That note nobody wrote

My primary challenge in this project has been using visual tools to convey abstract ideas. Reporting on people or place or event can be straight-forward: The subjects are self-evident and thus take care of the visuals (though it is still up to the producer to craft engaging and technically sound images). But The Improvisers is not so much a collection of reports; instead, this site attempts to shed light on a series of notions and beliefs. For some this means a way of describing human behavior, for others it is a way of seeing the world with eyes wide open.

My early intent was to use video to follow the life of a person who lives an improvised life. Someone who demonstrates the ubiquitousness of improv in all our lives. I did not even necessarily want the person to understand that he does this for fear of hitting my viewers over the head. Unfortunately the difficulty in grasping the ethereal (or subtle) nature of improv, without directly discussing the process, proved more than I could figure out. Instead I turned to scholars who think long and hard about how to describe what improv means and how it works on several levels.

How was I to use video to support the discussions put forth by experts such as Greg Hohn, Stephen Nachmanovitch and Keith Sawyer? Being too literal in matching visuals to quotes could insult the viewer, or worse mislead. When Nachmanovitch, author of Free Play, says “It means presence and responsiveness to what's really there,” how would I even begin to know what that looks like? I think back to an assignment for Powering a Nation where I shot photos in a sinking village in Alaska and I repeatedly asked myself, What does erosion look like? and Where can I see it? How can I capture the residents’ frustrations? However in this world of the everydayness of improv, the discussion often turns to mental processes, and even ones that we do without thinking!

As you’ll see in Demystifying Improv, I elected to go with a bit of an impressionistic approach in these places. When Sawyer, a creativity scholar, explains the importance of improv in playtime to the social development of children, I naturally documented kids at play to visually support that section. But as Hohn, an actor and educator in applied improv, talks of being in the moment, well, I have to concede that there really is no literal way to show someone shedding their inhibitions. But maybe with hooping in the street at night or playing badminton on a pier or painting abstractly in front of an audience, I can bridge a gap and assist my viewers in understanding what the speakers are saying.