Designing multimedia

Just saw a fascinating presentation by [Bear McCreary](http://www.bearmccreary.com/) (of [Battlestar Galactica](http://www.syfy.com/battlestar/) fame) at work. Among many interesting stories was his description of how he composed the adaptation of All Along the Watchtower used in one of the show’s most climactic scenes, [the piano in the bar](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c2ZJPKz5u8).

Apparently the inclusion of the song was director Ronald D. Moore’s idea, and over several seasons it became an increasingly important part of the plot (which I won’t spoil here). But that meant that the musical score for the show was now also something the characters were aware of, so Bear worked with the writers to weave his music into the story. And for the piano scene itself, the writers called him up while he was working on a particularly difficult cue and asked him to describe what it’s like to tease out a piece of music that’s stuck in your head. His responses went almost directly into the script.

I think as media continues to evolve, we’ll see even more examples where connecting music to plot, and to the other aspects of a story, leads to a more interesting and holistic experience. Learning ways to do this is an exciting opportunity for designers from all parts of the spectrum.

The entire presentation was captivating, including a bit where Bear taught the piano theme to someone from the audience, just as was done in the show, and his description of how he sees music while watching a scene (first he sees the overall shape, then starts to fill in the pieces). Hopefully it will be published online for more to see; I’ll link to it if so.

Creating Pandora

A fascinating view into the cameras and technology used in Avatar. The new technology included a virtual camera that lets you physically shoot a virtual scene, augmented reality that overlays live footage with CGI backgrounds, face-scanning cameras, and a combination 2D/3D camera.

Another innovation was adding imperfections (camera movements, lens flares) to make a “perfect” virtual world more believable.

Really interesting to think about what this technology might do when released to the world in a few years…

Update: i09 has a bunch of great interviews with designers who worked on Avatar: [part 1](http://io9.com/5420143/5-designers-reveal-secrets-of-james-camerons-avatar), [part 2](http://io9.com/5444960/avatars-designers-speak-floating-mountains-amp-suits-and-the-dragon), [part 3](http://io9.com/5460957/the-complete-history-of-pandora-according-to-avatars-designers)

Avatar

The interesting thing about Avatar to me was not the in-theater experience (which I thought was good but not revolutionary) but rather the fact that 12 hours later I still see Pandora whenever I close my eyes…something about the visual experience got deeper into my brain than any other movie has.

My New Year’s media diet

I would like to be more intentional about how I consume media. Here are some thoughts on how I might do that in the coming year.

*Read the Eternities* ([via](http://www.ryskamp.org/brain/?p=3640))

Focus my reading on classical writing, not modern writing

*Books first*

Books are the complete thought meal (Tim Sanders). Films can be good as well, but leave less to the imagination. Video/tv is the least considered and most ephemeral.

*70/20/10 rule*

* Time: 70% pre-1900, 20% 1900s, 10% 2000s
* Media: 70% written word, 20% films, 10% tv/video
* Reading: 70% books, 20% magazines/journal articles, 10% news/opinion

*Balance media with life*

Media should be a relatively small part of life…80% life, 20% media (meta-life)?

*Balance consumption with production*

80% production, 20% consumption?

*Think in the morning, act in the noon, eat in the evening, and sleep at night. – William Blake*

(I read this originally as “read in the evening”, which likely works better for me than Blake, given the miracle of incandescent light).

*Don’t start the day with someone else’s thoughts* ([via](http://www.ryskamp.org/brain/?p=181))

It’s the only chance you’ll have to think your own.

So, what might this look like in practice? All of these 80/20 or 70/20/10 ratios are terrifically arbitrary, but they’re an interesting starting point.

* 16 waking hours each day
* 20% media = 3 hours
* 80% production = 2 hours, 26 minutes
* 20% consumption = 34 minutes

Of those 34 daily minutes:

* 70/20/10 eras = 22 minutes pre-1900s/7 minutes 1900s/3.5 minutes 2000s
* 70/20/10 media = 22 minutes writing/7 minutes film/3.5 minutes tv/videos
* Of the 22 minutes writing: 15 minutes books/5 minutes magazines/journals/2.5 minutes news/opinion/blogs

Now, pre-1900s is really only books, so that would wipe out the entire “writing” allocation, leaving no room for magazines, journals, or opinion, or for anything since 1900. And you wouldn’t really watch video news from any other era than the present, so the 3.5 minutes on the 2000s would be all video news. So some wiggle room is necessary.

