Gita Pullapilly on Channeling Creativity

Gita Pullapilly (FIN '99) merged her business know-how with her creative talents to become a successful filmmaker. Here, she offers a few tips for encouraging your creative abilities.

When it comes to the business aspect of my work, I am in control.

When it comes to creativity, I learned to relinquish that control and be open to whatever comes to me. At times, that takes a lot of discipline. When my husband and creative partner, Aron Gaudet, and I create, we don't worry about the business side of how much it is going to cost to make that set, or how we can pull that scene off in production.

It's all about trying to tell the best story. We let our smart and talented producers tell us later to cut or re-imagine something to create a workable budget.

I come from the holistic school of mind and body, hand-in-hand, to channel creativity. This is what I train myself to do daily:

Pray. Right when I get up, I sit in a quiet area of the house and say a few prayers. It's my time to appreciate what I have and to ask for the support and love that I need to move forward. It allows me to be in tune with what I'm grateful for and what I can do to contribute to the world.

Meditate.I find myself bombarded during the day with decisions beyond my control. When I was younger, that would cause tremendous anxiety. All that worry and stress was unproductive. Now, meditation helps me focus. I have a better way of letting things wash off me. And it helps keep me in the zone creatively. I find that, following meditation, I come away with a thought or idea that is helpful for our work.

Work out. I am far from an athletic person, but I won't let a day go by without taking a walk, biking, or something. Living in LA, I really have no excuse not to enjoy the outdoors. When I'm biking or hiking with Aron, we usually end up talking about a scene in a script that we're working on — often something that isn't quite right. And then, as we exercise, one of us will usually come up with a solution or an alternative way into or out of the scene.

Take a pet timeout. We have two cats and a dog. When I'm stumped or we've been sitting at the computer brainstorming and nothing feels right, I'll take a break, roll on the ground with my dog or bother my sleeping cats (because they love to sleep ALL THE TIME). I find the most ridiculous or absurd things to do — slow dancing with our eight-pound dog, Ms. Minnie Pearl, or snuggling with our cats. If I can find a way to laugh somehow, it connects back to something creatively and jumpstarts the writing. Though I'm not sure Ms. Minnie Pearl (in costume at left) appreciates it!

Discover stories. I love to read, watch and listen to the best storytellers, whether it be a podcast, a book, film or television show. I want to push the boundaries of storytelling. I'm a big believer in looking at how a work has been crafted in order to learn how to be better myself. Whether it's a great article or a fascinating podcast, it's all in the artist's approach to a story.

I also watch a lot of content that isn't always the best example of storytelling. Aron and I will break down what worked and what didn't. It's a constant learning process and we have to be open to understanding how to tell the best story for the topic. My dad was a history professor, and he would tell me if I want to understand something that is happening in present day, look to history. You can learn how someone else did it right or learn from their mistakes. Still today, I find this to be incredibly helpful advice.

Filmmaking is a lifelong journey for me. And that means continually working at my craft … every day.

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Editor's Note: Gita Pullapilly and husband, Aron Gaudet, produce and direct documentary films and narrative films, including The Way They Got By and Beneath the Harvest Sky. They were selected as Guggenheim fellows for 2015 to support their next feature film, Crook County, about a whistleblower's harrowing journey into an undercover FBI operation in Cook County, Illinois, in the 1980s. Read Pullapilly's story in the Fall 2016 edition of Mendoza Business magazine bizmagazine.nd.edu