4 kinds of chance (or `luck') in creativity

On 4 kinds of chance (or `luck') in creativity...


Creativity researchers Hayes (1989) and also Austin (1978) said some interesting things about luck, in creativity... 
Here's an excerpt from an early draft of my 2016 Ph.D. (that didn't make the cut, at 100,000 words max!)

"`Graeme Mason, chief executive (2013-present) of government film funding body Screen Australia states: 

`Australian films by their nature – creatively and size – are art-house. They’re appealing to a smaller demographic. We don’t have the budgets. We’re not going to make Thoror The Hobbit… There is no room to fail any longer. The specialty audience has had so many opportunities that are so much cheaper. You have to nail it. We need reviewers in your paper to give it five stars. We need reviewers to be saying `This is bleak but this is one you have to see.’ We need your friends to be telling you to go see it. You can no longer get four-star reviews and `This is a good first attempt’. It has to be five stars.’ (Maddox 2014) 

Paraphrased, Mason above is essentially saying: You really need your film to go viral, or it’s curtains. The above quote applies in a general sense to the Australian movie industry, but the point extends deeper into the international cinema domain.

Given also that culture and domain-knowledge evolves, there are also circumstances constantly occurring in the context within which filmmakers are operating (e.g.: in the film industry) of which, they can have no control, let alone, knowledge or awareness. 

For example, as a screenwriter, unless we know every single film producer in the field, we may not know, who exactly is looking for which exact type (or say, genre, and budget range) of screenplay, and, at which exact particular and specific point in (or, window of) time. 

Despite annual industry personnel (hard-copy) directories such as Encore, this kind of information is certainly not standardized, formally organized, or presented comprehensively anywhere within the complex system of the film field and domain. 

That specific information largely is shared, (or alternately: deliberately guarded, and sometimes, not shared) via word-of-mouth, and certain social networks (rarely however via electronic social networks, as producers generally wish to avoid being `bombarded’ by an onslaught of amateur, sub-par screenplays, for example). As Alexander (2003) notes of the industry: `vacancies are not advertised’ (Alexander 2003, p. 154). 

With regard to screenplays, this means persuasion(one of "the 7 P's" in the study of creativity) is crucial; the movie story itself must persuade investors/financiers that the film should be made, over all competing projects.

In short, the environment - and the ecosystem- of filmmaking (and of each creative cultural domain within it) is somewhat like a `jungle’, and therefore, a Darwinian “survival of the fittest”
Hayes (1989) also notes that chance (i.e.,  “luck”) can play a crucial role in genuinely creative acts, citing Austin (1978) on four different kinds of luck in creative acts: 

`Austin (1978) makes an interesting distinction among four kinds of chance events.  

Chance I is just blind luck. It could happen to anyone and doesn't depend on any special ability of the person it happens to.  

In Chance II, luck depends on the person's curiosity or persistence in exploration. The fact that a curious person attends more, say, to the habits of beetles makes that person more likely to discover something interesting about beetles than a person who regards them simply as something to be squashed.  

In Chance III, luck depends on the person having extensive knowledge of the field not shared by most people. Thus, the Curies' discovery of radium depended on their recognizing that a certain mineral was more radioactive than it ought to be on the basis of the known elements it contained. Clearly only a very knowledgeable person could make such a discovery. This is the sort of chance that Pasteur was talking about when he said, "... chance favors only the prepared mind."  

Finally, in Chance IV, luck depends on the person's particular, and perhaps unique, intellectual style or pattern of interests.  

Acts which involve chance events of the last three kinds do reflect credit on the mind of the actor, and thus are potentially creative.’ 

(Hayes 1989) 

In The Creative Personality, (Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly 1996a) also identified ten antithetical attributes of the creative personalitythat include a curiosity, or a deep interest in, almost everything and anything; Stanley Kubrick (see: Ciment 1999, passim) stands as an example of such an individual, but such traits also appear across the top 20 RoI filmmakers.

Simonton (2004) also examines scientificcreativity, demonstrating that four different elements can come into play with scientific creativity, in Creativity in Science: Chance, Logic, Genius, and Zeitgeist (Simonton 2004). 

The current thesis also proposes that these four factors in Scientific creativity (chance, logic, genius, and disciplinary zeitgeist) can also equally play a crucial role in creativity in the Arts (for example, in screenwriting and in film); as will be later shown in this study - the top 20 RoI films demonstrate this, and the bottom 20 RoI films do not."

 

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REFERENCES
And, see: Chase, Chance, and Creativity: The Lucky Art of Novelty (Austin 1978, 2003)

So, anyway -
4 kinds of luck! 






Load those dice, and use them: well!

PS - Here's a quote, that did make the cut, in my PhD
(see p. 117 of the StoryAlity thesis):

`Marketing can’t change the odds. There is no evidence to show that marketing has much to do with a film’s success. Marketing is mostly defensive anyway; a studio has to market its films draw attention in a field where everyone is shouting. If you don’t shout too, you will be drowned out and may not be noticed.' (De Vany 2004, p. 4).

De Vany, A. S. (2004). Hollywood Economics: How Extreme Uncertainty Shapes The Film Industry. London; New York: Routledge.

Anyway; see my PhD (& the StoryAlity PhD-blog) for vastly more detail.



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You have been reading/viewing a blog-post by:

Dr J T Velikovsky
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PPS
If you can't remember the 7 x P's of creativity, they are:
...when scholars and researchers and scientists study creativity – from one perspective (derived from Rhodes 1962) – they examine the 7 P’s of creativity; namely:the creative person(ality) – their personality, character, traits, values, etc… ie Who are (or: were) they? What were they like?their creative potential (e.g. their talents, genetic / biological / psychological predispositions, etc. e.g. Did they display interest and/or aptitude at a young age, in the area in which they later were recognized as: creative?)their: creative process(es) (e.g. their cognition, their working methods, their techniques, strategies, work habits, etc)their creative product(s) – e.g. their: invention, or artwork, or novel, or movie, musical composition, or scientific theory or discovery, etctheir (creative) place – e.g. geographical, temporal, socio-cultural environment, social networks, etctheir creative persuasion (how did the Field become convinced that their product was indeed, creative? – i.e., new and useful? Or even: new, useful and surprising?)their creative press – (the many and various influences on the creative person’s behaviour…)See: What is creativity?