aseroff's tumbltown

Frugality Review: Superior Nut Company's Gourmet Hot & Spicy Peanuts (Fancy Grade)

Fri, 17 May 2013 13:22:00 -0700

I like to bargain shop with my groceries, because quality roulette is a very low-risk way to stave off the bores of routine. And one thing I like to pick up at my local Grocery Outlet is some sort of snack for next to the computer, and lately that’s meant trail mix. Trail mix is the frugal snack compared to bulk nuts - with expensive cashews or pistachios rare among the far cheaper raisins and peanuts.

So I was in the protein and DVDs section of GrossOut and my eyes spotted a large supply of very large (1.6 lb) cans of nuts with a red cap, towering over other nut packages. Buying in bulk was appealing, given my rate of computer-side snacking, so I check the price - $2.49.

There must be something seriously wrong with these peanuts.

Upon examination, these peanuts are coated in a fine orange powder smelling faintly of mesquite. Oddly, the powder has no flavor, as the peanut goes down tasting entirely normal.

I was already determining if they were bad or just boring, when my throat started closing up, tasting of what can only be described as peanut death. A sharp pain in my side brings my mortality to my attention. The right side of my head starts throbbing as my ear starts to ring, all while the protein necromancy occurring in my throat has escalated to a spreading sensory plague, devouring the length of my esophagus like mesquite lava rolling over a hot shit factory.

Desperately chugging from my glass, I attempt to neutralize the chemical reaction, but the water feels as if it sits on a cushion of awful, shooting down my throat without accomplishing its task. This chemical’s malicious creator devised protection against its weapon’s glowing weak spot. Will we be safe in a world where tongues can be held hostage?

My entire head is throbbing upwards, and I begin to consider to possibility of the government putting granulated LSD in select peanut products in a malicious test at the expense of the nation’s most frugal. My neck is swelling, but the volatile chemical reaction in my throat have mostly subsided.

I silently curse GrossOut with teary eyes and a raised fist, clenching through the pain. I wouldn’t serve these at a dinner party full of mortal enemies, and if Satan serves them in Hell, I’d have to tip my hat to his fortitude. My vision blurs, my sinuses close, and my gut rumbles its warning sound to the systems below.

The second peanut wasn’t as bad, though. I guess you just get used to it.

FRUGAL BUY: 10/10

Cons: Intestinal discomfort, esophageal burns, possible brain function loss, minor fugue experiences, retching, deathbed conversion, dilated pupils.

Pros: You really just can’t get 1.6 lbs of peanuts for $2.49

A Silicon Valley Reading of Betas

Thu, 02 May 2013 17:03:00 -0700

Betas has been picked up by Amazon Studios,

Betas Pilot

0:00

We zoom in from Google Earth to a communal hacker space in Silicon Valley. Within 15 seconds, Nash (Karan Soni) has deemed the workspace “unacceptable” and stomps to the door. And in 15 seconds, we have our first signal to the tone of Betas. The listening to soothing music to try to drown out distractions is real to all of us. But hacker spaces are generally considered to be highly productive environments (though easily mistaken for start-ups, which Nerf gun battles are commonplace). Is this the creators breaking any expectations of realism right off the bat, signalling comedic liberty with elements of start-up life? Or a simple plot contrivance to keep the cast at a low rung of start-up experience, but still signalling to the young, loose workspace of start-ups?

1:00

Trey (Joe Dinicol, or “Silicon Valley Justin Long”) is trying to find a parking spot, when an app called Valet Me pops up with a map to a spot. He is relieved, parks easily, and the app proclaims “Jolly well parked, sir!” before a call comes up from Nash.

Before any greeting, Trey rants about how much of a joke it is that Valet Me just closed Series A funding. This hilarious reversal of expectations is perfect: a normal person would be so glad to find a parking spot, that they might even recount the experience to a friend before saying hello. That, in fact, is a start-up’s dream customer acquisition: word of mouth, friend endorsement. But this isn’t about those hypothetical normal people that start-up boardrooms strategize over. This is about the cynical people in the start-up business, who see past the strategy and dig into the business behind it all. They also happen to be the early adopters: Trey utilizing an app he does not believe in is very realistic. Many call it ”competitor’s research”, or ”benchmarking,” but it often leads to these hypocritical experiences, where you are the market, and it works perfectly, but you still hate it.

