THE TROUBLE WITH LOOKING BEHIND-THE-SCENES

Back in the 1950s, Superman leaped tall buildings in…a theatrical harness with a couple of stage hands pulling rope through a block and tackle off set. But what did we see?

"Truth, justice, and the American way!"

Superman flew. He had to: people watching television decades ago saw it with their own eyes.

But that's television; we all know it's just make-believe, even if we tune in to lose ourselves intentionally in the story. Movies are a whole lot more immersive, just by means of working within more expansive boundaries and defining different expectations. But things are changing all over the land of make-believe, from the Province of Television to the Domain of Movies. None of our electronic fictions are precisely what they once were, and it isn't just because computer generated effects have replaced ropes and harnesses for our heroes.

Movies still command a certain measure of cultural attention, but not like they did as recently as twenty years ago. Arena- filling rock and roll bands have taken on profoundly different roles in the culture, too, as have books and other cultural events to a lesser degree. Even television no longer acts as the soothing zone of cerebral down-shifting that it used to be. Twenty years ago NBC's "must-see-TV" line-up held much of the country in thrall, provoking Friday morning office conversations that must have sapped a measurable portion of the nation's productivity.

The change came slowly, methodically, creeping in on catspaws. An easy cause for the change, obviously, was the advent of millions of new web-based ways for people to spend their time, distracting them from large, more widely shared events. The web and its handheld, wireless offspring further fragmented attention. But I believe one of the greatest factors in a new cultural ennui is the corollary to infinite choice. Infinite choice demands an inevitable qualitative discount on well made work just to keep the endless pipes full. As a result, theatrical curtains that used to hide how everything in the world was made have suddenly parted.

Typically we enter into a partnership with performing arts, or any work of art, for that matter. Even if a rock star makes it look like they're just wildly gyrating, the reality is always so much more prosaic: hours of rehearsal, endless practice all alone to perfect complex riffs, preproduction planning, and on and on and on. The partnership with an audience is about suspension of disbelief. We dream about our media idols because the illusion of so much charisma and power and performance excellence is one of ease and effortlessness. We want our magicians to levitate, even as we know that gravity never takes a holiday. We want what they seem to have.

Ever watch a cooking show? Millions do. Cooking shows teach you everything, even if you never intend to cook what they're showing. Most people never try the stuff being made in state-of-the-art studio kitchens. But expectations rise by watching these things, nonetheless, and with those expectations puffing up like soufflés, so do the minimum requirements for general satisfaction. Is this bad? Probably not. An educated public, no matter what the subject, is a better social body. But when everything is ordinary, it's harder to hold an audience's attention.

Lower production costs and an effectively infinite number of media outlets means that humanity's innate curiosity can now be effectively sated for any subject at all. Behind-the-scenes programs, blogs, podcasts, photo galleries, magazine articles, and more can teach you the secrets of just about any subject or endeavor you may want to know. Curious about how to play a diminished C chord on a guitar? Check. Want to know about the manufacturing process of fast food french fries? Yep: that's available too.

It's a funny thing. I like having access to all sorts of information about how the world works. I like knowing how papayas grow just like I also want to be able to look up how to properly place a comma in a sentence.

But endless informational resources about endless subjects is not the same as going behind-the-scenes. Behind-the-scenes programming removes the necessary suspension of disbelief required for theater. Just like audiences still go to see magicians even though they know it's a trick, they go to the movies knowing that the stories they're watching are built by armies of people working for months in movie making businesses. The compact audiences metaphorically sign with creators not to see how it's done facilitates necessary disbelief. The fact is, Superman only makes sense if we believe he can fly. If we see the ropes, we all laugh; it ruins the magic. The moment we go back stage and see that there really isn't a bottomless pit into hell but instead just a wooden trapdoor, we lose a bit of the surprise and emotional connection with regard to the plight of the character and his our her narrative.

