My wonderful husband-to-be is an illustrator. He has numerous sketchbooks lying scattered around our home, with scribles and doodles of ideas. They are so inspiring to flip through, and I must admit, I envy his skill. To be able to visualize an idea in a spontaneuos way seems so liberating for the creative proces, compared to the slow-paced standard workflow of filmmaking.

The chain of events you have to go through within the danish filminstitute is there for the reason. The reason is understandable, as they want to ensure quality through thoroughness and thereby support the production of good films. However, it can also become a restraining standardisation of the creative process for those who work differently.

I feel that my energy has been somewhat paralyzed lately by the weight of trying to do "good work". It's an emotional trap I am very prone to fall into, since the need for recognition is programmed so deeply into my whole existence. It guess it's both human and natural, but I don't think that truly interesting work grows from that emotion.

It was something I was very aware of during my last year at filmschool. There was a lot of pressure as well as excitement around the graduation films. All though it wasn't openly articulated, a lot of my fellow students clearly had this compitition-thing going on, of who makes the best film. I am freaklessly sensitive to such things, and used to get caught up in these kind of games, against my will. But because I had become aware of that, it was so important to me to liberate myself from the wish to make a "good film" and be a "good student". It had to be about the work.

It was gamechanging for me to make that insight, and it was a very valuable experience to take with me out in the "real world". The trouble is, that the system, the filmindustry, feeds that emotion of wanting to do "good work", so it is an extremly difficult task to stay clear of it. It quickly becomes a morass of your own and other peoples expectations to what path you should take. The feeling of waiting in line to climb the latter, is incredibly uinspiring to me, and unhealthy too.

I need to create a platform for intuitive investigation of my ideas, if I want to truly develop my work and my method. If I continue down this lane of trying to meet the standards, trying to do "right" and fit into the box, I will crumble. I'm not trying to be dramatic here, but it is a realisation, that I need to treat with great care. It is about how we nurture our work and minds, how we keep our inspiration fertile.

I am in a place now, where I urgently need to liberate my creative process. I need to work with visuals, sound, people. The honesty of a moment, the sensuality of an atmosphere. In other words: I need a sketchbook. Not a literal, physical sketchbook, but a filmic sketchbook.

I need to create a room for experimentation, where I can do my equivalent of doodling, camera in hand, and see what that exploration brings.

Within the next couple of weeks, I will launch a sketchbook-project, where I will begin to share my ongoing worksketches with the rest of the world. The aim is to push myself out of the selfconscience-zone and into energized inspiration again. I'll return soon with more info, once I have a few remaining practical how's in place… so stay tuned..