Spaceship You
Become a better compositor by doing less compositing…
Become a better compositor by doing less compositing…
VFX work, especially compositing, is almost as far away from physical labour as it gets.
It is sedentary work, sitting in front of a computer all day. Our creative work requires a lot of brainpower: mental energy, stamina, and focus. And we use our brains disproportionately more than our muscles. Which makes it easy to neglect our bodies.
Many compositors dismiss this fact, but the reality is that keeping a sedentary lifestyle will have a long term negative impact on your health. And it’s well documented that poor physical health tends to lead to poor cognitive performance. (Source, source, source, among many).
You have to take care of your body in order to take care of your brain. They are supremely interlinked. And so, you can actually become better at cognitive tasks like those needed for compositing by stepping away from the computer more.
– A better compositor by doing less compositing.
Let’s zoom out a bit and take a look at it from a different perspective.
The Divine Gift
Over 500 years ago, Michelangelo painted The Creation of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican.
The painting illustrates the Biblical creation narrative from the Book of Genesis – in which God gives Adam, the first man, the spark of life.
But Michelangelo, with his extensive knowledge of human anatomy (including dissecting and studying human cadavers since his early teens), may have concealed a deeper meaning in this particular piece of artwork.
In 1990, physician Frank Meshberger noted in the Journal of the American Medical Association that the background figures and shapes portrayed behind the figure of God appeared to be an anatomically accurate picture of the human brain.
Hidden in plain sight, the shape of a brain is outlined by God’s billowing shroud – a discovery which means that Michelangelo could have believed the divine gift of consciousness and intellect did not come from a higher power, but from our own minds.
Which can make you ponder about your own nature, and what ‘you’… are.
You
Apologies in advance, but let’s have a bit of a macabre thought experiment.
I hope this never happens to anyone, but imagine for a moment that your best friend suffered a horrific car crash and had to amputate both legs and both arms in order to survive.
For the purposes of this example, there was no trauma to their head or torso, ‘only’ to their limbs.
Let’s call this friend ‘John’. After the accident, John would still be John. He’s lost major parts of his body, but nevertheless, when visiting him in the hospital you would still be talking to your friend John.
Essentially, his living, functional torso and head would still constitute him, the person: John.
It’s going to get a little bit more macabre, but please bear with me – there is a point to all of this.
Out of hospital, poor John suffers another brutal car accident right in front of you, and gets decapitated. The wreck catches fire quickly. You only have time to run in and pick up either John’s head or his torso, before running back and safely making it out alive from the inferno yourself.
Which one do you choose? What would you most consider to be ‘John’? Which of the two parts would you collect in order to give John a burial?
This might divide opinion (because of the heart and all that it symbolises) but I would choose John’s head. Essentially, John’s brain would be the most ‘him’.
In other words, at the very core of it all, ‘You’ are a brain. You’re a brain inhabiting a body.
And your brain is entirely dependent on your body, both to function and to survive.
‘You’ (your brain) are piloting an absolutely vital ‘spaceship’ (your body) that keeps you alive and safe from direct exposure to the outside.
Spaceship You.
Look After Your Spacecraft
As I wrote in my previous article; aboard Spaceship Earth, we are all one – we’re all crew.
We have to look after our ship (and each other) because it sustains us, and because it’s our home – the only one that we’ve got.
Similarly, aboard Spaceship You, everything is a part of the whole – everything contributes to the whole.
You have to look after your body, because it sustains ‘You’, and because it's your home – the only one that you’ve got.
If you were an astronaut travelling through space, would you not do everything in your power to keep the spaceship in good working order? To keep yourself safe, and able to function optimally?
You – your brain – sort of is exactly that; an astronaut piloting your body.
So please look after your spacecraft.
Stand up, stretch, go for a walk – even go for a run, or go to the gym if you can. Keep your spacecraft in excellent working condition, to keep You in excellent working condition.
Besides, doing something as simple as going for a walk outside is great for sparking new ideas. You get fresh external inputs, and by getting your blood flowing you’re also activating your brain in more ways.
Which means, you’re more receptive to those inputs, and better able to ‘connect the dots’ and develop greater ideas.
It might seem counterintuitive that effectively doing less compositing in this way makes you a better compositor. But by being active, you’ll gain more energy and focus for when you do composite, making you that much more efficient.
It’s a highly net positive exercise which will ultimately make you a better compositor: Take care of Spaceship You.
I hope you found this article useful. For more like this, see Advice.
