Everyone Is Talking About Taste
Now that any idea can be generated with AI, the most important “skill” to have is taste. Or at least this is what some AI experts or tech moguls - founders of Open AI and Y Combinator - have concluded. Not everyone agrees. Here is how the battleground looks: On one side - members of the AI industry stating that taste is now the only core skill that matters. On the other side is Will Mandis, himself a former member of the AI industry, who is arguing that taste is not what led to the great art that so called taste is based on, therefore, it is not an end in and of itself. Mandis blasts the taste argument as a “clean and easy” answer to the question: what are humans for in the world of AI? I initially took what the AI experts said at face value. After all, the logic followed. If we’re no longer involved in the actual making of art, then our role shifts to being solely an evaluator. Being able to do that well - knowing good art when you see it - becomes all the more important. Then the counterargument swayed me against the simplistic reasoning of “taste” and how it reduces an entire realm of subjectivity and critical thinking into a bullet point on a resume. It would seem that things aren’t so clean and easy. But, in that spirit, I offer a different word to move forward with: integrity.
Mandis’s article has 1.4 million views so far
Word choice is important. They carry the weight of historical use, and this is the basis of Mandis’s viral counterargument. “Taste” is young. Art is much, much older. For most of its history, art has been a partnership between labor and patron, and usually aimed at representing something greater than themselves: a god, an ideal, a worldview. The laborers who understood the craft and the patrons funding it didn’t always agree, and this friction, aimed at something transcendent, is what led to great art in the past. Things shifted in modern times. The patron, who was a part of the creative process, was replaced by the collector, who was not, and art became assets - signifiers of wealth and prestige. Artists still strived to depict complex ideas, and continue to do so today, but their names became brands to display with carefully calibrated ostentation. “Taste” was born - and it permeated through art and into fashion, interior design, and so on. It’s less about which art “is” good, and more about which art “makes its owner look good”. We carried that idea of taste as an act of self presentation forward to today. Now, the collector doesn’t need to interact with an artist. They only need to submit a prompt.
If having good taste is the end goal, then you’re working for the approval of others. While it is nice to be validated, the author of the counterargument would say that approach doesn’t move society forward. It’s a backward looking method of discerning quality that leads to circular thinking. Everyone is copying someone else’s style and no one is making anything new. This is, after all, the basic mechanics of generative AI, it just works so fast that its output seems new.
How are we to move forward and make new art, if the old way - patron plus labor partnership - is dead and the new way - generative AI - is here to stay? Taste will remain important, but I think the answer is integrity.
Can an AI generated video of a morbidly obese cat falling through the floor be considered to have any integrity? I would argue that it doesn’t. It’s slop. It looks remarkably real and would have taken a lot of effort to make just a few years ago, but it is slop nonetheless. It doesn’t take a highly developed sense of “taste” to understand that, because that type of content has been around for a while. It’s entertainment created solely to get attention, often made lazily and cheaply. The dilemma now is that almost all audio and visual art can be created lazily and cheaply. So then what criteria do we use to determine if it is good?
When we do any work - even if it’s just writing a prompt - who are we doing it for and why? There is a scene in Walk The Line where Johnny Cash is auditioning a song and the producer stops him mid way through. What the producer was hearing was no different from dozens of other songs on the radio. He tells Johnny,
“If you was hit by a truck and lying in the gutter dying and there was time to sing one song, one song people will remember before you're dirt, one song that tells God what you thought about your time here on earth, one song that sums up what you are; are you telling me that's what you'd sing? Hm? The same thing everyone sings?…Or would you sing about something you felt. Something you touched. Cause, I'll tell you now, that's the kind of song people want to hear. That's the kind of song that saves people. It don't have nothing to do with believing in God, Mr. Cash, it has to do with believing in yourself.”
