Who translates your ideas?

“Metaphor is the currency of knowledge. I have spent my life learning incredible amounts of disparate, disconnected, obscure, useless pieces of knowledge, and they have turned out to be, almost all of them, extremely useful. Why. Because there is no such thing as disconnected facts. There is only complex structure. And both to explain complex structure to others and, perhaps more important - this is forgotten, usually - to understand them oneself, one needs better metaphors. If I was able to understand this, it was because my chaotic accrual of information simply gave me better metaphors than anyone else.

My father always said if you translate a proverb from one language into another, you pass for a poet. The same can be said for science. Work strictly within one area, and it’s diminishing returns, hard to make progress. But translate a concept from its field for use where it is unknown, and it is always fresh and powerful. In buying outside, you are doing intellectual arbitrage. The rate limiting step in this is your willingness to continuously translate, to force strange languages to be yours, to live in between, to be everywhere and nowhere.”

Luca Turin via Chandler Burr in “The Emperor of Scent.” 


Last year my friend Gordon and I decided to get together, catch up and attend the Mind 08 Symposium, a day of presentations around MoMA’s “Design and the Elastic Mind” hosted by SEED magazine and moderated by the brilliant Paola Antonelli. Amongst the talks about design and science there is a presentation by Chandler Burr on olfaction. With no visual aids, no laptop, no powerpoint, and only reading from the books he is carrying, Burr manages to convey the complexity of smell in elegant witty language. He is charismatic, knowledgeable, a great presenter. His talk comes to an end quickly, time flies. This gets filed in my head.

More than a year later I am finally reading Burr’s books. I get to “The Emperor of Scent,” and there I run into the two paragraphs above. 


It is as if I am looking at a mirror, there in words, I am defined. I am utterly surprised. Such simple thoughts clearly stating what I’ve been doing my whole life. I am a deeply curious generalist searching for the next bit of interesting information, bits of data stuck in my head, prepared to become an expert at a moments notice. Surrounded by interesting and interested people. Artists, artisans and technicians that allow me to annoy them with questions and welcome my suggestions, my unexpected juxtapositions. Always ready to get things done, because, above all, I too want to see the end result.

I am a thought hunter, sharer and producer. I am a meticulously organized OCDoer. I am an efficient catalyst. I am an idea translator.

In the beginning

Opening title sequences are where some of the best storytelling creative work is taking place and often are better than the movie that follows them. Unlike teasers and trailers, which tend to give too much away trying to entice you, with the title sequence you have an audience already committed to the movie. This is an opportunity for the filmmakers to enhance the story being told. If done right the titles can set the visual and narrative mood and even become an integral part of the story. But these sequences are not just a creative playground, they are bound by the contractual obligations of how long, in what order, at what size and font the names of the players are shown. 

The first time I became aware of the titles of a movie having an impact on the story was "Se7en." Gritty, raw and a perfect introduction to the criminal mind of the villain:

Another sequence that remains very clear in my mind is the opening for "Catch Me if You Can." Inspired by the legendary Saul Bass, the sequence integrates the names of the performers into what turns out to be a mini reproduction of the whole movie you are about to see. 

Saul Bass, a brilliant graphic artists that frequently worked with Hitchcock, created some of the most memorable titles. Here are the credits for "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World:" 

His work is beloved and imitated to this day, sometimes to great effect. 

 

If you enjoy these then you must visit The Art of the Title Sequence. Featuring HD video, commentary and interviews with the creatives, producers and filmmakers behind some of the best titles ever. The site curates a series highlighting Single Take Titles that make you wonder how many takes it took to achieve the final result. Click on these links to see "The Player," "Touch of Evil" and "JCVD" in all their crisp visual glory. 

It's a shame that tv shows can no longer afford the time to have title sequences as well. Those shows that do have elaborate opening titles, mostly on cable, demonstrate how the art of the title sequence can work on the small screen. (Does anyone have small screens at home anymore? I guess you do, if we count computers and mobile devices. More on television viewing on a later post.)   

Here are a few standouts:

True Blood

Mad Men - embedding not allowed, click to view.

House


Nip/Tuck - embedding not allowed, click to view. 

United States of Tara
 

Six Feet Under

 Carnivale


Here are two international tv show sequences I like. Though these shows are vastly different their openings have something in common, they do not include any credits, instead using the sequence to dive you right into the stories.

Skins


Spooks
 

In the end, any work that manages to convey so much in less than 60 seconds is worth watching. 


Related:
The Art of Title: web, facebook, twitter 

 

The Meaning of Work (A TED Remix)

What do you do for a living?

The question that starts most conversations between people that have just met. Our careers tend to define who we are. Careers that more often than not where chosen by our uninformed younger selves. This year the nature of work, of economics and of business has changed radically. Many have, voluntarily or not, begun to reconsider their careers choices. How do you define your career? What is success for you? Are you happy and motivated in your job? Are you rewarded positively by your employers? 





The TED Conference (Technology, Entertainment and Design) brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes.) Each conference is structured around an overarching idea. A TED Remix is a new juxtaposition of talks around a specific theme.

Related:
Alain de Botton: web, facebook, twitter, wiki
Dan Pink: web, facebook, twitter, wiki
Mike Rowe: web, facebook, twitter, wiki

Sally Hogshead’s Radical Careering: 100 Truths to Jumpstart Your Job, Your Career, and Your Life
Claudia Shear’s Blown Sideways Through Life: A Hilarious Tour de Resume
Alain De Botton’s The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work
Alain De Botton’s Status Anxiety
Dan Pink’s Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (Pre-order)
Dan Pink’s A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future
Dan Pink’s Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself
Mike Rowe’s Dirty Jobs: Collection 1 

 

The Matrix vs. Lego

This is not just another cool clip. It is also an example of remix culture. Two icons mashed up together to create something, well, awesome. Like everything that inspires, it is made to look effortless, as if the clip was put together while playing. But underneath the fun is an incredible amount of work, superb attention to detail and specificity, which is what makes the clip work. It is almost frame by frame a perfect reproduction of the original. 

“A C++ program called falling was created to generate the falling rain characters and output them to a set of frames that LegoBoard could use to create an image sequence. Falling uses a mini “kernel” to give animation time to the falling rain character “processes”.

That was my favorite quote from the making-of site, you must visit, until I read this one:

“We did 8 takes of this, but settled on the 3rd one that was filmed. The last one may have been technically superior, but this third one had more charm.”

But then I saw this:

“We also had to watch the original footage a bit to work out the number and placement of all the dead bodies.”

Have you met @SirKenRobinson?

“If you are not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”

 

Inspiring education advocate Sir Ken Robinson recently launched a new website at sirkenrobinson.com.

 

Sir Robinson’s talk on creativity and education was one of the very first talks released by TED on the web and has been downloaded over 3.5 million times in over 200 countries, making him an admired expert on creativity, innovation and education. You can view the charming talk here.

 

Most recently he wrote the book The Element, which he describes as “the place where passion and skill meet. People find The Element when they engage in the thing that they love that they are also especially good at doing.” The book encourages us to follow our passions.

 

Here is the (long but worthwhile) talk he recently presented at UCLA as part of the Hammer Lectures:

 

 

Visit his website and make sure to follow him on twitter and facebook.