And it's a tough thing, steeped as we all are in infinite information. We all have access to trailers and magazine articles and web sites that reveal tons of details about how something gets made. But I suppose my thesis is this: treat behind-the-scenes information with respect, lest you no longer appreciate anything. It's one thing to learn all about a magician's life; it's another thing entirely to learn how he makes the tiger disappear. As soon as you know where that tiger goes, you'll not only stop caring, but you'll be more likely to click on something newer, something incrementally more scintillating, and your own attention will continue to fragment.

Fragment it too much, and then nothing matters at all.

-MS

PS -- Yes, yes, it's always the same old request here at the bottom of the blog. "Please share with your friends if you like it...yadda, yadda, yadda." There are even the little buttons around here where you can post it to Facebook, Tweet it far and wide, distribute it all sorts of ways. But you know what? You COULD! And you know what that would do? That would make us SMILE.

FIGHTER PILOT VS MISSION PLANNER

…or, "You can't have one without the other".

Shortly after a recent production meeting, I was talking with one of our animators. He usually says a lot even when he says a little, but his brain is always working in the background. Smart, smart, smart, the guy focuses like a laser, works really hard. In short, he's good! So I was thoroughly fascinated when he said, "I'm really glad I do what I do for you instead of what you do for me. I'd much rather be a fighter pilot than the guy who's in charge of where to send the planes."

There's a reason we're a good team.

The truth is, I really love working with people who deeply care about what they do without me having to worry about them hating what they do or trying to do what I do. Sounds obvious, but as we all know work teams are not always harmonious.

He's the kind of guy who genuinely feels like he's doing his best when he can deeply dig in to a discrete assignment. As an animator, his creative life is intensely technical, even as it aims to deliver something that doesn't look technical at all. To viewers, the final result of his labor should be visually effortless, conveying whatever story or feeling it was designed to impart. Viewers doesn't care how it was made, and nor should they. But as a producer or director I most certainly do!

What I've come to appreciate, and what I love best about working with artisans of all sorts, is that inside a discrete assignment, there's no singular way to solve any specific creative problem. I turn to experts to do specific things because I can count on novel ideas to get proposed, no matter how specifically or clearly I think I'm defining the task. I also turn to experts because their expertise is what empowers their own creative contributions to be special.

Now here's the other side of the equation, and try not to flinch 'cause this could sting a little.

You may be a master producer, director, civil engineer, or flower arranger, but the moment you work with any other living person, you've got to accept that you're going to have the living, breathing influence of that other person invested in the output. Even if you give precise instructions -- "Make it powder blue, two meters long, five centimeters thick, and carved from aluminum"-- there will be inevitable surprises. Yes, you most certainly can demand a revision if work delivered doesn't fit your inner vision, and compromising on vision is generally not something you should easily accept. But you're a fool if you don't at least consider the alternative solution presented to you based on your initial assignments. If you really respect your team, you will enter in to a pas de deux with each player, individually. Even if you don't like each other personally, the pursuit of the work itself should be as if you were both trying to have an intimate conversation while walking the wrong way against street traffic on a crowded sidewalk. It should be as if you're making every effort to stay close enough through the endless oncoming distractions, internal and external, to stay on the subject, keep the conversation going, reach your destination in mental sync and understanding.

Are you nervous that I'm suggesting that everyone should have the same level of authority, that everyone is equal on a team? Far from it. The director decides the movie. The architect decides where to place the windows. But the great ones listen closely to the key grips and building engineers. One of the things I respect about the fighter pilot vs mission manager metaphor is that properly compartmentalized, both players each get a positive boost from doing their specific jobs right. They both may be able to pilot a plane, just as they both may be able to make an overall plan, but left to pursue excellence in their individual dharmas, a cohesive team becomes capable of greatness.