The producer is challenging Johnny to make something that isn’t derivative (let’s set aside for a sec that this movie itself was accused of being formulaic). We only get so much time on Earth, why make something that’s already been made? I think people have a pretty good sense of when a piece of art smells disingenuous. This doesn’t mean that the piece in question won’t be successful, or even high quality, but it will have a stink to it. For something - a song, book, movie, painting - to be considered good, it needs to speak the truth. That quality is integrity.
Rather than using this technology to spit out art we hope will impress others, some artists are finding ways to incorporate it into their work - and not just as a tool - but as medium and message.
Linda Dounia is a Senegalese-Lebanese artist who uses AI to produce visual work that also exposes its limitations and biases. One such work, called “On Theory”, combines photos taken by her while in motion with AI generated images of the same locations in her hometown, Dakar. The result is a journey that starts in real places but loses definition and context over time. The photos taken by the artist represent her memory - which is subjective and not perfect. The generated images are also demonstrated to be subjective and imperfect through “lossiness”, an imperfection inherent within the tool. After all, it is based on the same function: memory. And that memory is not total. It is simply what has been collected so far. Dounia says,
“Who decides what things (objects/ideas/places/people) are worthy of naming? Who names them? …The answer to these questions points to the highly subjective and therefore political nature of the 'data about the world', its incompleteness, its unfairness, its unevenness. Very much like my own personal memories of my world. AI then cannot be 'the' world, but 'a' world within many worlds.”
One of a series of images from Dounia’s “Blur Theory”
Here we see a piece of art that uses AI to comment on how AI is replacing art. This replacement is hailed as progress, but the progress is also an erasure.
Dounia is not simply an evaluator of a machine's output. Instead, she is a skillful user of it as a tool; understanding how it works and what its limits are. Dounia’s act of creation draws those truths from the tool and combines them with her own personal truth she has observed about the world. It has integrity.
Taste is concerned with how others view you, integrity is concerned with how you view yourself. People connect with the latter on a deeper level than the former because humans admire and crave honesty. Trust is fundamental to human survival. Power is too, and good taste is a manifestation of that - look at all the culture I have consumed, the things I can afford - but ultimately we are social creatures that depend on one another, and that starts with being honest in our words, actions, and art. Maybe we like our technology to be “clean and easy”, but our art should reach up from the dirt.
Who Do You Work For?
Like many people I found myself blown away by the gold medal winning performance of Alysa Liu in last month’s Olympics. Much was written of it at the time, but now the news cycle has moved on to far more harrowing things. For a brief moment though, we were all charmed. I’m still thinking about why.
There’s a magnetism to watching a talented performer do what they’re best at, in a moment where the stakes couldn’t be higher, without fear of failing. Even though I know I will likely never be that good at anything, or ever feel so free, I am not discouraged. Just seeing that it’s possible for someone is inspiration enough. The more I learned about Liu’s story, the more impressed I was. Any Olympic sport is enormously competitive, and any Olympian is under intense pressure, but within that, female figure skaters are even more scrutinized and often have a much shorter career. Only two female skaters have won multiple individual golds in Olympic history, and the last time was 1988 (the other happened in 1936). Liu, at 20, is the oldest gold medal winner in her sport since 2006. For most of them, you get one shot that you work most of your childhood to get. After that, then what? Before taking the ice on February 19th, Liu knew the answer to that question. She gave herself the gift of knowing what else life had to offer by quitting the sport before turning 17. Fully. No plan to return. The trajectory of her life at that point was firmly pointed toward continuing - she had won a national title at 13, attended the Beijing Olympics as a 16 year old with still more untapped potential. But she just said I’d rather not, thanks.
If she came back to it, it wouldn’t be at the behest of someone else. It wouldn’t be because of external sources. It was because she thought it would be fun. And through this story - expertly told by the folks at NBC sports - the world was given an excellent example of the difference between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation.
