As a doctoral candidate or thesis writer, we have all been given advice on how to write our manuscripts, on how to research, on how to relax. We’re often given dissertation editing advice from advisors, readers, friends, family. We regularly scour the Internet looking at link upon link, possibly searching for a dissertation editor or reading prescribed advice from all types of experts in all kinds of fields. And as we weed through the expert advice, we continue to write and research and research and write, trying to find our groove to keep the flow of words moving from our brains to our fingertips.
Yet very rarely do the dissertation editors and experts give advice on mental thought processes through the utilization of entertainment. Oh sure, some experts will tell aspiring writers to watch such movies as Barton Fink, Misery, The Shining, Dead Poets Society, Stand By Me, or Henry Fool before sitting down to a blank page on their computer screen. However, we’ve found it’s often the case that inspiration comes not from movies about writers, but movies that offer ideas of inspiration from the norms found within the world. Such films may be considered provisional to getting the creative juices flowing but, in all honesty, certain movies can prove helpful for you when trying to get through the process of dissertation writing.
So, no list of which movies are the best to watch before you write. That kind of list is nefarious, honestly, because it can create insecurities in one’s own writing style and can even create blank space or writer’s block since you will be thinking about how to write as well as Stephen King—which doesn’t even work for a dissertation!
Instead, today we’ll discuss some of the best movies to watch while writing your dissertation in terms of encouraging the creativity of one’s own thought processes and writing style.
Here’s our list:
- Midnight in Paris (2011)
- Adaptation (2002)
- Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010)
- Inside Out (2015)
- Moonrise Kingdom (2012)
- The Princess Bride (1987)
- The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007)
- Monsters vs. Aliens (2009)
Sitting down with your laptop and turning on the television, your desktop or laptop computer, or your tablet, flipping over to Netflix or Hulu or whatever movie channel you watch, and intertwining your writing thinking with the antics or drama of these films can push your creative fluids to flow freely.
You might be thinking, what kind of advice is this?! Who would recommend watching movies while writing my dissertation? Well, hang on, and we’ll run down the reasons alongside these feature films that we believe are sure to enhance your thinking, formulating, and writing of your dissertation or thesis.
Midnight in the Paris
The fact that this movie stars Owen Wilson should not put you off, if you think watching a movie should be serious and related to academic writing.
Wilson is ingenious in his depiction of Gil and gives probably the best advice a writer having squashed thoughts or a block,
“Pretend you are sitting with a famed author and discussing your dissertation.”
For example, you might pretend you’re talking to Alice Goffman, who wrote an ethnographic study on the lived experiences of crack dealers while she was living with one. In your comfy chair, you might pretend that you and Goffman are discussing the legitimacies of her field study while you dish on all the crazy parties she went to and about the time she watched a layperson surgically remove a bullet from another crack dealer on her kitchen table.
This gets the juices flowing for the writers of this blog post—but we digress.
The point is that talking to your “pretend” friend-slash-author may provide you with inspiration. Crazily, Midnight in Paris provides a sound array of inspiration for many writers, and it really does convey quite a bit of good sound advice for when you have problems moving your writing along, and after all, we are all looking for that dissertation assistance.
Adaptation
This movie probably does not come to any surprise that it is on a list of suggested movies to watch while writing your dissertation. Everyone says Adaptation provides an embodiment of the enigmatic American literary icon, but what we believe has merit in this film is the fact that it portrays a writer who fights his personal demons, who faces ethical struggles, and had to adapt and change his original ideas to something someone else thought would be better. Many of us have dealt with this very type of change at the beginning of our dissertation.
It is certainly not unusual for a doctoral candidate to visit with the person they selected as their chair and walk out of an initial meeting feeling bamboozled and overwhelmed with all the necessary changes recommended. Often the earliest drafts require editing services to help get the required approval of a proposal but then are advised substantial changes. Charlie/Donald Kaufman offers audiences insight to slogging through any manuscript and gives viewers inspiration that shows the insanity of a writing process.