Still, the rough daily schedule is something like: 22 minutes reading classic (pre-1900s) books, 7 minutes watching a film, and 3.5 minutes catching up on the news.

That’s not much time! And it’s hard to imagine watching a film 7 minutes each day. So let’s expand it to a two-week scale: 5 hours reading books, 1 1/2 hours watching a film, and 45 minutes catching up on news. That would roughly correspond to 1 300-page book (at a thoughtful rate of 1 page/min) and 1 film every two weeks, and 45 minutes on blogs/news catchup.

The era breakdown is probably best spread out over time, so that you’d tackle one book or movie at a time rather than splitting your attention between several. So at a rate of 26 books per year, you’d have 18 pre-1900s books, 5 from the 1900s, and 2-3 from the 2000s. Your 26 movies, being mostly from the 1900s and 2000s, could be split more evenly, and perhaps given their rapid evolution give half (13) from the 1900s and half from the 2000s. (Having just reviewed my Netflix queue, I’m tempted to give even more emphasis to recent films. Movies from the mid-80s don’t carry the same weight as Plato’s 2000-year-old dialogues).

How would you practice this? It seems important to first have a set of items that you are interested in consuming in the near future. I keep a massive Amazon wishlist of things I’m interested in, so I’ll need to prioritize from that a set of 18 pre-1900s books, 5 1900s books, and 2-3 2000s that I will actually tackle. Same exercise with films from my Netflix queue.

Next is to set aside the time for consuming and producing. A daily time for reading seems right, as does a biweekly time for a film. News or blogs could be done as either a daily check-in (3.5 minutes! What tools would make *that* possible?) or as a biweekly binge (might help prioritize what’s really important). Experimentation is probably necessary here.

Producing is a more nebulous area, but setting aside an hour to write each morning, and perhaps one afternoon a week to film or write something longer, would be a good use of that time. And, similar to consuming, keeping a list of things I’d like to produce–and scheduling them–would make sure I’m ready to go immediately.

So, given that I started with those arbitrary numbers, how does this look?

The first big ratio was “80% life, 20% media (meta-life)”. Is it right to spend a fifth of my waking life on media? Well, the average America watches 5 hours of television each day (almost a third of their waking life), and my combined internet and video consumption is probably at least that much. So slimming down to “just” 20% actually seems like a good first step, and I enjoy books and films enough that I’m happy to start there.

The producing/consuming ratio is the part I’m least clear about. Is producing media really 4 times as important as consuming it? Worth spending 2 1/2 hours a day? How would I even do such a thing? Well, blogging is a part of it, and personal journaling could be considered media production as well. Beyond that, it would be interesting to blend more rich media production, creating video or music on a variety of topics. This is something that is subject to big change given experimentation, however. The thinkers I most respect, however, are tremendously prolific in their writing and filming–even if they are not “professional” writers or filmmakers. So there’s something in this media production craft that seems worthwhile.

And the 20% consumption is not the limit of all media I’ll see. Media is a part of many other parts of life (that other top-level 80%), and if movies, books, or the internet are included in my work or social life I consider that separate. Watching a movie with friends is socializing, not “consuming”. But I hope to be more intentional about the things I personally choose to consume on my own time.

Here’s the schedule I’m going to start with during my sabbatical:

* 1 hour of writing daily
* 30 minutes of book reading daily (~1 book every 2 weeks)
* 5 min blogs & news daily (5 min catchup at the end of the day)
* 1 filmmaking or long writing session each week
* 1 film watching session every 2 weeks

I’ve also separated my media wishlists (Amazon & Netflix) into the appropriate categories:

* [Pre-1900s books](http://www.amazon.com/wishlist/QHCSTDGJP4YE/) (targeting 18/year)
* [1900s books](http://www.amazon.com/wishlist/LTW9WYUFTPQD/) (5/year)
* [2000s books](http://www.amazon.com/wishlist/3P4SAB9E93N0T/) (2-3/year)
* [1900s films](http://www.netflix.com/StrangerLists?prid=264588053&showList=353682) (13/year)
* 2000s films (the rest of my Netflix queue; 13/year)

Thoreau said that we should “be careful what objects and what subjects we thrust on [our] attention.” Hopefully my new media diet is an appropriate mix! I’ll check in later with an update…

The thinking man’s alien movie

Likely the most original film I’ve seen all year; tremendously rich premise and insightful commentary. Still the requisite blood and guts for an alien/monster summer flick, but I could have watched 2 hours of just the social commentary, presented in a mix of faux news footage and documentary-style camera shots. And like the best speculative fiction, it leads you to reflect on our real world relationships and actions.