Almost 100 years before these latest Olympics, Saul Leiter was born. If you’re wondering where this is going, hang on. And if you don’t know who Leiter is, he’s mostly to blame for that. Saul was a photographer who bucked the prevailing black and white trend of the era in which he got his start (1940s and 50s) by taking color photos of everyday life in New York City. He paid the bills with fashion photography, but was more interested in taking photos of rain-streaked windows; blurry, reflective city scenes with partially obscured subjects. His work would not become well known until he was in his 80s, and this was purely by chance. See it for yourself. It’s amazing art. He didn’t make it for anyone but himself. According to Saul:
“In order to build a career and be successful, one has to be determined. One has to be ambitious. I much prefer to drink coffee, listen to music, and paint when I feel like it.”
Taxi, Saul Leiter, 1957
Relatable. Also, I should mention that while the world identifies him as a photographer for his amazing work, he went through most of his life considering himself as a painter first. Photography was more of a hobby that paid the bills for some stretches. Which is surprising and also not. In the current gig economy era, it can be hard to understand how someone could sink so much of their time into an activity without a high ROI. If it’s not making you money, or more popular, why do it? Why do anything? Well, that depends on who you are doing it for, and that’s the more important question to ask.
It is all well and good to strive to be your best; to be determined and ambitious. But the permeation of hustle culture into every second of our lives has shifted the definition of those terms. Our “best” now means “most liked” or “most profitable”, with the former devolving toward “most attention-getting”. Both designations are determined externally. We don’t have much control over how the world sees us, and yet we obsess about it anyway. What matters just as much, if not more, is how we define our best internally. That type of excellence is where passion (overused term) and integrity (underused term) meet. You would hope for talent to also be at this meeting. It doesn’t have to be, but when it is, that’s when you get something magical.
Which brings us back to Alysa Liu. We have more power over how we see the world than over how the world sees us. She took that power by stepping away from the path that was prescribed for her, and saw what the world had to offer, which is plenty. And when she came back to skating on her own terms, she brought some of that world with her in the form of a new hairstyle and a piercing I didn’t know was possible to get. Knowing that an exciting life outside skating was waiting for her made it easier to relax and be herself within that activity; to go out and skate like she loved it, not because she desperately needed to win. Ironically, the carefree attitude that shined through in her routine was the difference maker. She seemed unaffected by gravity when all of her competition were. She danced to her own (choice of) tune. As for Saul, he took photographs of what moved him, not what he thought would move others. People connect with that as authenticity.
Beware the other end of the spectrum in this scenario. I’m not saying intrinsic motivation = good and extrinsic motivation = bad; only that our world is structurally geared toward the latter and the former doesn’t get enough attention. I’m certainly motivated to make a living and provide for my family. And I am under no illusion that I will be discovered as a genius one day. Neither was Leiter. That being said, I think we would do well to remind ourselves not only why we’re doing what we’re doing, but who we’re doing it for. Like Mama Cass sang, “make your own kind of music, even if nobody else sings along” (let’s ignore that she didn’t write this song for the sake of this post)
How To Write A Promo
As anyone who has skinned a cat understands, there are multiple ways to perform a process. How such a psychotic act became associated with that wisdom I will never understand. Why couldn’t it have been more than one way to ice a cake? More than one way to build a bridge? Or really anything else. All that aside, I have been thinking about what my professional process is. I haven’t really put that into words, except for the super condensed description you might see on my résumé. What follows is a thorough description of how I work, which, like the gruesome euphemism used to open this piece, isn’t always the same every time. Here’s how I write TV promo campaigns.
Step one: Find A Way In
A fresh project can be as intimidating as it is exciting. Or vice versa. Your first thought might be, “cool, this could be anything!”, and then your second thought might be, “oh no, this could be anything!” At the beginning, my brain is a pendulum between these two states. The excitement and urgency are just enough to push through imposter syndrome and get me started typing out whatever comes to mind. It could be a song, a word, a movie, a concept, etc. It’s not important what it is or where it’s from. What is important is that I do not place any limits. I don’t worry about budget or time. If there is something to watch, I might start there first, but the timelines of marketing and production typically don't cooperate. Most of the time, nothing is available to work with when you need it. TV is great like that. But that’s usually if we’re starting fresh on a campaign for a new show. If there’s a previous season or campaign to look at, I might start there as well.
