Explosions. Nothing spices up a movie like explosions. I mean, there's a reason they were a Hollywood staple before CGI was even a thing.

Just look at Star Wars. How many spaceships do you think they blew up for that movie? Dozens? Hundreds? That was someone's job: lovingly building scale model spaceships, only for them to be rigged up with gunpowder and blown up on camera.

And they were making these things from scratch every time they needed a new one. Let's not forget, this was a time when "3D Printing" meant super glue and popsicle sticks. So these FX artists needed to pump out one-of-a-kind model spaceships every single day. Talk about a one-of-a-kind problem.

Luckily, they had a secret weapon: Model airplanes.

They bought a bunch of model kits, dumped the pieces on the floor, and quite literally bashed them together with their original designs. This meant they could buy extra kits to make repairs quickly and cheaply. They affectionately called this resourceful process "kitbashing."

In the now-now times, our challenges look a little bit different. Technology has made video production more accessible than ever before, but that means the expectations have never been higher. Your content needs to do more with less. It needs to be high-impact and scroll-stopping. It needs impeccable, stand-out quality. Oh, and can we get it by tomorrow?

Yep, unfortunately it seems there will always be another one-of-a-kind problem waiting around the corner. But maybe those clever FX artists still have something left to teach us.

Kitbashing isn't just a crafty technique from a bygone era. It's a reminder that a bit of resourcefulness can go a long way. That there's no true substitute for good ol' fashioned creative ingenuity. It's a reminder that for every a one-of-a-kind problem, there's always a one-of-a-kind solution.