The film’s website is similarly innovative, presented as an artifact of the situation, with more man-on-the-street interviews.

If you can handle the monsters and gross special effects, this one is highly recommended.

Update: Oh wow, for the original short District 9 was based on, they actually asked people about the Zimbabwean immigrant problems South Africa was experiencing. Art imitating life…

Pixar’s prototypes

Some really fascinating insights into the early explorations of a Pixar film–color studies, storyboards, clay models, test animations, dioramas, etc. Cool to see what a “prototype” looks like in their world…

• Lou Romano’s work as production designer – color studies, animations, dioramas, etc. Here are his animation tests on YouTube.
• A few storyboards from early scenes – really quite detailed.

Notes from Triumph of the Nerds

I’m always interested in documents from past technological revolutions since they echo so strongly in the current ones. [Triumph of the Nerds](http://www.netflix.com/Movie/Triumph_of_the_Nerds/70014652) is a great example of this, a film that shows how characters change (except for Steve Jobs) but the script so often stays the same…

### Part 1

Hey, it’s Art Walker, my old cycling coach! – 5:00

Definition of a “nerd”:

> I think a nerd is a person who uses the telephone to talk to other people about telephones. And a computer nerd therefore is somebody who uses a computer in order to use a computer. – Douglas Adams, 6:18

Poetry in products, a la Steve:

> To me the spark of that was that there was something beyond sort of what you see every day. It’s the same thing that causes people to want to be poets instead of bankers. And I think that’s a wonderful thing. And I think that that same spirit can be put into products, and those products can be manufactured and given to people and they can sense that spirit. – Steve Jobs, 30:00

### Part 2

A good test for your beauracracy: how long would it take for your company to ship an empty box?

> At one point somebody kind of looked at the process to see well, you know, what’s it doing and what’s the overhead built into it, what they found is that it would take at least nine months to ship an empty box. – 6:00

“DOS” comes from “QDOS”–“Quick and dirty operating system”. So did that make DOS just dirty? – 22:00

### Part 3

What PARC was really about:

> People came there specifically to work on five year programs that were their dreams. – Adele Goldberg, former Xerox PARC Researcher

How to design, a la Steve:

> Ultimately it comes down to taste. It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then try to bring those things in to what you’re doing. – Steve Jobs, 26:00

Though that doesn’t guarantee success; the importance of innovating in business strategy as well:

> The problem was the industry wasn’t measured by who has the best selling personal computer or who has the most innovative technology. The industry was measured by who had the most open system that was adopted by the most other companies and the Microsoft strategy ultimately turned out to be the better business strategy. – John Sculley, 39:00

More good Chuck Jones

From the [Charlie Rose interview](http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3614849423230018899#0h22m00s) with [the great cartoonist](http://ryskamp.org/brain/films/notes-from-chuck-jones-extremes-and-inbetweens):

> We soon discovered that with humor, the more a person is playing a bit crazy, the funnier it is…The more you narrow a character down, the better it gets; the more fat you can pull out. – 24:00

> Humor is always based on the loser; that’s why we always understand them so much better. – 27:30

> A good animator, working for a director, can produce maybe 15 seconds of screen time per week–with the help of an assistant. – 42:00

He draws throughout the interview; consistently uses lengthy quotations of others.

Notes from Charles Mingus: Triumph of the Underdog

Interesting film about the jazz legend ([Netflix](http://www.netflix.com/Movie/Charles_Mingus_Triumph_of_the_Underdog/1192049))

> Mingus’s personality ran like the color spectrum, from hot to cold. From beautiful to, well, you take it from there – John Handy, 6:00

> Charles was just testing people, to see how far he could go. And he went very far; most people did not confront him. – Sue, 7:45

The importance of finding “your component”–someone who can match with you.