Imagine the final version of my project hiding somewhere inside a large building with multiple entrances. Some of them are locked, some aren’t. Maybe there’s a ladder or an open window. Maybe there’s a key hiding under the mat. The point is there is not a clearly defined first move. I have to jiggle a bunch of handles until I find a winner (or two or three).
One of my more recent campaigns for Gold Rush started out like this.
I jotted down “Gods of Gold” and thought about what that would look like; what kind of copy and music would work with that, etc.
Step two: Pull The Thread
Once I get my foot in the door, I get a little bit of momentum. Or more accurately, gravity. I allow it to pull me deeper into an idea and don’t question whether or not that’s the right choice. That’s for someone else to decide later on. This is when stuff starts to pour out, and shockingly, some of it can be good. It can feel like I didn’t come up with it. Rather it came to me as if I’m channeling some divine source of marketing ideas. This is also when I start sending my ideas to editors or designers so they can be executed in rough form. From this exchange, a dialogue is opened and the process becomes collaborative.
Step three: Make Some Connections
Now I have the raw materials from which to build something, and the process becomes a bit like building with Legos. Each little brick is something from my brain dump in step two. I can sand down their rough edges and start to see how they fit together. Some can fit in surprising ways. At this point, I’m sharing what I have so far and starting to get some notes. In rare cases, these can be like meteorites that wipe out an idea altogether. But for the most part, they are doable, and the good news is, I am so familiar with my building blocks that I can think of many combinations that could work. Or perhaps I have the right combo but just need one more extra flourish. It depends on what the approvers think, and that’s why this is usually the longest step in the process. I need to get multiple busy people to agree on something subjective over email.
Step Four: Refine and Polish
Now I just need to make it shiny. Which sounds simple, but this part of the process can be frustrating for me. At this point, the idea is fully realized and executed. Once that happens, I can get anxious to move on, especially when everyone else seemingly wants to change one small aspect or another just so they can feel like they contributed. At least that’s what it seems like to someone being a little possessive. Usually they’re noticing something I didn’t, or considering an aspect that needs to be addressed. These notes can feel like asking for comic sans dialogue bubbles on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, but almost always, they’re fixing blind spots I am too close to see. I try not to take it personally (often a good life rule in general). Just when I think I’ve had enough, I get to see the final product in all its glory. And I get to see others react to it for the first time. These people weren’t around for the project’s uglier stages of development, and that is a fine payoff.
Final form of what started as “Gods of Gold”.
Step Five: Thanks for the Memories
Why is there another step? The project is done. Time to move on, right? Not quite. Now is the time for archiving and most importantly, saying thanks. An artistic piece may never be truly “done”, but in a business context, it sure needs to be. There are deadlines. And more ominously, beyond those are drop dead dates. Morbid alliteration aside, the last step in the creative process is appreciating what I have created by sharing and preserving it, as well as thanking everyone involved in making it. Thanking is easy. It feels good to pat each other on the back over email. Preservation is tedious but crucial. I need to upload and backup not just the final pieces but the key components used to make them. There have been many times where this practice has saved me from reinventing the wheel later. You never know.
That is my general process. No cats were harmed in the making of this blog post.
What Would Kubrick Think of AI?