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is one of those silly teen angst films that most adults find superfluous. After all, with a generation of teens and young adults taking movie date night seriously, Hollywood has focused many films on capturing the attention of this population. However, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is a movie that has an emphasis on something that all doctoral candidates should remember while writing their dissertation…there is more than one way to tell a story. So, while you are sitting there depressed because your committee ripped apart your discussion of the results chapter, remember that there is often more than one way to explain things. And while you certainly must adhere to their advice (such as it is) on changing your entire chapter 5, don’t get down on yourself. Get some popcorn, your laptop, and watch Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. It may help pick you up out of a slump, it may give you some inspiration, or it simply may be a way to remind you, that indeed, there are many ways to tell a story (or explain your results).
Inside Out
Okay, so who really admits to watching a kid’s movie? Or who would really believe an animated film holds more than a simple “golden rule” type message?
Yet the Pixar animated film Inside Out explores the inner self, discussing the psyche and the in-depth nature of emotional countenance.
When you’re in a creative slump, it’s reasonable to wish that you could be a kid again, and get back that big imagination you once had. Inside Out will definitely help nudge you in that direction, and it might make you shed a few creative tears too (Marsh & Zakrzewski, 2015).
Okay, so maybe you don’t have problems with your emotional well-being, but we all know that writing a dissertation is an emotional rollercoaster. It’s loving what you have written to want to delete the entire file. From working diligently for days, nights, and weekends, thinking you have created a masterpiece, to reading the crappy comments from your chair. Writing your dissertation can literally give you a lot of emotional meltdowns through the entire process!
Watching Inside Out can offer you a type of therapy that can help you embrace those strong emotions you may feel towards your dissertation and writing skills. This film makes you realize being happy comes hand in hand with sadness or what is termed as emodiversity. This term is the necessary emotional array that combines both the positive and negative aspects of your emotions to provide a balance of your mental health. And we all know that mental health is a tentative thing while writing your dissertation!
Sit back and work on your dissertation enjoying the antics of Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust as they explore their human’s (a young pre-teen named Riley) emotions as she is forced to deal with absolute craziness and adversity in her young life…like you dealing with the ups and downs of dissertation creation.
Moonrise Kingdom (2012)
If you need dissertation help, one film to watch while writing your dissertation is Moonrise Kingdom. Everyone is aware that dissertation writing often makes you wish for a dissertation help service. There is no doubt that this gargantuan task in writing and working on a research study can be a little crazy-making!
The film is an exploration of imagination and learning for 12-year olds Suzy and Sam. The film is set in 1965 and Suzy, and Sam runs away and fights to maintain their friendship which does evolve into romantic feelings. Beyond this, what we witness through the film is a desire to follow the dreams we first believe it, to have the tenacity to make such dreams come true. This is true with your dissertation. You had a dream of what you wanted your topic to be, and you developed through this dream how to arrive at this moment when you sat down and started to write.
Moonrise Kingdom reminds us that even though we are adults we still have “the childhood capacity to dream” and have the ability deep within ourselves to create the words to express our story. Perhaps statistical analysis of the data collected for your dissertation does not sound like a creative endeavor. However, watching Moonrise Kingdom can help to open up the imagination within you, to initiate the flow of words that you need for your chapters or even just prompt new ideas that help round out your dissertation.
The Princess Bride
“My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die.”
“As you wish …”
“Inconceivable. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means”
“Who says life is fair, where is that written?”
“You seem a decent fellow, I hate to kill you. You seem a decent fellow, I hate to die.”
“No more rhymes now, I mean it! Anybody want a peanut?”
“When I was your age, television was called books”
These lines from the film The Princess Bride are familiar all over the world. The Princess Bride is one of the perfect fantasy films, but what many do not realize, is that The Princess Bride is a great movie to watch while you are working on your dissertation. Whether you are writing on quantitative analysis or qualitative research, The Princess Bride will remind you that you can put a twist on an old formula. Sometimes you don’t have to create something totally new for it to be original.
