The Hollywood 360 Interview -Austin Craig and Jordan Petersen, Hosts Of BYUtv’s THE NEW CREATIVES

Linita Masters

7 years ago

By Linita Masters

Tonight, BYUtv will premiere a new original program, THE NEW CREATIVES, hosted by Pocket Film Fest Co-Founders Austin Craig and Jordan Petersen. The program showcases people whose innovative approaches to their respective crafts embody the future of creative self expression.

The contemporary world offers a limitless canvas for anyone seeking to create, and The New Creatives sets out to prove that there is no wrong way to be an artist. Season 1 features a lineup of ingenious creators from all walks of life—the only thing they have in common is that they are all working outside the box. What makes The New Creatives unique is that in addition to giving you an inside look into a new creative process, the team works side-by-side with the featured artist to create something new.

The Hollywood 360 had a chance to speak with hosts Austin Craig and Jordan Petersen about The New Creatives.

The Hollywood 360 : Tell me about the new show.

Austin: I’ll give you the pitch.

The show is The New Creatives, which is about creative professionals, their creative lives and their creative pursuits. We meet with them and talk about what they’re doing, and why they’re doing it. We explore their creative process and we make something original. We go from brainstorming, through planning and problems solving, to the completion of that vision. These are mainly creatives who are working in new media through platforms and who are expressing themselves in ways that probably weren’t even possible ten years ago.

We live in a world of multiplying possibilities and options that are so much more connected than they used to be. There are so many different ways to express yourself and hear the expression of other people. We think it’s thrilling! We want to explore and learn about what’s going on out there in the world of creative lives.

The Hollywood 360: Is it exciting being able to get your hands dirty?

Austin: It has an HGTV element to it. We aren’t flipping a house, but we are making something.

The Hollywood 360: What were some highlights for you, while making the show?

Jordon: One of our bigger projects was a stop motion music video. We did a collaboration between a musician and a stop motion artist. We had them get together, come up with some ideas and then we tried to facilitate as best as possible. Making this thing ended up being a large enough project that we ended up splitting it between two shows. I think that will be at the end of the season.

There was another guy that was a sculptor and a physical installation artist. His sculptures are really unique in that they are interactive. He uses a lot of technology to make the sculptures interactive. He uses Ferro Fluid, which is this magnetized fluid, and he uses programming language to help it interact in certain ways as people approach the exhibit. Really, really cool stuff.

He’s an Illustrator, cartoonist, and sort of freelance. He’s built a very impressive community online. He interacts with that community very intimately, to kind of do his work. It forms a lot of what he does, which is really neat too.

The Hollywood 360: How has this experience expanded on your creativity?

Austin: That’s a really good question. The reason we got into this show and the reason we wanted to make this show was because, obviously, there are a lot of interesting possibilities out there with more every day. For me, personally, what I wanted to do, was kind of exercise my creative demons.

I have a very critical internal monologue. When I have an idea, it’s very easy for me to come up with reasons why I can’t do that, or why now is not a good time, or the challenges I’ll face trying to get that together. It was good for me to meet some of my heroes and people that we really admire and hear that they face those same struggles. The creative process is not a straight line, it’s not simple and its not handed to you on a silver platter. It’s something that you have to struggle through, problem solve, grit your teeth and make it work. And when you do, the fulfillment is so much greater than if you were just a passive critic or even a fan of other people’s work. When you make something yourself, there’s a thrill that comes out of that. I wanted to find that I wasn’t alone in facing a lot of these creative struggles and know that it was worth doing and be able to overcome those demons.

Jordon: We’ve been really impressed by getting up close and personal, and unpacking the real creative process. It doesn’t matter what kind of art a person is doing. To really understand the process of how they work can end up being helpful, no matter what kind of art you’re pursuing.

I’m a writer and director as well, it’s been interesting because I’m looking at all these totally different formats. Example, one of them is a Raptivist, and I’m the farthest thing from a rapper as you can imagine, it was a thrill seeing her process and the way that she kind of sought inspiration. She disciplines herself. Exercise is a big part of her life because it’s important to her to have a vitality, strength and energy, so she could access that creative part of herself. The processes of creativity can be very communicable across any discipline that you can pick out. So this is very inspiring.

The Hollywood 360: Do you feel this show will help the audience expand their idea of what art is?

Austin: I think it will show them, that there is a lot more possible than you might generally think upon first going into the life of a creative person. And that it’s a lot more possible within themselves.

Jordon: Not only possible generally, but they are more capable than they might have originally thought.

The Hollywood 360: Did your work on the Pocket Film Fest help you with The New Creatives?

Austin: Pocket Film Fest, yes, that’s what, Jordon and I were actually working on before we did this show (The New Creatives). That’s how we started working together.

Jordon: It’s kind of based on the same principle. The reason we got into The New Creatives, was that it was based on the same underlying themes and principles which is that these new technologies and these new forms of creativity are available, much more ubiquitously. We are hoping to inspire people to use these tools to express themselves, which is what inspired the Pocket Film Fest and secondarily inspired the show.

The Hollywood 360: Have you created anything recently that was inspired by your involvement in the show?

Austin: Most of our work now is commercial direction. We do a lot of web videos for companies. That’s most of my career. But I think since we’ve wrapped up the show, it’s inspired me, Jordon and the whole team, to start making things that we want to make things. We want to create things that are personal and not just because we have a client paying for them.

Jordon: And also to obsess a little less about how many people see the work that we do. One of the interesting things that we got to see, when we really got to know the people that we worked with on the show, is how many thing they work on that no one ever sees. They have work that will never see the light of day, but are personally fulfilling. During my own life, and I think this is true of both Austin and I, I’ve worked on a lot more things just to exercise. I worked on things just to explore them, without worrying whether or not anyone was going to see it, or if anyone was going to like it, but just to try stuff out.

With the first guest, in the first episode, on the first challenge we extend to the audience, we ask them to create 100 somethings. This is based on an exercise that Jake Parker, our first guest, gives his students. Take a set of ideas and apply them 100 times in some kind of art. It was a really cool sequence. At the end of the episode we say, hey listen, take something that you like doing, or something you’re interested in trying out, do it 100 times and see what happens.

So, I went off on my own, and did that with a couple of different writing exercises. I tried taking one thing and reiterating it 100 times. I am never going to show that anybody, but it was really exciting for me to kind of just reach inside and see what comes up.

The Hollywood 360: What do you think the viewer will take away from show?

Austin: My Hope is that when people watch the show, it inspires them. When I say inspire, I don’t mean to go deeper and watch a bunch more content and spend the rest of their life in front of a screen. I hope it inspires people to get up and go make something. We built in a challenge to each episode. Now that you’ve seen us get creative, you’ve seen what our guests create and how they express themselves, we’re going to challenge you, the audience, to go and apply this to your own lives. Go stretch yourselves and learn and experience this creative exercise in your own lives. So we issue challenges at the end. We really hope the audience will engage with us over social media, by sharing what they’ve created.