I recently rewatched 2001: A Space Odyssey, and I wondered what someone like Stanley Kubrick would think of AI, specifically the generative AI used to create imagery either as a thought starter or a final product, or text that can become a script. One visual effect in 2001 - that of a floating pen in a space shuttle - took months to conceive and produce in a way that looked realistic. Through ingenuity and good, old-fashioned trial and error, Kubrick came up with the solution: double sided tape and plexiglass. For the nebulas and other galactic phenomena we see in the“stargate” sequence near the end, he turned an abandoned factory into a chemical lab and filmed large vats of paint thinner reacting to drops of paint falling in. The chemicals were noxious and the hot studio lights caused bacteria to grow in the vats. Special effects aside, Kubrick was notorious for demanding what many considered to be an excessive amount of takes from his performers; asking them to do something as simple as opening a door dozens and dozens of times until he was satisfied. The creative process can be painful, but all of that sounds particularly punishing. If there were a tool that could create those visuals by simply pushing a button and thereby avoiding the frustration of trial and error, and the physical discomfort of chemical cinematography, do you think Kubrick would have used it? His reputation as a control freak/perfectionist leads me to believe that he would not.
I do not think that would be the only reason though. Among all the dilemmas about generative AI - authorship questions, job loss, energy consumption - I think what is not talked about enough is process loss. Near instant generation of art means there is less, or no, process to the creation. That time spent between art and artist from beginning to final piece is not a step by step operation. It’s a feedback loop where the art and the artist communicate with each other; surprise each other. Rarely do artists begin with a finished idea and just execute it. They start, and in the doing, calibrate their direction based on what they discover, or what challenges arise. So many opportunities for experimentation, improvement, or collaboration can emerge in this space. They can appear in any brushstroke or stroke of the keyboard, or even in mistakes. For example, Kubrick didn’t arrive at the now iconic black monolith until after trying out several different designs. The early ones didn’t work well with the lights, or just didn’t feel right. The feedback in the process led to what we see today. He also was not sure how to portray extra terrestrial life - even when they were deep into production. Eventually, they went too far over budget and couldn’t afford what would have been costly costumes or models. Instead, after inviting input from Arthur C. Clarke and Carl Sagan, he came up with a much more efficient path: you just don’t see them at all.
With gen AI, he would have gotten his first design - a transparent cube - “perfect” and without any light reflection problems because it would be fully computer generated. Alien designs could have been conceived and created more affordably. I’m sure it would have been nice to have all those challenges smoothed out, but would Kubrick have been satisfied with what was generated? Artists with less time and money on their hands - or less demanding creators - might think it’s good enough and just move on to the next thing. As for Stanley, well…
He made AI one of the most iconic villains in movie history. He also destroyed all the models, sets, and design notes from the movie so they would never be used in low budget films. I think it’s safe to say that he would be against using it, or allowing it to use his work.
I’m hardly the first to have philosophical hangups over something like this. This year, photography turns 200. Painters reacted to its invention in 1826 with disdain. The machine was considered a threat to their livelihood and lacked artistry. As we have seen, photography eventually became its own medium. Artists adopted it as merely another tool, while painters pushed their medium into new, more abstract territories that photography couldn’t replicate.. There are parallels to the current situation, and that does leave room for excitement over what new directions in which art could go. For my part, I am begrudgingly trying to learn everything I can about what gen AI can and can’t do, and hopefully that will make me less uneasy about it. One of the video classes I’ve taken is taught by the director at an AI production company that specializes in creating landscapes from prompts. The name of the company: Cuebric.
2500 Hours of Civilization
I’m not prone to addiction but a damn computer game got me close. Thanks to Steam, a game platform for PCs, I know I have spent roughly 2,500 hours of my life playing Sid Mier’s Civilization. I don’t mean to present that as some sort of world record. Plenty of people have played for far, far more (perhaps for a living). But no other game I have played comes close to approaching quadruple digits in terms of hours played. Why is that the case for me?
