They Want To Be Moved

Google’s first Super Bowl commercial wasn’t a high budget Hollywood production. It was a screen recording:

It’s amazing how simple but complex this video is. The basic elements aren’t complicated:

• Music
• Screen recordings
• Sound FX

Easy right? I’m sure anyone could screen record a bunch of Google searches and edit them together in iMovie with some stock music underneath. But what kind of music will you pick? How will you cut from one recording to the next? How long should the cursor blink for at the beginning? What is being typed into the search bar?

All of these things require one thing other than two hands and an iMac: taste.

The kind of taste that requires the author to be in touch with what they’re feeling so that they can translate it. Because as the creator of Google’s “Parisian Love” Anthony Cafaro says,

“People don’t want to feel like they’re being told something—they want to be entertained, they want to be moved.

See The Extraordinary In The Seemingly Mundane

If you’ve got the capability, the challenge is not making the video, it’s what video you make. How do you zero in on the right thing? This relates to Kierkegaard’s story about being “happy in the art that we practice.” The right thing is usually right in front of you. Rick Rubin says that:

“As artists we aim to live in a way in which we see the extraordinary in the seemingly mundane. Then challenge ourselves to share what we see in a way that allows others a glimpse of this remarkable beauty.”

It’s your job to make the mundane seem extraordinary. Google searches are boring, that video is not. Sitting at your computer typing is boring, adding music and text over the top of it is not. Transforming what you think is boring into something exciting is a great place to start when making something new.

Stand In A Corner, Face The Wall

John Coltrane was relentless about practicing. Before a recording session he would show up an hour early, “stand in a corner, face the wall, play, stop, change reeds, and start again. After a while he would settle on the mouthpiece and reed that felt most comfortable to him, and then he would start to work on the ‘runs’ that he wanted to use during the session.” He’d play the same thing over and over again, adjusting his breath and fingers, making slight changes as he went. But despite his meticulous routine, he still wondered when he’d play what he was hearing in his head.

“I believe when you say that you make almost what you want, in a way you do, but like when. That seems to be the part that we don’t have much to do with. You kind of set your course, but when you arrive and things like that, you know. It doesn’t always happen as you plan.”

Do it consistently but don’t count on the results. That part isn’t up to you. Standing in the corner, facing the wall, and practicing, that is.

Talk to you next week,

Dawson