Later in the conversation, not sure what to make of Nash calling Billy Joel “shit.” I read it more as a neurotic caricature than a relatable start-up type, but he appears to be having a crisis, so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.

1:45

Hobbes appears to be having cyber-sex of some type, assumed paid webcam “shows” given the slob-vibe of the character. And then he turns out to be in a laundromat, just chatting while waiting for his laundry. I can see how this scene could simultaneously establish character and setting, but by later painting the character as an out-of-control abuser of Mitch’s friendship, the whole scene ends up on his character, and none on the setting, which I believe was the intent of the laundromat reveal. Besides, I’ve never heard of anyone doing anything like that, even here.

The rest of the dialog between them is unremarkable, especially the end-of-scene zinger.

3:00

Okay, they’re pitching an app called “brb” (terrible SEO!) to a renouned venture capitalist - this was to be expected, maybe not so soon, but great, I’m glad the cat’s out of the bag. The writers know what bootstrapping is, they know what it’s like to be technically behind schedule (is there any other way?) , and they know there’s resentment over the perception of the start-up valuation inflation. Another bad end-of-scene moment (not really a joke, just, awkward), then…

Title

The title of the series intrigued me. For one, it signals software development, but also, a recently rising cyber-sociological term for being not an alpha-male. So I imagined software men pursuing women poorly. This title card, however, indicates a strong influence by The IT Crowd, which is vaguely in the same ballpark as the “Big Bang Theory meets The Social Network” Betas was billed as.

3:45

Answer revealed: Mitch and Hobbes immediately begin poorly pursuing someone in their hacker space. An inauspicious start for now. They see Nash and Trey fighting. Overhearing their argument, Trey seems to be the stereotypical CEO, business-sense sort of guy, and Nash, the stereotypical secluded technical genius. It just also happens to be that Nash is also given the neurotic worrier in the relationship (usually the CEO, whose job it is to makes promises to people but often lack the technical skill to help ship product) to offset Trey’s Justin Long easiness, and this cocktail ends up looking like a very unfavorable, stereotypical comedic Indian (like Kunal Nayyar’s Raj from Big Bang Theory). Unfortunate, but far more accessible, and when you’re distributing on Amazon, do you really even know what your demographic is?

5:30

From the hackerspace to a bar, and all the sudden, the jokes get better. The banter of the b-plot boys at the workspace mostly contained frivolous pop culture jokes (that, while maybe commonplace, do little to build this shaky start-up setting), but the far more conventional bar setting brings out a Leeroy Jenkins joke, the hacker mentality of diagramming on a beer menu blackboard, and the love-hate relationship with members of other start-ups (the Valet Me team arrives, celebrating funding).

6:20

Trey follows Nash to the alley to give a start-up pep-talk, and stripped of the conventional sitcom rhythm, it’s finally feeling like The Social Network all the sudden- organically funny, a little exposed, dramatic. It’s a breath of fresh air, and the promise of serious drama. It’s a crucial scene because to buy into the premise, you have to believe they have stakes in it, and by now, it’s all they’ve talked about.

And if you didn’t feel it there, Trey comes back inside and proclaims that their app will actually encourage face-to-face social interaction, which is both a remedy to a common Silicon Valley cultural complaint (“everyone’s looking at screens!”) and a paradoxical start-up El Dorado of sorts (you try making an app that helps you not use said app).

A clever way to never face overlap with real life is to make your fictional app impossible, and by doing so, they’ve established the credibility of the co-founder conflicts, the magnitude of the story, and given the audience a taste of what it’s like to emotionally invest in something that’s just a server full of files somewhere, full of potential, but facing the challenge of getting started.

And if that TinyWings joke was a reference to Tiny Planes, I agree with Mitch- it is heat waves, baby.