Perhaps the world’s most successful strategy game franchise, Civilization (or “Civ” to those who play) is notorious for its addictive gameplay across all editions. Many players, including this author, have deluded themselves by saying “just one more turn” - it is a turn based game - over and over until they have played far longer than intended. Until past their bedtime. Until the sun comes up. Until the sun goes down. Until you get the point. They just released the 7th entry in the series. I probably won’t buy it. Probably. The premise of the game, first released in 1991, is to “build an empire that will stand the test of time”. You pick an historical civilization like China, Egypt, Rome, etc. and lead them from ancient times through the millennia to the present age and beyond. You explore, settle, make war, build wonders, and drop a few nukes until you satisfy one of the game’s victory conditions - or one of your opponents does first. In my case, the game certainly stood the test of time, even if my empires didn’t.
Between the 5th (2010) and 6th editions (2016) I’ve played almost 2500 hours.
I also played Civ 1, Civ 2, and Civilization: Call to Power, but that when I was a kid and time didn’t mean anything. And Steam wasn’t around to keep track.
Was that time wasted? Let’s go with: it depends on how you look at it. And look at it you can, all neatly quantified next to the game title and the button to launch the game. With this time, I could have learned an instrument or vastly improved my jumpshot. I could have run 625 marathons (at a 9 min/mile pace). I could have spent more time with family and friends. Ouch. On the other hand, that big number could have been spread out across a number of other leisure activities that are equally isolating and don’t serve or improve anything, and I would not have realised that time was spent that way. Thank goodness - I would not like to know how much time I’ve spent scrolling on my phone. But here, with this raw data of time played, is an opportunity to reflect I would not otherwise have. I spent almost 100 days of my life playing Civilization. What did I gain from that experience? What did I learn? Let’s live an examined life for a sec.
There’s a decent amount of real world history built into the game. It would be difficult to play it for as long as I have and not learn a thing or two. Thanks to Civilization, I know that Seondok was Queen of Silla, and her reign led to the unification of the Korean peninsula. Things like this can sometimes help in trivia. Also the nature of the game is strategic. If you’re playing at the highest difficulty (I do, are you impressed? No? Ok) there’s a significant amount of forethought and planning that needs to go into every action in order to maximize efficiency and give yourself the best chance to win. Now, I could go ahead and extrapolate on how that can teach you about management, or B2B marketing, or whatever business speak buzzword is in vogue, but this isn’t a linkedin post, so do that on your own time. I think the most potent lesson I learned from Civilization is this:
Set a timer. Set a timer. SET A TIMER.
Civ sessions can easily get out of hand in terms of length. The game is slow paced. You’re covering thousands of years of made up human history here. Exploring the world, building an empire, establishing governments - this shit takes time. Not as much as in real life, but plenty for an almost omnipotent, immortal ruler of an entire culture of people. There’s a gambling like aspect to it - not in the way the game works, there aren’t any microtransactions and I haven’t spent any money on this game other than the price to buy it - in the sense that it makes you think you’re always on the cusp of getting a reward. Not a big score, but one just big enough that you’re willing to sit through 4 or 5 more turns to get. And once you do get it, there’s a fun little dopamine hit. But what’s this? In a couple more turns I’ll be able to…and then it’s 3am and you have to get up at 7 for work.
The only way to counter this is to set a timer and stick to it. I’ll be honest. It wasn’t that effective at stopping me when the timer went off, but it would wake my brain up and remind me that time is indeed passing. It’s so easy to get sucked in, and that can be a great escape from reality, but such things should be enjoyed in moderation. With the annoying alarm sound comes a tiny dose of shame to offset all the small doses of dopamine I’ve just been taking. And that awareness and shame eventually gets me to wrap up a session sooner rather than later.
I found that this method can be applied to other activities with maybe even more effectiveness. Timers work to make sure you don’t spend too much time playing and being unproductive (god forbid! In our capitalist society?). This method also works the other way in the sense that it helps you make sure you devote adequate time toward chores, projects, exercise, or anything else you might put off in favor of relaxation. Need to do some cleaning but feel daunted by the amount? Just set a five minute timer and promise yourself you’ll do at least that much. Five minutes is manageable. Once you get going and shortly keep that promise, you have the option to surpass it and overdeliver, or you can call it a day without any guilt and little bit of cleaning done.
