism -- most explicitly in architecture, but also intellectually -- was disruptive to everything that came before it.  But...

Postmodernism is "disruptive innovation".  Postmodernism is disruptive innovation on Modernism.  It's sound onto the silent film biz, 3-D on Blockbuster filmmaking.  Postmodernism is that slight mutation of an idea or form that triggers a dramatic shift in the environment in which it operates.  When I think of disruptive innovation, I think of "Reality TV" -- disruptive innovation on traditional scripted programing.  It's an inferior technology overtaking a better one by numbers or force; market force.  It's what the invention of mp3s did to the Record Industry.  Napster brought an industry, that was over 100 years old, to it's knees in about one year's time.  Disruptions come fast and strong in Postmodernism.  Like hurricanes out of the clear blue sky, "disruptions" sweep in and the operating landscape is changed.  Facebook disrupted Myspace to death, but only distracted Google and Apple into paying attention.  Apple disrupted music, movies, books, cell-phones, computers... Silicon Valley is disrupting Hollywood, but also helping it...

Digital media is disrupting publishing, but it is also helping it.  This is when I realized to point of the article, and the idea.  Creating (your own) disruptions, ones that can help (you), is the name of the game.  Disruption can be a good thing, it doesn't have to be a bad thing, so long as you know how to use it.

***

I've been a fan of the New Yorker for a long time.  It's important to support good writers and organizations that nurture them.  "Buy writing content", I thought to myself.  Support the digital publishing model!  So, I downloaded the app and bought the magazine.  I wanted it enough to buy it, rare for me.  No need to call or drive around looking for it.  Instant readability at a nominal fee, really helped me.  

"What an age this is..."