Writing the code for a new feature is often the easiest part of the life of a small software developer. Two recent examples tell the story very well. Both involve updates to our reporting tools: Sequence Clip Reporter and Producer’s Best Friend. Part 2 follows tomorrow.
One of the joys of 2014 for me was to learn to sing – from very much a position of sucking at it. I still suck whenever I start learning a new song. What I realized is that we have to be prepared to suck at something before we can be good at it, or even learn it.
By “sucking” at something I mean, being very, very bad at it. I realize now I’ve been there many times.
There was a time when I had no idea what XML was; now if you search that term and my name you’ll find I have a contribution to be made.
There was a time when I sucked at metadata – like XML I had no idea why it was important.
The thing is, I’ve sucked at so many things and yet, putting through the sucky period, eventually we suck a little less, then barely at all, until we arrive at a point of knowing we don’t suck at that skill or knowledge any more.
Never be afraid to start off badly: it’s the only way to learn something new.
Variety just posted an article on how many people had watched online game play (of one game) in one week. 75,000 players and 6 million individual viewers who collectively watched 327 million minutes of gameplay. Watched. That’s about an hour per viewer on average.
Six million people watching one game’s game play. That’s a decent network-sized audience these days. That’s one game for one week. Admittedly a release week for the game.
Watching game play has become a huge audience, with very low production costs. While it’s not traditional production, the time spent watching gamers play video games, erodes the time available for other forms of entertainment, specifically films and television!
Once upon a time it was easy to differentiate between Film and TV production: film was shot on film, TV was shot electronically. SAG looked after the interests of Screen Actors (film) while AFTRA looked after the interests of Television actors. That the two actors unions have merged is indicative of the changes in production technology.
As is noted in an article at Digital Trends, there is almost no difference between the technologies used in both styles of production, so what are the differences? It comes down to two thing, which are really the same thing.
One of my non-metadata interests is in food, so I read a lot of food related articles, including this one where Anthony Bourdain talks about the foodie revolution. What stood out was this comment after discussing the traditional way a talented young chef might make their way through the kitchen hierarchy over decades, vs the modern “democratized” approach where a talented young chef just ups  – maybe via a food truck – and gets their career started.
“A lot of old-school guys complain about this—you’re not paying your dues. That’s the downside. The upside is interesting people with something to say and a unique worldview can actually get their name out there and open a place with relative ease compared to the way it used to be.â€
This reminds me of modern production: it’s been democratized to the point where, if you have an idea, you can make it happen.
Apple frequently talk about being at the “intersection of Technology and Liberal Arts” but we rarely experience that other than through their hardware and software. Thanks to the encouragement of our friend Cirina Catania, we (Cirina, my partner Greg and myself) experienced the Invisible Cities Opera in LA’s Union Station. That’s a really unusual place to stage an opera, and indeed this was a most unusual artistic experiment and experience, involving large amounts of production skills – staging, singing, etc – and some amazing technical chops from Sennheiser and Bexel (Burbank CA).
According to Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan is the latest to speak to its brighter side. “[It] led to a lot of people watching the series who otherwise would not have,” Gilligan tells the BBC.
In this episode Terence and Philip discuss the way the App Store works and the issues that arise for developers; business models and compatibility between versions in Media Composer; in-app purchases; Adobe panels; Flash; Creative Cloud; app interchange formats; reporting; and app ecosystems.
A recent article in the Atlantic confirms my long standing suspicion that the best writing and most interesting characters with the most interesting stories are on TV, not in the movies.
When you are designing your marketing messaging, you need to clearly communicate the benefit (or even the service/product you’re providing) to those who have no idea what you do. In light of what I’ve observed on the exhibition floor at IBC, I may even need to reconsider our own “Taking the boring out of post” slogan as not being clear enough.