September, at last. The return to school is a major milestone toward some degree of normalcy in our day-to-day routines. Nowhere near as normal as we’d hoped, alas, but we’ll take what we can get. On to the newsletter!
Something We Like: Creative Constraints
Zach: One topic I plan to revisit often in this newsletter is the topic of creative constraints in production because a better understanding of constraints can help you make better production decisions for your communications and marketing.
Constraints are the most helpful ingredients in any creative process. Creating something original, memorable, and effective is a process of distillation. This is especially true in film, where two or three images that may flash on-screen for a split-second must communicate complex, specific emotions, connections, and messages.
Good craft is more about editing or cutting away than it is about generation.
Michelangelo once said: "I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free." This is particularly helpful lens for understanding constraints. As innovative, explosive, and mind-melting as his statue of David is (you really must see it in person if you can), the scale and pose were dictated by a number of clear constraints.
Michelangelo could have freed angels of any kind from that hunk of marble, but he was provided with the following constraints:
A statue of David was specifically ordered. Subject constraint.
The block of marble was quarried many years before and already owned by the client. Scope and medium constraint.
Agostino di Duccio had shaped the torso and legs 36 years before Michelangelo ever touched it with a chisel, ten years before he was born.
Talk about helpful constraints ... While Michelangelo had a huge creative valley to play in, with room to make exciting decisions like an action pose and a political message, the predefined slopes helped guide him toward what most consider one of the greatest works of art ever created.
If constraints could help lead to the creation of Il Davide, they can certainly help with your next video campaign.
The most important initial constraints that need to be set for effective production are Objectives, Timeline, and Budget. Everyone understands the middle one. The other two are more complicated. We’ll cover them more in future newsletters.
Something We Read: “Wonderworks”
Matt: I, too, have been thinking a lot about the art and science of storytelling this month after getting lost inside Angus Fletcher’s “Wonderworks.”
Fletcher is one of those annoying people who’s good at everything, and he draws on his dual degrees in neuroscience and literature (nerd!) to develop his thesis that storytelling is itself a form of technology, one developed over years “for overcoming the doubt and the pain of just being us.”
Here’s an example about how the brain reacts to repetition in Mark Anthony’s funeral speech in Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar.” You remember that one, yes?
Says Fletcher: “Anthony’s repetition … creates a light sensation of deja vu that makes the brain self-conscious. In that self-conscious state, out brain is pulled out of its passive viewing experience and prompted to take a more active second, third and fourth look at our internalized belief that Brutus is an honorable man. … So, a belief that initially slipped inside our head without resistance becomes a repeated object of our conscious judgment.” This is your brain, on Shakespeare. Any questions?
When I started at Short Order a few years ago, I was dazzled by the actual technology sitting around the offices — the drones, the cameras, the magicks and spells that a good editor can cast inside the computer to make raw film into something watchable. But the most powerful tool we have at our disposal is still a good story, with all of the techniques and technologies developed through millennia of experimentation.
Lots of people come to us looking for a video that helps do … something. Maybe raise money, or show gratitude, or encourage new thinking, or just create a feeling of pride in members of a team. (Thankfully, no one has yet asked me to help them overcome the doubt and pain of “just being us.” Yikes.) “Wonderworks” reminds us that storytelling is itself a tool to accomplish all these things and more. It’s a tool that’s hard to precisely calibrate, no doubt — finding just the right story to achieve the desired effect is quite a trick — but when you get it right, there’s not much better.
(And FYI: Some critics really hated the book for reducing great works of literature to self-help books. I take the point, but what is art if not something meant to lift the spirit and expand our understanding of what is possible?)
(And FYI again: I first heard about Fletcher on this episode of Malcolm Gladwell’s “Revisionist History” podcast, discussing how the moral messages of fairytales have changed over the years. Fascinating stuff there.)
Something We Made: Inside the Chemours Discovery Hub
Matt: One of the very last things we did before lockdown in 2020 was to attend the grand opening of the Chemours Discovery Hub on the STAR Campus of the University of Delaware. It was an exciting day — the doors were open, the page was turning to a new chapter in Delaware’s chemical engineering history, and then …
… no one was allowed to come and visit.
A year later, we went back into the Discovery Hub to show people what was happening inside Delaware’s premier R&D facility. So if you’ve ever found yourself in a ginormous car line for a COVID test on the STAR Campus (we’ve been there) and wondered what was inside that Chemours building with the molecule out front, wonder no more!
The Final Bits
Still reading? You’re the kind of person who listens to the credits at the end of a podcast, aren’t you? (You’re our people…don’t tell the others.) Let us know what’s up with you by sending us electronic mail messages, to Zach at zach@shortorder.co and Matt at matt@shortorder.co, or give a call at 302-656-1638. We’d love to hear about what you’re up to.
Sincerely,
The Short Order Team