Think outside the box, whilst inside the box (studio): As this studio is about working with constraints, I thought i'd google 'constraints in filmmaking' and see what comes up. One of the first links was to a journal article by Heidi Philipsen entitled 'Constraints in Film Making Processes Offer an Exercise to the Imagination'. Interestingly enough the first sentence of her article states: "I would like filmmakers interested in thinking "outside the box" to recognize that they can benefit from being placed "inside a box." I wonder if Paul had contemplated this whilst choosing the name for this studio. Throughout her article Philipsen challenges the notion that creativity is an intangible innate quality, existing within the mind of one source, but rather creativity arises from a multitude of sources. Alike all things shared she suggests that creativity is easier to enhance by changing environmental conditions, rather than encouraging people to 'think more creatively'. Perceiving creativity in this way allows you to see it as an organisationally influenced phenomenon, rather than a psychological and individual phenomenon. Which enables you to have more control over creativity and to encourage creativity once being aware of how it can be environmentally enhanced. As Csikzentmihalyi (1996) states "a genuinely creative accomplishment is almost never the result of a sudden insight, a lightbulb flashing on in the dark, but comes after years of hard work". Constraints, as Philipsen suggests is one such way to manipulate the environment to enhance creativity. Students who attended The Film School in Denmark, who were forced into working with constraints for their projects eventually considered constraints to be both useful and inspirational. Such constraints included: making a scene with a specific theme, within a specific deadline and with other specific conditions concerning the use of camera, sound, actors etc. Students stated that these constraints ultimately made them feel secure, inspired and focused and... What did John eat? - something savory - something sweet - something sour - not enough information
something sweet

Jon's back ached. Frost had come early this year and the ground broke like stone. Jon had spent eight seasons breaking this ground to plant spring's crops and every year it got harder. Sweat beaded on his brow and he felt his cotton shirt stick to his skin under his coat. Jon took off his soft-brimmed hat and wiped his forehead. He examined the hat as he let his breath return. The hat had kept the burning sun and beating rain off his head for as long as Jon owned the farm. He wore it every day. It had been a gift given to him on the day he married Alasandra but he could not remember who gave it to him. Jon put it back on his head and pushed the tiller deep into the stubborn earth. Daven ran over the hill and down the cart path leading to their small cobblestone house. The boy had only left a short while ago and he held no sack with the bread and cheese his mother had told him to buy. Jon furrowed his brow. The boy continued to run and soon the wind carried his cry to his father's ears. "Papa! A carriage is coming! Two horses!" Jon's furrowed brow remained. Surely the boy meant a cart from a neighboring farm. No carriage made it out this far. "It's from the city! A soldier drives it!" Jon felt ice water flow over him. He turned to the house. "Sandra! Get the musket out of the pantry!" Jon saw his wife's face appear at one foggy window. Jon gestured wildly at her. "Get it!" They were too late. As Daven reached Jon, the black carriage already approached. A single figure sat on the bench, guiding the two brown horses down Jon's path. Daven had probably left: - not enough information - an hour ago - a few hours ago - a few minutes ago
a few minutes ago

The young man (boy, really) played with his fingers in the garish light cast from the lone bulb in the concrete bunker. He scratched at an imaginary itch on his right hand (just below his thumb) to take his mind off the man in the lab coat who sat across from him at the beaten, scarred, wood table. It didn't work. And whoever this man in the lab coat was, he was insistent about paperwork. He had three inches clipped onto a weathered clipboard which he flipped through with precision. "Can I offer you a glass of water?" asked the boy's captor in a calm, sensitive tenor. The boy, Kurt, continued to scratch the imaginary itch, which had leapt magically from his right hand to the left. Eventually the falseness of the itch would be deduced, and the lab coated man would disappear out of the cell and return with... God knows what. He had seen torture hundreds-if not thousands-of times on TV, and he was glumly certain that there would be no commercial breaks for him. "Can I offer you a glass of water?" The question was repeated without urgency, like a forgetful waiter. The itch now leaped with the dexterity of a trained flea onto the boy's leg, and the dutiful fingers followed. He watched as the man in the lab coat, without name tag or company insignia, studied his stack of papers attached to the clipboard. Several yellow forms near the top half inch were labeled 27B. The man frowned and wrote a note on the top page. "Note: Find out who isn't duplicating 27B in Pink." "I'm sorry," he said, "I wasn't listening. Was that a yes or no to the water?" Kurt remained in his chair, almost motionless, except for the itching-and-scratching routine. It had leapt again, this time onto his scalp, and the twitching fingers followed. He wondered how long he could keep this up without drawing blood. The bunker Kurt was kept in was: - Had pink walls - Was nice and clean - not enough information - Made of concrete
Made of concrete

Eating less food at night time is sensible advice for someone trying to lose weight. The reason often given is that if eat you too much food at night, the body will store all those excess kilojoules as fat because we're inactive until the next day. The reason sounds plausible, but if it was one hundred percent true then world hunger could be solved by just feeding people one meal at night time. What really matters is how much is eaten over days and weeks for weight gain or weight loss, not so much when it is eaten. There is merit though in advice to eat less at night time as it can help a person to cut back on the total quantity of food eaten. Eating lots of food in the evening can also be a marker for unhealthy dietary habits, especially if much of that extra food is going to fuel couch surfing exploits. So even though advice to eat less at night time seems logical, it hasn't actually been well tested by science to see how effective it can be for losing weight. Filling this gap, a short-term study involving 29 healthy men looked at how 2 weeks of restricted night time eating fared against 2 weeks of 'normal' evening eating. Advice on restricting night eating was very clear: avoid any food or drink containing kilojoules between the hours of 7 pm and 6 am the next morning. No other changes to the participants' diet or lifestyle was required so each person was free to eat whatever they wished during the day time hours until early evening. Twenty seven of the twenty nine people complied with following this advice for 2 weeks as well as the 2 week control period. Eating at night a waistline hazard So did people eat less when restricting night time eating? Yes, equal to 1000 kilojoules (about 250 Calories) per day less than during their normal eating pattern. This small energy difference was enough to see the men lose 0.4 kg over the 2 week restriction period, and gain 0.6 kg over the 2 week control period. What were the results of a study restricting night time eating in the text given? - not enough information - those restricting night time eating lost weight compared to the control period of eating at night - lots of weight was lost when the people ate at night - no difference was seen
those restricting night time eating lost weight compared to the control period of eating at night