Let’s talk creativity. What do you do when everyone in your profession goes on strike and your find yourself mindlessly walking around, eating all day and becoming really comfortable with daytime TV?Well if you are the cast and crew of Saturday Night Live, you learn from the experience and then you use that experience to do something totally cool. After the now infamous writer’s strike, which occupied much of the fall and winter, the SNL cast has learned how to do more than just be funny. Many former and current SNL members recently got together to spend their summer vacation filming an online miniseries called “The Line”. The series surrounds the stories of those waiting eleven days for a science fiction film premier.The premise is based on the experiences of the actually actors and has attracted a wide array of followers. Done through a very low-stakes medium and distributed on the web, the experience has been a first for both the actors and the production company. By learning from a difficult situation, these actors have found a new way to express their talents. They are also finding a whole new ocean for exploration. Direct to internet series may be the new wave of the future and an option for those unable to get financing for billion dollar pictures or television series. For more information about this, look to our previous post on From Here to Awesome.

Have you recently found yourself in a similar situation? Rather than bemoan the lost time, try to put your creativity to use. In the end, you might just make a fun(ny?) discovery about yourself or your medium

I have no idea what goes into the making of a film; although, I’m sure it requires exorbitant amounts of time and energy. Naively, I thought once all that effort was put into the film, people would just buy it and then the film-maker would receive bundles of money. Unfortunately, it appears that that is not the case- filmmakers don’t receive bundles (ever) and movies aren’t just bought……

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