I use timers in both ways now. I try to not go overboard though. It’s nice to help keep myself honest, but it’s not about policing my behavior at all times. Think of it as just living intentionally. Not a bad lesson to learn after spending hour after hour bombarding my enemies with Hwachas.
In Praise of Physical Media
One year ago I moved to a place within walking distance of a video store. I have watched 87 movies since then. To put that cultural consumption into perspective, the year before - when I was nowhere near a video store but still had access to three separate streaming services - I watched 57. More isn’t always better, but in this case it is. Not only did I watch more movies, but I watched movies I probably wouldn’t have considered otherwise, several of which are now among my all time favorites. Somehow, by choosing a less convenient way to watch movies, I ended up watching more (and better ones) in the past year than probably any previous year of my life. And I have a one year old child that keeps me fairly busy! As a professional who works for one of the biggest streamers in the world, this realization was pretty eye opening. There is something to the experience of putting on shoes and a coat to select a movie, as opposed to scrolling a menu from the couch. The former requires more time and effort, and slightly higher stakes (late fees, ice, an outfit choice). The latter; a thoroughly researched monthly fee designed to be quickly forgotten. But even with all the streaming options at my disposal, I made far less time for enjoying them than I have with the video store. Because, as I have found, if something is always available at your fingertips, then you don’t feel the need to make time for it.
Best Video in Hamden, CT has been around for a while. Founded in 1985, it used to be an independent chain of stores during the glory days of in person video rental. It was sold in 2015 to a non-profit created for the purpose of keeping it alive, and they consolidated the entire physical media library of over 30,000 titles into one location. And they also made that location into a coffee shop and lounge. And the coffee is good. Is that a confounding factor in my recent uptick of movie consumption? It is, and nostalgia is certainly a factor as well, but the point remains. Over the past year I watched plenty of DVDs and Blu-Rays of movies I could have just streamed with a few clicks of a button. Could have, as in I have the technology, but I wouldn’t have, because it would not have occurred to me that I wanted to watch those movies by looking at a major streamer’s interface.
The issue is that scrolling through the seemingly endless lists of movies that you can find on Netflix, Prime Video, Max, etc. is just not exciting. There is no thrill of discovery. Most of the user interfaces at major streamers are a mess. And it doesn’t help that almost every one of them tries to be the one-stop-shop app aggregator where all the streamers are in one place. That sounds nice on paper but in execution it’s gobbledygook. Even my Samsung TV starts with an app aggregator from which I can select my preferred app aggregator. These companies are building what they think is a straight path in isolation but when taken all together it is actually a maze. The only exception is Netflix, which also happens to be the top streamer. And when you finally get to the menu, they try to funnel you to the content they want you to watch - usually something new - and you think maybe you’ll watch it, but then you keep scrolling because you think you’ll find something better. You try to remember what it was you went there for before they tried to steer you toward their own agenda. Then you realize you spent too much time scrolling and it’s too late to start a movie. You give up and shake your old man fist at the sky.
If you go to a physical space and browse the shelves, then there is the joy of the hunt. In this particular video store there are your typical genre based sections and new releases, but there is also a “best of the best” section. There are shelves dedicated to “staff picks”, “oscar winners”, “oscar losers”, as well as almost any director of note. You like 12 Angry Men? Here’s every other movie by that same director (Sydney Lumet). Unlike with streamers, the movie selection at Best Video isn’t subject to the licensing squabbles between corporations of Lovecraftian size. No need to shuffle from one app to the next, or wait for the title to cycle back around to an app you actually have. At the store, if something isn’t checked out already, it will be there, and if it is checked out, it’ll be back in a couple days. If they don’t have the movie you’re looking for, they’ll order it and add it to their library. This happened to me when I was looking for Airborne, an obscure rollerblading movie from my childhood. And speaking of licenses, they hold a lot of rare titles you just can’t find on streaming. When you choose to watch a movie this way - that movie comes home to live with you for a little while. You become its temporary caretaker. And in this way they all become more memorable; they were once your roommate. Also, with all the time and effort invested in procuring it, you’re more likely to watch it to justify the cost. And you're more likely to enjoy, or pay closer attention to, it for the same reason. In fact, the journey to procure the movie, watch it, and return it, is in a way its own three act movie. Streaming may offer instant gratification, but watching that way is like a tree falling in the forest. Did it even happen?