Here's where the strategy trips people up. When the pilot doesn't appreciate the challenges of the planner, trust erodes, and the mission suffers. Where the planner doesn't listen to the realities of flying by night, low to the ground, under fire, the planner compromises mission success overall. If you're going to work with a team--and face it: in the modern world everyone works with teams of varying size and scale--you've got to build multidirectional respect. Without it the team fall apart, or at best only achieves middling results. If you can't find a way to respect the various members of your team, you either need to find another team, or quit doing what you're doing.

--MS

PS — Have something to say? Leave us a comment! Don’t want to miss the latest from 1AU? Sign up on our mailing list. (Cool email like ours is better than that boring stuff that clutters your inbox, right?) Consider yourself a fan? Please re-Tweet us, post to Facebook, or otherwise forward us to your friends. Cool? Yep: cool.

IMPROVISATION

Improvisation: that's when you have an idea and you make up the next bit based on what you just did a moment ago, right?

I bet you do this a lot. We all do. But often people mistake improvisation for "making it up as you go along". No doubt there are elements of this in all improvisation, but artists know something intuitively that onlookers may discount. Lots of practice making things up leads to better results when you've got to perform.

We're heading into presidential debate season and no matter which side you support, keep one small corner of your brain open to the inevitable display of improvisational footwork from both candidates. They've both practiced prior to the debates; we all know that. They both have their standard buzz lines and tropes and stylistic flourishes; we know that too. But we don't know precisely what they're going to say to the inevitably unexpected events that arise and neither do they. They will improvise.

Each of us improvises when we reach the next moment in our lives. Do you think every surgeon knows precisely what they're going to see when they cut someone open just because they've had twenty years of training? Does every NASCAR driver know what's going to happen on lap 217, even though the job can be reduced to "drive fast and turn left"?

So, what's not improvisation? I could argue that all things fit the improvisational spirit, considering that life will eternally provoke unexpected moments for "making it up as you go along". But some things aren't so fluid. Some things are genuinely predictable. Monthly bills to pay, nightly dishes to wash, weekly reports to write for your boss: none of these fit the spirit of improvisation very much. But sometimes moments of inspiration springing from deep understanding of these tasks leads to invention and innovation, and the first time you try them out…voila: improvisation. Things only become codified, even ossified, after they've been done a million times.

When you give a speech, you're not improvising. You're presenting something that's gone through revision, trial, testing, and rehearsal (and if you're not, you definitely want to call us, 'cause we provide all sorts of great coaching services!) When you're building a model rocket from a balsa and cardboard kit, you're not improvising either. But the moment you're not sure what to do at the podium when one of the spotlights inexplicably goes out, or you discover that the rocket kit came with a cracked stabilizer, you've suddenly been thrust into the realm of improvisation.

This is not comfortable for everyone. Not everyone likes to riff on a theme. Some people feel much, much better working from a set of known data, from a cookbook, or a sheet of printed music. This is not only okay, it's valuable. I rely on concrete thinkers to do concrete things. I demand it of myself, in fact. Cooking, writing a novel, flowcharting the architecture for new software all require disciplined thinking and rigorous labor. They cannot be done well without a focused mind. But focused thinking is not the same as rigid thinking. The value of improvisation is being able to notice an unexpected opportunity, seize it, and not get tripped up by the inevitable surprises.

Undisciplined improvisation is just making it up and you go along. The difference in being a good improviser is the ability to impose the ballast of discipline even as you tack with ungovernable winds. Good improvisation is being able to take cues from known rules, briefly experienced inputs, precedents and even accidents, and not get thrown. Great improvisation is being able to take those elements and turn them into something breathtaking. Done well it's effortless; it just flows.

--MS

PS -- Have something to say? Leave us a comment! Don't want to miss the latest from 1AU? Sign up on our mailing list. (Cool email like ours is better than that boring stuff that clutters your inbox, right?) Consider yourself a fan? Please re-Tweet us, post to Facebook, or otherwise forward us to your friends. Cool? Yep: cool.

SPHERE TALK TODAY!

