CREATIVE TASTE: WHAT YOU NOTICE SHAPES WHAT YOU MAKE
- Modern Rituals
- Jun 15
- 5 min read
Taste and Talent
Taste and talent are skills - and they can be trained
Early in our forays into the industry, some of the best advice we received was simple: go out and see things. Watch plays, films, television, commercials. Visit galleries. Experience other art forms. It was emphasised as being just as important as learning the discipline of acting itself.
Part of the reason for this advice was to challenge a persistent myth—the idea that taste and talent are innate, that you either have them or you do not. It pushes back against the mystique of the director with “the eye,” the writer with a singular voice, the producer who “just knows,” or the actor with “natural” ability.
Taste, like any skill in the creative industries, is not mystical. It is a trained sensitivity to quality, pattern, and intention.
Every creative decision you make—where to cut, how long to hold, what to remove, what to emphasise, which beat to land as an actor—is governed by taste. And like any decision-making system, it improves through exposure, calibration, and feedback.
Tony Robbins often speaks about pattern recognition as a core driver of success. When you can recognise patterns, you stop reacting blindly and begin anticipating outcomes. He links this directly to confidence, strategy, and reduced fear: when you understand the pattern, uncertainty diminishes.
Taste operates in the same way. It is simply pattern recognition. Competence is the build up of experience and the ability to eventually deploy those patterns.
When you watch a great film, read a powerful script, or see a performance that lands with precision, your brain is mapping what works:
Rhythm: how long things take
Structure: when things happen
Contrast: what changes, and why
Restraint: what is deliberately left out
Over time, these patterns become internalised. This is what we see in practitioners like Roger Deakins—an almost invisible mastery that feels instinctive but is built on years of exposure and refinement. You begin to sense when something drags, when a line is off, when a moment doesn’t land—not because you are consciously analysing it, but because your system has been trained to recognise the shape of effective work.
This is why volume matters. Repeated, attentive exposure to film, television, theatre, and other art forms is essential. This is what our teachers were really encouraging.
Passive vs Active Watching
However, this does not mean passive consumption. Sitting on the couch and letting stories and art wash over you is not enough. The key is attention—tracking intention, not just outcome.
Instead of thinking, “that was good,” start asking:
Why did that scene land?
How did cinematography, music, and editing combine to create that effect?
Why did the writer choose to enter and exit the scene at those specific moments?
A practical method is to watch something twice: once for the experience, and once for analysis. It is equally valuable to study work that does not succeed. When something feels off, interrogate it—what is missing, misjudged, or unclear?
The next step is application. Take what you observe and bring it back into your own work. Create with intention, review critically, and track how your decisions evolve.
Growth often comes from recognising the gap between your current output and the work you admire. We notice that dialogue feels flat, pacing drags, or emotional beats lack clarity. That tension—between where you are and what you can see—is where development happens.
Refining your taste sharpens your ability to diagnose your own work. It becomes a tool for progression rather than a vague instinct.
So, how much have you actually watched this week?
If the answer is little to none, a simple practice can begin to build this muscle:
Watch one scene per day with full attention
Write 3–5 observations (not opinions—observations)
Identify one element you can apply to your own work
The process is straightforward: observe, extract, apply. Repeat consistently over time.
Do that for long enough, and what looks like instinct becomes inevitable.
This work happens quietly. It accumulates beneath the surface and reveals itself in your output—building the confidence to create stories that truly connect.
BOOK OF THE MONTH
THINKING, FAST AND SLOW
- DANIEL KAHNEMAN
This month’s book ties directly into our ongoing discussion around taste and the development of craft.
In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman explores how judgment improves when we become more aware of the patterns, biases, and signals that shape what we notice and prefer. At its core, the book is about attention—how we think, how aware we are of that thinking, and how that awareness impacts our ability to learn.
Taste is not fixed. It is trainable. And it is deeply connected to how we think.
Kahneman’s central idea is that we operate using two modes of thought:
Fast: automatic, intuitive, and effortless
Slow: deliberate, analytical, and effortful
The fast system allows us to make quick judgments, which is essential in creative work. But it is also prone to bias, overconfidence, and shallow evaluation. The slow system, by contrast, allows us to interrogate those instincts—to test whether what we felt was accurate, or simply familiar.
What Kahneman demonstrates is that strong judgment is not about choosing one system over the other, but about understanding how they interact.
This maps directly onto creative development.
Our “fast” system is trained through exposure. The more films, plays, scripts, and artworks we engage with, the more material our intuition has to draw from. It begins to recognise patterns in rhythm, structure, tone, performance, and emotional impact. But exposure alone is not enough.
Real growth comes from engaging the “slow” system—pausing to reflect, compare, and articulate what we are responding to. Why did something stay with you? What felt original? Where did your attention drop, and why?
This is where taste becomes precise. Kahneman shows that intuition improves when it is calibrated through feedback and reflection. The same applies to creative work. Watching widely feeds your instincts; analysing carefully refines them.
A practical way to apply this:
After watching or reading something, identify what stayed with you. Break down why it worked—structure, pacing, performance, tone. Compare it to something that did not work, and locate the difference. Over time, this builds a feedback loop between instinct and analysis.
Kahneman’s broader conclusion is that good judgment in any field comes from combining intuition with reflection, not relying on one at the expense of the other.
For creatives, this can be distilled into a simple principle: fast recognition, slow evaluation.
Notice what moves you. Then take the time to understand why.
In practice, that means consuming widely, questioning your first response, and repeatedly analysing what your intuition picked up before your logic caught up. That is how taste develops—from something vague and reactive into something deliberate and reliable.
Watch an interview with Daniel below:
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