Seven Questions About Creativity with Gary Hustwit

Introducing Seven Questions About Creativity, a series where we present creatives from all disciplines with a fixed collection of seven questions about their creative processes and experiences. The questionnaire is designed to provide an open space where both broad strokes and specifics are welcome, where creativity is seen through the most universal lens possible, and where you may just find a new way of thinking about your own work.

To kick off the series, we handed these questions over to Chance Operations’ founder and documentary filmmaker Gary Hustwit. Gary doesn’t particularly love being the subject of interviews on a platform he founded, but we couldn’t think of anyone we’d rather have show us how it’s done. Stay tuned for regular installments of these questions and answers from artists we admire.

Where do you go, physically or mentally, when you need inspiration?

I do anything but watch documentaries! I feel like the last thing you should do is to look at the work of other artists in the same medium you’re working in. When I need inspiration, I usually listen to music or pick up a guitar. It’s not because those things necessarily inspire me directly, but they get my brain into a space where I can be inspired. Things like listening to music, looking at an art book, or taking still photographs all have that effect for me. Many times the inspiration will be accidental, but you have to be in the right mindset to be able to accept it.

There’s a thing I do, like a thought exercise, when I encounter something interesting in a medium that’s totally different from the one I’m working in. I call it “transference” and I’m always asking myself ‘What’s the documentary filmmaking equivalent of that thing or that idea?’ It’s not about copying someone else’s work, it’s examining their methodology and imagining what the results of applying there approach to my own work might look like. For example, photographer Cindy Sherman is known for her self-portraits and she’s in every one of her photos, in various costumes and scenarios. I never appear in my own films, but considering her work would push me to think about what would happen if I did appear prominently in them. While I don’t think that would be a good thing, that type of thought exercise helps me to question