A hundred million years from now, archaeologists will marvel at works like LOOP and wonder how they did it! But you don't have to wait until you're a fossil to find out. Vicky Weeks will present a special session at today's JHSM Symposium called DECONSTRUCTED: Science On a Sphere. Join her in the Africa Hall upstairs at the museum at 10:30, and then come downstairs to see our latest movie called LOOP, playing in competition this year. Questions or comments? Drop us a note!

Want a sneak peak? Check out the trailer to LOOP here.

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KEEPING YOUR COOL

"Cry havoc!"

Or, at least, sound the alarm.

One of the great challenges in creative pursuits is the seemingly simple act of getting to the next day intact. Doodles on cocktail napkins, to cite cliché, all look full of promise and potential. But when they're reduced to real work--to physical labor, to spreadsheets and invoices and deadlines--those darling doodles rapidly fade from memory. Big ideas fully enjoined can suck up every last moment of the day and every ounce of strength on a team.

But as anyone knows who makes his or her life about bringing new ideas into being, creative pursuits rarely take place when convenient. They tend to pile up, forcing Solomon-esque decisions about limited resources, dwindling energies, and shifting priorities.

Havoc indeed.

In Upton Sinclair's great novel "The Jungle", the protagonist Jurgis Rudkus repeatedly declares, "I will work harder" when confronted with unrelenting challenges. By the middle of the book he's worn down, beaten up, dismissed and dispirited. It's sad, but it's honest. In the story Jurgis suffers the depredations of a corrupt political and corporate ecosystem. It's not exactly the same as trying to keep the wheels on the car in a successful artistic enterprise. (That's us.) But the parallels obtain. Sometimes the reckless momentum of the world, the relentless spin and swirl in an effort to get to some undefined next level can simply knock you out. Some days it's hard to keep going.

It would be reductionist bromide to declare that one ought to just work harder to push through challenging demands. It just so happens, however, that it's the truth. The trick is to find sympathetic vibrations in competing demands on time and energy. Do subtle observations made while pursuing one project shed light on some intractable problem dogging another? Does a conversation with one client spark a moment of invention to solve a dilemma elsewhere? Can you shoot B-roll on one location for two unrelated stories?

Not always. But when the volume gets turned up to 11––and it doesn't matter what you do because it always gets turned up to 11 once in a while––it's essential that the din of battle does not overwhelm your nerves. You need to see the forest and the trees simultaneously. If you survive the journey, the calm of morning may afford a strength and clarity that makes it all worthwhile. Managing chaos is not out of the ordinary; it's to be expected if your heart is set on living a life that matters.

RESETTING

Our chief technologist and master editor Vicky Weeks has a knack for getting right to the center of the coconut. When we're deep into production or out on the road and everyone needs to take a few hours to go over plans, break down, clean up, or otherwise find their brains, she says it's time for us to "reset".

Clearly the term draws cultural connections to the ubiquitous ghost in the collective machine. We're all so tethered to our myriad devices; the very idea of resetting ourselves seems to be an extension of the machines we use. By investing our identities with this mechanical process, it's almost as if we've capitulated free will to some sort of Borg collective, as if "resetting" ourselves is simply a standard procedure for living as part of a larger hive mind.

But I fear I'm heading down a digressive path.

Beyond a cultural analysis of machines-versus-humanity, Vicky's expression always makes me smile for it's perfection. In elegantly simple language it suggests an awareness that big actions and important decisions are often made best when someone is stable, solid, and whole. To "reset" is to find a center point, a moment of equilibrium in what may have been roiling seas. It is to have a moment's clarity, or at least a moment's peace amid the jangle of reality.

If you know anything about media production, reality jangles. It rips and snorts and bucks like a bee-stung bronco. To hope for anything different is to be a fool in a warrior's game. But even samurai understand the value of sitting quietly. Sometimes the very act of quiet breathing, of carefully coiling the extension cords and repacking the equipment bags can make all the different in the world for successfully completing tough shooting days.

