Special Effects Porn is Dead

Just like hard-core cheapies, movies like Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park aren't really "movies" in the standard sense at all. What they really are is half a dozen or so isolated, spectacular scenes - scenes comprising maybe twenty or thirty minutes of riveting, sensuous payoff - strung together via another sixty to ninety minutes of flat, dead, and often hilariously insipid narrative.

- David Foster Wallace

So I'm knee-deep again in all things David Foster Wallace and I come across his 1998 essay "The (As It Were) Seminal Importance of Terminator 2." The gist of it is that there exists a genre of Hollywood mega-budget film that relies on a handful of eye-popping action and special effects scenes to get an audience to fork over ticket money. The sheer spectacle of these scenes - as in porn - is enough to make up for the shallow and unsatisfying story-lines connecting them together. The "Wow!" is what gets the butts in the seats.  

In the fifteen years since this article was written, this trend has only accelerated. Avatar, Pirates of the Caribbean, John Carter, The Lone Ranger, I'm literally reading down the list of most expensive productions, all over the $250 million budget mark, all made in the last eight years. And don't forget about the 3-D!

But have you seen these YouTube videos [1, 2, 3] of the guys with GoPro's strapped to their heads, dangling off high-rises and cliff faces? I don't know about you, but sitting in my office chair staring at my little computer screen, I feel a sense of fear and awe shooting straight from my amygdala that I can only assume is the same feeling that Hollywood is chasing with their big, expensive, IMAX-sized productions.

The lesson? Dudes with cheap cameras, an internet connection, and a death wish can be more compelling than anything a producer with stacks of money and an army of visual and sound effects artists can conjure. You can now get "Wow!", and a whole lot of it, for free.

Curation Isn't Creation

In this Age of Information, where anything and everything is available at the touch of a button, curators perform a central and vital function. Without them to cut through the clutter and deliver thoughtfully handpicked content, we'd be lost in avalanche of choices and options.

But while curation may be a creative endeavor, it's not creation. Creation demands risk, transparency, and vulnerability. It requires that you stare down the empty page, the blank canvas, and step bravely into the abyss.

If art is what you aspire to create, you must give the world more than just a collection of your favorite things. You must give yourself.

On Small Screens and Earning Trust

Most of us don't have the luxury of screening our work for a captive audience in a large dark theater. Increasingly, home theaters, desktop computers, laptops, tablets, and smartphones are the avenues through which our creations will be seen. Setting the obvious technical differences aside, these venues and devices have their own unique set of demands. None more important, perhaps, than cultivating an audience's trust.

Think about it. When you go and see a movie in a theater, you've already invested time, money, and energy just getting yourself into the seat. Then there's the whole darkened movie theater thing. It's a lot harder to walk out of a theater than it is to thumb the remote, flick your mouse, or turn off your cellphone.

So how do you earn trust? Get yourself right. Keep yourself in humble service to the story or the idea. Honor your audience by not wasting their time. I don't know about you, but the second I feel like my time and energy isn't respected, like I'm just a cheap pair of eyeballs, I'm out.

There are tens, hundreds of little decisions that go into creating a music video, a short film, an animated GIF. And each one of them is an opportunity to either alienate or captivate your audience. Yes, worry about the technical stuff - the lighting, the edit, the sound design. But never lose touch with the fact that you are asking for people to surrender their time and attention to watch what you've made. That's an honor, not a right.

Out of Excuses

The gatekeepers are gone.

The tools of the trade are more affordable than ever.

People are craving work that is original, handmade, and meaningful.

We have unprecedented access to one another.

What are you waiting for?

Get on with it

You don't want to be near me when I've been out of the studio for more than a week. I transform into an irritable, cranky wreck of a human being. I don't know why this is. And I've heard this is the case with other creative types.

Maybe it's a signal our subconscious sends our way, reminding us there's something that needs attention. And in order to right the ship, in order to find our equilibria, we need to face down whatever it is we're avoiding.

It seems that the world conspires against us, when it comes to doing our most important work. It throws an endless assortment of must-see-television, cheap calories, and other justifiably "important" distractions right at us.

But maybe the world isn't the problem.

It's so much easier to allow yourself to be distracted than it is to face the empty page or the half-finished project. Just get yourself into your studio (or workspace, or coffee shop... wherever it is you get your work done). Sign yourself out of your email, Twitter, Facebook accounts. And just sit.

See what happens.