> If I could find my component–you see, like you take a light and screw it into a socket, you dig? Well this [light bulb] ain’t nothing by itself, but you screw it in the socket, it lights up, dig? – 9:00

His wide-ranged personality translated into a wide range of music:

> His music is one of the widest-ranging sets of music you can find composed by one single human being – Gunther Schuller, 11:00

> He was not victimized by a style. – Wynton Marsalis, 12:30

Like Thelonious Monk (“I like all kinds of music”), he denied giving things names, categorizing it – 13:00

Struggled a lot to join an existing ethnic group, but with a black and Swedish father, a Chinese-black mother, and a black-Indian stepmother he didn’t fit in with any of them. – 18:00

Studied European composers Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and Bartok before playing a lot of jazz – 19:00

> I had a right to love Duke [Ellington] because everyone has a right to tune into something they love. – 20:45

Once told a loud audience, “Ok, you won’t shut up. How about doing fours with us? We’ll play four bars, and you shut up, then you can do whatever you want for four bars, and we’ll accompany you.’ “And it worked, and they loved it.” – Eddie Bert, 30:30

> We have a straight line, like a railroad track, but we don’t play a straight line–we suggest the line [by playing notes around it]. – 33:00

> Charles said, ‘Well, I like what you’re doing, but you must remember that your playing is the same as a conversation. When you walk in the room, you don’t just say “Hellowaywhoahyeah!!”…first you say ‘hello’, take a breath, ‘how are you’…and you take another breath. And it’s like a graph, you start here and go round and round and it gets larger and larger, and at the same time you have to come back to where you started. – Dannie Richmond, 34:30

He’d write parts that were a little harder than what you last played–and harder than you thought you could play–to help the group grow. – 37:45

> He wrote parts…that were a little out of the range of most of the instruments, because he liked the sound of the struggle – Lew Soloff – 37:00

Even when he was paralyzed by ALS, he would still sing into a tape recorder to compose new music. – 1:02:45

Notes from Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser

Film mostly made of recovered footage, called “the Dead Sea Scrolls of jazz”. ([Netflix](http://www.netflix.com/Movie/Thelonious_Monk_Straight_No_Chaser/60003961))

> In the bebop period…the musicians weren’t obviously trying to please an audience, but they were playing their music their way. It was a real independent expression. – Harry Colomby, 11:40

In NYC you had to have a police-stamped card in order to be a musician. If you committed a crime, the police took your card away. Monk had his taken away helping a friend evade arrest for drugs. – 14:00. Interesting that this was even a system!

Start with a little bit:

> If you get four bars done, you might have something. – 19:30

The beauty of simplicity:

> I want it to be as easy as possible so people can dig it. Then it’ll be good. – 20:30

Don’t overpractice:

> Usually we’d take the first take, sometimes the second, but never the third. He’d say ‘Once you play it the first time, that’s the way the feeling and everything is. And after that, you start going downhill.’ And it’s more like a challenge when you do that. You know that you got to play it correctly the first or second take, or that’s it. He would take it any how. If you mess up, well that’s it–it’s your problem, and you have to heard that all the rest of your life.- Charlie Rouse, 22:30

After all:

> You rehearse every time you play on an instrument. – 24:45

He works so hard, sweating constantly even on slow pieces, wiping his brow during the middle of a solo.

Interesting quote from [the Guardian on his first visit to London](http://century.guardian.co.uk/1960-1969/Story/0,,105533,00.html):

> He does not take his jazz the easy way. Each note is apparently considered, weighed, analysed and then reluctantly committed to the audience. It does not make for easy listening, but why should it? Although he has a superb sense of melody he seems less than happy with it and prefers to explore the intricacies of harmonic improvisation, finding a nerve-tingling discord and playing moodily with it while he considers how to get himself out of it.

> Interviewer: Do you think the piano has enough keys? Those 88?

> Monk: Well, it’s hard work to play those 88 – 1:00:45

His styles today don’t seem so shocking, but given the musical landscape at the time they were hugely innovative. Monk paved the way for so much more.

At one point he just got overwhelmed and stopped playing, confessing that he was “very sick”. Never spoke of it again, but was clearly wrestling inside of himself with something. – 1:21:00