Some people fall into the trap of thinking they need to reset too often. It's one thing to be organized, but to reset too often is to give yourself an excuse for not actually getting anything done. Real engagement with creative work--with life, really--requires us to stay in the game and figure out how to find balance through movement. In the fast-moving obstacles and challenges of a busy day, balance is less a stable position than it is a confident sequence of footfalls that resist panic as they lightly hop from position to position. In aggregate, those hops should be moving you forward.

Resetting is different. It's a system downshift, a reboot, an intentional pull of the power plug. It can be something designated for a few hours, or it can be something designated for many, many days. You don't do it when you're tired; for that you should just get some rest. Resetting is for finding your center again, with the specific goal of heading out for unknown horizons. It's not something to take lightly, even as it can dramatically lessen the force of gravity for a precious period of time. In some ways it's a sacred thing, and like all powerful techniques, something that should be intensely respected, infrequently employed, and done with mindful intention.

It's okay if you enjoy it, too. I know I do.

--MS

PS -- To our regular readers, please take 20 seconds (or thereabouts) and retweet, cross post, or otherwise pass the link for this blog--and its 1AU Global Media home--onto your own readers and friends! Call it karma, call it kismet: we'll just call it cool! Cool?

Storm!

There's always a storm ahead. The question is when. Then the next question is, "What are you going to do when it comes?"

History rarely celebrates The Couch Potato. Crowds never gather to cheer the timid, the sedentary, the boring. Sing it, Virgil: "Audaces Fortuna iuvat."

But you know what? A day or two after a natural calamity, everyone's wishing for a little prosaic ordinariness.

The mid-Atlantic states got clobbered by a colossal storm on summer night in 2014, knocking out power, felling massive trees, ripping power lines from their poles like spider webs ripped from backyard porch railings. It came on a Friday and by Sunday morning more than 1 million people were still without power. Substantial water restrictions were imposed due to a suddenly darkened water pumping station in the region. And may I add parenthetically, that this all sent a particular pang of fear into my heart, because triple digit temperatures dangerously threatened to desiccate my thriving tomato crop. But perhaps I shouldn't jest about such widespread woe.

Widening the metaphorical lens, I can't help but be aware of the tragic fires this year in Colorado. Homes and lives have suffered terribly, and major portions of vital national wilderness have turned to ash.

Pulling back even further, it's inevitable that perditions elsewhere in the global village should immediately come into focus. Debt crisis, Syrian upheaval, African strife, environmental decay, abrasion of the American social fabric: trapped in an art gallery a hungry person hardly notices the  paintings all around.

Of the many lessons a life in the arts teaches, the two most essential are fortitude and perseverance. No kidding: "the show must go on" means so much more than simply a rallying call for nervous high school students at the spring play. But the real world often requires us to drop philosophy for practicality. Philosophy informs how we will act; that's why it's essential to develop deep philosophical skills early on. The actions we make in life are choices shaped by a life of philosophical training--good choices if we've trained ourselves well, not so good choices if we've missed the forest for the lumber mill.  Surrounded locally by a calamity that merely hints microcosmically at the substantially larger challenges elsewhere around the world, I'm aware of the discontinuity between philosophy and practicality.

In the past few days, we've been working hard to develop a number of new, substantial projects. New treatment pages and reference art are starting to add up, starting to gather exciting critical mass. We're aiming high, looking far, and running the engines at high revs. Nobody cheers for the complacent, and these days we've been pretty busy.

Then the storm hit.

As I turn in my chair to look out the window, it's a lovely morning, now two days after a gusty wind and rain have stopped. The air is almost still, the sunlight golden yellow, the few singing winter birds giving no indication of the rough night they weathered just recently. But the storm also forced momentum to come to a crashing halt on those new projects, as practical realities and the emotions and energy necessary to propel them got siphoned elsewhere.

