This is not a typical hugedof.com post. There won’t be a photo showing something cool from my surroundings I recently discovered or a current event or art or experiment or whatever else I have felt was worthy of sharing on the internets. I have been challenged recently by some new coworkers (I started a new job about two weeks ago). Many of them are independent filmmakers outside of our video-production day jobs. They seem to constantly be working on music videos or short films or just seeking out new opportunities to tell a story through motion picture. I do not get the urge to do so often and I think I may know why.
I capture stories. I have always been interested in photography. My dad still has the Minolta 35mm camera that I think he got before I was born and I remember wanting to learn how to use it early on. Starting in middle school and continuing through all four years of high school I took classes on broadcast journalism. I even became the producer of the high school’s morning show that was sent out to every classroom each morning and even out to the community for whoever wanted to be up on the happenings of the town’s public high school (between 800 and 1,000 students when I was there). I had been capturing or telling other people’ stories for years and I think that is where my skills are best used. Even with my four years of film/television production (and communications theory) training during my undergrad I still gravitate toward telling other’s stories, or helping them share their stories. I have had moments of creative joy coming from creating a fictional story, but for the most part I’m not sure I’m as gifted there as those around me are.
Now to the point. Don Miller, a writer from Portland, Oregon, is putting a seminar (www.donmilleris.com/conference) in the coming months about telling a story with your life. I have read his books and really click with his thoughts on multiple subjects. What has really caught my attention though is the idea of living a good story. It is our stories that define the human experience. That said, there is a drawing – sort of – for those who would like to have travel to and entry to the seminar covered. This is my entry.
What I want to do, for at least the next chapter of my own story, is to allow others to open up to tell their stories – whether it be those who don’t often (if ever) have a voice or those who are often in public view. Each person has a story to tell. Each person has a journey they are on. I want to learn how to enable them to share their stories – to share what they have learned from life so that others may benefit from it. What I would imagine gaining from the seminar is greater depth to the ideas from Miller’s book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years and apply them to the method taken in capturing these stories, editing them, and then sharing them with the world. In the process, maybe I will have collected enough adventures, experiences, wisdom, that I could finally allow myself to be on the other side of the lens.
For more information on the seminar, check out the video below or go here: www.donmilleris.com/conference
Grace and peace,
Eric
Living a Better Story Seminar from All Things Converge Podcast on Vimeo.