Posted by Lorelei on January 19, 2010 at 21:56:02:
I've just been watching the childhood video-projects of one of my favorite directors. He used a silent film-camera when he was a boy, did VHS-to-VHS editing as a teen, acted and directed in his projects, did some stop-motion and claymation... and now as an adult, the value of that early play is so obvious.
It got me thinking about my creative areas and how they were encouraged or dashed. I think adults have to be careful to support children's activities, since one never knows what's going to wind up becoming a career.
As a child I was fascinated by animation, puppets, muppets, marionettes, ventriloquist dolls and magic. I saw an ad on TV for a marionette and asked for it for my birthday, but it turned out to be badly designed, which discouraged me from using it. Then I saved my allowance for months and dropped a large sum (for a kid) on a ventriloquist doll named Lester. I practiced talking without moving my lips, read books on it etc, but the doll was crappy and the jaw kept jamming shut or open, so I gave up. Then I bought a number of magic books and magic tricks (there was a FANTASTIC magician's store in my town), and practiced a magic act. Unfortunately, the lady across the street thought it was funny to hijack one of my tricks so it didn't work, and I was so humiliated that I quit. My brother and I played with Dad's silent film camera, making a short Godzilla movie with my Tyrannosaurus toy; this was so exciting to me that I made a number of frame-by-frame drawings to create an animated movie, but my parents reamed me for using the "good paper" instead of the "scrap paper" we kids were permitted to play with... so I never got to film the drawings.
The creative urge that DID work out was my father permitted me to run around with his still camera taking pictures of things even when I was really too young to be allowed to handle an expensive camera. I got very good at framing and shooting with speed and accuracy. Little did we know that was going to come in handy so many years later. :)
--LorLor