The thing about The Princess Bride that offers help with dissertation writing is the story is one of fairytale norm but has a different way that allows the characters to reach their happily ever after. The same can be noticed when you are writing your dissertation. You may need the help of a statistical consultant to help sort through the data found from your qualitative research and analysis. In the end, however, when you reach out to a statistician for help, you can consider this just taking a trip through the Fire Swamp and need to avoid the rodents of unusual size (ROUS) as Wesley and Buttercup once did. Watching The Princess Bride can give you a sense of clarity on this journey and help you understand that in the end, the road you travel to reach your conclusion (that happily ever after for graduate school) does not matter, only that you reach it
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Think about how our imagination is put to work when we write a dissertation or thesis. We don’t often consider dissertation and thesis writing as something we use our imagination, but we really need to step back and consider how our imagination works. We have an idea; our imagination formulates this idea and begins to build and create the intrinsic path from the idea to an outcome we hope for or even expect. Our imaginations walk us down this path, even when you are screaming help me write a thesis.
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is an ingenious film that prompts an awe-inspiring tale of real-life Jean-Dominic Bauby. Bauby was an editor of French Elle magazine who through a tragic accident was paralyzed throughout his entire body. The only movement he can do is through his eyes. Bauby’s therapist, Celine, tirelessly works with Bauby to create a language using the movements of his eyes. The creativity of Bauby’s developed language through moving and blinking his eyes alone is inspirational.
The point of this movie for you may be just to feel good about how this man overcomes such tragedy in his life, but look deeper. Bauby facing severe adversity and rising above it, waking his mind, waking his body was beyond what most would expect. Even though writing your dissertation is not a tragedy (although it can feel that way), waking up your mind comes from seeing your idea clearly and recognizing that you can accomplish this daunting task.
Monsters vs. Aliens
Yes.
You read the title right.
Monsters vs. Aliens is the story of Susan Murphy who is about to marry egomaniac Derek Dietl but is hit by a meteorite before the ceremony. The meteorite contains an alien substance called quantonium which makes Susan grow to an enormous, gigantic size whitening her hair. Captured by the army, Susan, renamed Ginormica, meets other monsters hidden by the government. Housed with Susan/Ginormica is B.O.B. (benzoate ostlyezene bicarbonate), a mutated being who was created as a food flavoring blue goo with no brain, Dr. Cockroach Ph.D. who is a half cockroach, half human and is quite mad, Insectosaurus, who is a 350 ft tall mutated bug of unknown origin, and Link (aka the Missing Link) who was found frozen and deemed a fish-ape hybrid over 20,000 years old.
When an alien invader arrives, the government relies on the monsters to save the day.
Sounds like a typical feel-good movie, right?
Nope. What we found from watching Monsters vs. Aliens was a real sense of inspiration, which came from understanding that the enormity of any situation, for example like writing a thesis or dissertation, could be tempered by the perspective of the situation and thereby could entice an open flow of verbiage from the brain to paper.
Still confused?
When we watched Monsters vs. Aliens, we recognized how super huge Susan became and how she overcame it based her finally realizing what she wanted. She was happy being a big monster that could help save the world.
If you apply this thinking to being stuck and needing thesis help, it might help you to ignore the enormity of the project and work on one section at a time. Each small section builds far more easily onto the next once you stop focusing on the monumental task of writing an entire manuscript.
While these movies may not be the norm for what you watch or for what you believe can give you inspiration, it may be worth your time to check it out. Understandably, we all need some type of dissertation consulting when undergoing such a mammoth task as writing a dissertation or thesis.
So, inspiration, creativity, even essential language is considered a necessity when working on your dissertation or thesis. These suggested movies can possibly assist in opening the key to your creative flow. But if you have trouble and need dissertation help, thesis help, editing services, or APA editing, Precision Consulting has your back. We offer services such as a personal dissertation consultant to help get you through those tough times when you need the encouragement and focus of a supportive teammate. We also provide statistical consulting services and are one of the leading data analytics companies, with the very best statistics consultants and qualitative research experts available to assist.
From statistical consulting to qualitative research and analysis, to dissertation editing services and one-on-one work with a dissertation coach for your defense, Precision Consulting has you covered. Give us a call or send an email to make an appointment with one of our dissertation consultants. We have the ability, the know-how, and the desire to help you with your dissertation or thesis writing.
And enjoy the movies! Here’s that list again:
- Midnight in Paris (2011)
- Adaptation (2002)
- Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010)
- Inside Out (2015)
- Moonrise Kingdom (2012)
- The Princess Bride (1987)
- The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007)
- Monsters vs. Aliens (2009)