On Inspiration and Creativity

Finally getting round to pulling together my DVD for the RDA featuring the Drill ride competition entry that we completed in May 2014.

RDA Artwork

My support for the Cotswold RDA comes from a variety of sources; firstly to help our very good friend Debbie Powell, secondly a love of seeing honest horses doing an honest days work and thirdly from the concepts of sustainability and community support imparted by my employer and typified by their support to London 2012.

Having said that I have to say that this year, as Team Cotswold strove to achieve a hat trick of wins in the RDA National Drill Ride Competition,  hasn't been easy. We struggled to agree on the music, the bad weather in the Spring meant that a lot of lessons had to be cancelled and I've been really slow getting the final DVD together as I've been busy with my British Eventing and British Dressage videos.

It all comes down to inspiration; but where does inspiration come from? For me it generally comes from the music, listening to the music gives me a mental image in my head and I can then use the video tools to deliver that image. Part of the reason why I need to move quickly from concept to finished product is I become bored. Having come up with the idea means I've solved the problem; the finished product will never quite match up to with the initial idea.

So what has all this got to do with my RDA DVD? Well if I'm honest I think I was missing the inspiration, the hook, between what I'd seen on the 19th May and what I was going to put in the DVD. There was also some issues with printing Avery products on my new PC that was playing on my mind so worrying about that probably influenced the inspiration. But as I said we'd struggled to agree on the music so my original ideas for the hook had been lost.

Being able to bury myself in BE and BD events and videos meant I put the RDA on a back burner, but once I'd sorted out my Avery printing issues I confronted the main issue of the content. On the 19th May I'd used two video cameras, one hand held and one standing on the side in "secret filming" mode. I got some lovely informal shots from the latter and I've used a lot of them for the "making of" video. Music choice? Well you'll just have to get hold of the DVD to find out!

The inspiration for the second video finally came from Belmont Special School's motto "Always be the best you can be" and use of the Serif special effects to turn the video black and white but also get the ponies, riders and volunteers to glow. The music I found on iTunes matched the motto and I was home! If you ever get to watch the DVD I hope you'll appreciate what we at Harveywetdog go through to match the "music to the motion"!

First off the Production Line!