Three taglines.
Three different fonts.
Three different font colors.
Amazing.
Even if you don’t end up selecting a movie to take home, it’s fun to have a coffee and browse. Or just sit and be surrounded by many works of art - entire careers of art. You can hold a movie in your hand, look at the back of it for more info, and feel nostalgia for a time before all content became ethereal 1s and 0s floating through the air, accessible everywhere but existing nowhere. Here movies have weight. They are enjoyed, discussed, and given meaning by a community. I’ll admit that we’re looking through my own narrow lens of the past year with one video store, but anyone who lived in the Blockbuster era can remember these feelings. Or more recently, the Criterion Closet era. If you can’t browse in person, millions have found it fun to do so vicariously through the scores of actors, musicians, and filmmakers invited into the closet (formerly a disused bathroom) in the Criterion office. The mobile version they rolled out last year for their 40th anniversary had people waiting in line for 10 hours to spend just five minutes inside. While we’re at it, how about the Sam Goody era? Borders Books? Best Buy? Not that long ago, all physical media had to be obtained outside the home in chain stores like those, or independent ones you might remember more fondly. Technology’s ever improving ability to store and move larger and larger files is celebrated for how much space it saves but we’re still reckoning with the side effects: the spaces it destroys - all-important “third spaces” - where we could go with a friend to browse and discuss music, books, movies, comics, games, etc. Creating space for physical media gets us out of the house, offline, and into a shared community experience.
Streamers may have the ultimate advantage when it comes to convenience and volume, and a lot of what Best Video does can’t be replicated on a streaming platform. But it would be nice if those platforms - owned by some of the most powerful companies on the planet - could, you know, try harder. I’m not going to ditch my streaming services anytime soon. They’ve essentially become utility bills in my life, but if a particular movie is available at Best Video, I’ll happily make the 15 minute walk there first.
The Caves of Utah
This past September I was fortunate to go to Utah to oversee a promo shoot for our show Mystery at Blind Frog Ranch. I love this show and I have done every promo campaign for its four seasons. The ratings for it have grown each year, and so it has been rewarded with further investment. For season one we executed a clip based concept, but for seasons two and three we did a promo shoot on location, and we were more ambitious with each one. The most recent one is no exception. We went to multiple locations, including within a couple caves, and captured a wealth of great material for on air promo, social, digital, and press.
Our concept was about pushing deeper. In a literal and visual sense. We showed this by having our talent navigate into the depths of a cave. The concept also captures the nature of the show's central plot; a hunt for treasure somewhere underground, and the emotional state of the crew trying to complete the task. They have now become obsessed with their quest and are pushing themselves deeper into something like madness. To express the mental state of the talent visually, we turned to the snorricam, a rig in which the camera is mounted to the subject and pointing back at their face. This makes for a slightly disorienting experience for the viewer, as the subject appears stationary while the space moves around them. Only their reaction can give us a clue as to where they're heading.
We also filmed the environments themselves. We flew a drone into a cave to get an eerie, inhuman motion through that space. We filmed elements in slow motion; dirt falling off of bone, or breath caught in the light of a headlamp. I loved this shoot because we were able to get what we needed for the story of the promo, as well as improvise additional content we thought of in the moment. We did this in coordination with the show's production company and small crew of three people, which made for an efficient use of our budget, and an excellent adventure for me.