Lightfield Media

NO EXCUSES

Last week, I was lucky enough to be invited to be a delegate to the UN Conference on Women by the NGO, Pathways for Peace.  From around the world, women gathered to tell their stories, share their struggles and offer solutions.  The focus this year was Rural Women.  At one panel, the moderator, Nyaradzai Gumbonzvanda, the Chair from the NGO/Committee for the Status of Women from Geneva as well as the Secretary General of the World Young Women’s Christian Association (World YWCA), told her story.   Read more

Your Idea Is Limitless

I recently rented a movie called “Limitless”, which was about an ineffective, unsuccessful guy who is given a pill that gives him access to his entire brain. You know how they say you only use 5% of your brain? This pill enabled him to use it all. He became so sharp, so clear, so smart and his career took off. Imagine how you would be if your entire brain was on-line. No brain fog, no confusion, no questions. As the main character described it, “I knew exactly what I needed to do and I knew how to do it.”  Read more

Wait, Don’t Worry

My daughter recently came home with a perfect score on her spelling test. She was so proud and so was I. Her success in spelling is meaningful because last year, her 1^st grade teacher recommended holding her back a year because she couldn’t spell. She insisted that my daughter and I work harder to get the spelling right. But in my heart, I knew that struggling was not the way. Read more

The Closed Door

Yesterday, I was taking the train from NYC to Rhinecliff, NY.  My two small children and I got on the crowded train and I began scanning the car looking for one of those few sets of end seats where 4 seats face each other and my children and I could sit together.

An older woman was sitting in one of these 4-somes all alone and I asked her if she would mind if we sat there.  From the look on her face, she clearly would mind and mumbled some excuse about how there wasn’t much leg room and blah blah blah.  I could feel my blood pressure rising. Read more

What’s Your Question?

Years ago, I created an after-school program to teach 9th graders the basics of documentary filmmaking. As a producer, I know how powerful it is to tell the stories that matter to you so I knew it would be empowering for kids to make their own shorts.

We began the class by looking at scenes from a variety of films. The kids were breathtakingly savvy when it came to things like composition, story, and character. They’d grown up watching media after all. Then, everyone had to pick a subject. The students chose everything from profiling a favorite teacher or friend, documenting a favorite sport or subject, and one student even wanted to make a film about his own alter-ego.

This is where it gets interesting. It’s so easy to talk about what other people do. Critics abound. And it’s even easy to come up with a really interesting or even great idea. But, then what? Can you execute it? Where do people get stuck? Read more

Do you have an idea but are unsure about your next steps?

We are conducting a research experiment to investigate the key factors that stop us from moving our ideas forward.  Although it’s easy to blame our blocks on external factors like the economy or something going on “out there”, we’re interested in digging a little deeper.  Since our mission at Lightfield Media is to develop ideas from the inside out, we are also interested in exploring the shadow of our ideation process from the inside out too. Read more

Saying Goodbye

Sometimes when we work with others, we must end our partnerships.  Like any divorce or separation, it can be tricky both legally and emotionally.  In the development of an idea or a product, there are no children but there is this third thing, this creation that has sprung from the commingling of two minds.  How do you divide something that has its own being-ness in half? Read more

Where is Your Idea Unconscious?

This Indecision’s Bugging Me

I am developing an idea in an entirely new field.  I’m doing my research, talking to anybody who will give me time and doing a lot of google searches.  What I discovered after my first round of initial calls is that there are an infinite amount of moving parts.  Confusion filled my brain.  I spent days complaining to all my friends that I was so confused by it all.  These diatribes were part joking around, part helplessness, and part frustration.  Read more