When it comes to creativity and inspiration, generosity benefits everyone.  That’s because it can lead us to discoveries that advance our creative dreams and those of others.  To illustrate, I contemplated buying a loved one a writing software like OneNote that AU students posted about on Reddit.  So, I asked ChatGPT (who named itself HarmoniaGPT) what it would recommend for both fiction and nonfiction writing, and it recommended something called Scrivener.  So, I downloaded a free 30-day trial, and think it’s outstanding.  The software seems ideal for my documentary film.  It has this fantastic hour-long hands-on tutorial that took me two hours to complete, but it lets me quickly rearrange chapters and store research, videos, audio, web pages, files, and other documents.

I’ve also found it highly relevant for our thesis writing and other long-form documents.  For instance, we can use it to organize our theses.  We can have a section for our intro, another for the literature review, another for the methodology, etc.  We can shuffle around these sections or edit them without fear of accidentally deleting a large chunk, which I commonly feared when making edits on a massive Word file thesis.  It exports files as Amazon CreateSpace books, Microsoft doc files, PDFs, and other formats.  It’s $67.99 Canadian for students to purchase outright, but it’s priceless.

However, I must bust and move with my documentary film.  I’m still wrangling with how to write the preliminary documentary story to begin at least interviewing people.  Planning software like this will surely help me arrive at an epiphany where I can create an initial plan and simplify the process.  I also purchased and read part of Michael Moore’s 9/11 screenplay, and I may have what it takes to emulate his style.  We’ve all got what it takes, as there is nothing we can’t learn.  will surely simplify the process for all of our long-form written projects.

However, to my surprise, tonight, I had an epiphany.  I was in the hot sun in the car outside a restaurant (as I don’t tend to eat restaurant meals), watching fifteen minutes of the documentary film course on my phone, and that’s when the action plan hit me.  I already had nine plot points for each interviewee’s story mapped out, so I decided to use those plot points as talking points for the interviews, paying each interviewee $50 per hour until I acquired all the necessary footage.  From there, I’ll put the interview videos through a software program called Kapwing, which automatically transcribes the video interview.  I use Kapwing at work, and I’m comfortable with it.  I can also reference Kapwing-generated subtitles for time codes for my screenplay.  I can then do as the Documentary Desktop course on storytelling outlined, which is as follows:

Use brackets around the interview parts that sound interesting.

Cross out the parts I don’t want to use.

Put stars beside the sections that are must-haves.

Then, I can paste all the transcribed sections in Scrivener to reorganize them quickly in the screenplay and create the documentary video.

I was further inspired tonight and drafted the nine story points for each interviewee in a document and emailed all the interviewees.  It’s now the next day, and the one interviewee whom I feared would reject my proposal, whom I desperately needed to realize this film concept, accepted my request to interview him.  He had two conditions, however: one of which was that he would be filmed live, but he lives overseas in the Netherlands if I’m correct.  So, I will locate a company in his city to go out and film him, either with a script I provide or with me conducting the interview remotely, although my commentary will be excluded from the film.

With this road map, the story may be what I expect it to be–or something completely unexpected.  It depends on the quality and content of the footage.  And that’s the beauty of documentary filmmaking.  It’s seeking out themes and patterns that weave together a vision.  Finally, I’ll get practice making a theatrical short film by creating a video book trailer for an author and featuring it in a local theater.

Thus, a generous act of aiding another’s creativity, coupled with education, opened doors for my creative project.  Generosity and education open infinite doors for all of us.  We don’t need to start with a single skill in our desired area either—we just need the spark: the goal.  Once we set that flame in motion, the world follows in line with our dreams and presents constant epiphanies.  Nothing is truly impossible if we put a goal in motion, and all it takes is a single thought.