That perseverance thing, that thing about the show going on? It's not about dumb, donkey-headed stubbornness. It's about taking the day in stride, come what may, no matter what winds or rain may lash fragile flesh. It's about a sense of humor, grim sometimes, but a sense of humor fundamentally. It's also about a determination to be undaunted, even as the unexpected knocks you for a loop. Because the unexpected is always gonna knock you for a loop.

Of course, you can't think these things when you're wondering where your family is going to sleep now that your home is a pile of rubble, or your nation in tatters from political unrest. But later, later, later… long after the smoke has cleared and democratic elections held, and people you love are together again telling stories, the artists of the world will have led the way in making sense of events that really had little to do with ordinary reason and rhyme. Acts of creation matter most when the world runs down. The perseverance inherent in those who have something to say puts a frame around the otherwise Brownian chaos of unpredictability. By framing the world, we make sense of the world. By making sense of the world, we find our fortune.

In case you're wondering, by the way, we're back to being full speed ahead getting those new projects off the ground. Stay tuned.  Go farther.

@michaelstarobin

facebook.com/1auglobalmedia

PS -- To our regular readers, please take 20 seconds (or thereabouts) and retweet, cross post, or otherwise pass the link for this blog--and its 1AU Global Media home--onto your own readers and friends! Call it karma, call it kismet: we'll just call it cool! Cool?

LIVE!

Live performance is the ultimate Turing test. What happens on stage is what happens for the audience. There are no re-dos, no edits, no clean-it-up-in-post. Live lives.

But "live" doesn't just happen. In broad terms, a good live performer describes someone with an acute sensitivity to the world around him or herself. More specifically, a compelling live performer is somebody who knows how to rehearse.

Deeper still, rehearsal is not enough. It's possible to be well rehearsed and yet to have rehearsed poorly. Ultimately this is where skilled direction and production come to bear. Message, motivation, mechanics: you've got to have the tools to make a live event come alive for an audience.

A few days ago I went to the opening night performance for Diana Krall's 2012 world tour.  Playing at Meyerhoff Hall in Baltimore with her stunning quartet, she made it look easy. Chatting with the audience, turning casually on the piano bench to regard her fellow musicians, clearly enjoying the night, the music radiated out across the packed hall into the summer air. There's nothing like a live event.

But even though she commented several times how she wasn't sure what they might play next, and even though the group clearly left room for improvisation and on-the-fly set changes, nothing was left to chance. To say they were well rehearsed is to understate the obvious. But what they really expressed were lifetimes of craftsmanship, and deeply felt affinities for playing music.

Simple statement: I like music. But here's the question, at least for regular readers of this blog: what's the direct relevance to what we do at 1AU Global Media?

As a production facility specializing in real world images and CGI and carefully crafted storytelling, one may think the more specifically human aspects of live performance might not resonate as intensely for for us. Not true. We pride ourselves in extensive live performance backgrounds. Superb production in a traditional sense should appear effortless. That's why Krall's performance sounded so good. To the audience, it just sounded like they were playing. Playing: that is, the act of having fun. Serious things done well can still invest audiences in a sense of fun, particularly if you broaden your acceptance of the word to mean enjoyable satisfaction in what you're doing. At 1AU, we care intensely about making it look easy, even as the craft of doing so requires lifetimes of practice. More to the point, doing a job well, especially a creative one, is precisely what defines fun.

Our clients know they can turn to us for highly sophisticated media. But if you're new to 1AU, consider us next time you're planning a live demonstration, or your executive staff needs to make a public statement, or speak on camera. Preparation for a live event divides the merely enthusiastic from the pros. Sometimes the line is wide; sometimes it's narrow. But there's always a line. Cross over… and go farther.

-MS

PS -- To our regular readers, please take 20 seconds (or thereabouts) and retweet, cross post, or otherwise pass the link for this blog and it's home at 1AU onto your readers and friends! Call it karma, call it kismet: we'll just call it cool! Cool?