9:00

The B-plot boys are back, being irrelevant and awkward and beta. Hobbes cracks a noteworthy joke about 35 being 95 in Valley years, which is not a saying I’ve ever heard, but the mentality exists. Entrepreneurs can go through handfuls of failed start-ups hunting the big score, and providers for families tend to find more stability elsewhere, so Hobbe’s age is actually a compelling character trait for the enigmatic oaf, as well as being an endless source of material for the future.

12:15

Jumping a venture capitalist at his house party is a great misdirection from the limitations of a boring meeting room to the spectatorship of a house party for the rich and famous. The dialog between Nash and Trey is not landing well still, but that’s something that will age with the increasing complexity of these characters.

14:00

Impulse Amazon shopping - very start-up, and I’m sure Beta’s distributor won’t mind.

Hobbes explains to Mitch that to get the girl he wants, he needs to “take out the alpha”. Another tally for Beta’s core element being the sitcommy antics of the ineffectual male, though that and serial start-up dramedy are not mutually exclusive.

15:15

Moby speaking cameo. Had to mention it.

17:05

Trey interacts with attractive single female, supposed target market for his app. We’re back to colorless banter to get from point A to point B - the woman is in business with their target VC. The twist was nice, and hopefully a sign of complexity to come.

17:30

Comically, the B-plot boys’ failed espionage ends up working out for the end goal of being on good terms with Mikki. At this point I cannot care less about Mitch and Mikki, but her decent slap of his poor social etiquette with video gaming and hashtags got a chuckle out of me. It’s not grounded in reality, since “hashtag” is used routinely for sarcasm or irony, and the video game genre is skyrocketing in respectability. It was just a cheap beta male sitcom joke, one that with fuller characters could’ve been richer but more niche - something they might have been avoiding.

19:15

They get five minutes to give the VC their elevator pitch- a crucial step in the start-up fairy tale (in reality and in conventional narratives). But I can’t imagine many of them started with this poor of a mock-up:

I notice the value prop changed a little bit throughout the episode, and it turns out it’s because it’s an even more impossible of an app than previously believed: a New Facebook, but on top of that, a New Facebook for doing things with strangers. And forget avoiding a real start-up space- since their product is a (classic) genius-but-fuzzy algorithm for doing anything socially, it’s a narrative Pandora’s box. It’s can transcend its role as serial plot device and drive episodic plot at any given time. That’s some flexibility.

Then the VC explains bondage while smoking an out-of-frame hookah, which besides being a funny reveal, humanizes the previously all-business character as a once-wild start-up veteran instead of just as The Money.

21:00

B-plot finally takes a turn for the better as the three characters play a texting prank on the alpha of previous. It’s funny, it illustrates the phenomenon of the internet desensitizing us to graphic imagery and human relations, and…

Another bad joke to cap off the scene. It appears Mitch’s beta-ness takes the form of reciting memes at the end of conversations. Memes are such interesting subject material (though not always of enough substance to make good comedic fodder), and it’s a shame they’re not being used to greater effect. On the other hand, who here has met that annoying guy who recites memes awkwardly? Thought so.

22:00

Trey’s last chance at convincing the VC is very authentic. In the world of massive valuations for internet properties, it makes an entrepreneur bitter to see short-sighted businesses and their teams succeed, while ambitious game-changers never get the chance to get off the ground. This plays to great effect when, once again, Trey parks his car to the cheerful sounds of Valet Me, and he throws his phone in anguish. An understated moment that could have been funny written ten other ways (and none new to the episode), yet they chose the simplicity of irony.

Final Thoughts

The pilot for Betas is very turbulent thematically, but offers an above-average portion of tech-literate jokes through its well-engineered start-up tale. The depiction of start-up culture in the Bay Area fluxuates between impeccably precise, to simplified for better storytelling, and none so offensive that I’d be worried for future material. So long as Mitch and Hobbes eventually cross over into being relevant to the start-up A-plot, I’ll stomach their brutally awkward workplace romance comedy B-plots.

I’m still at a loss for the original voice of Betas. There was very little new in Betas; even the titular conflict manifested itself as the very oversaturated woman-being-cold-to-smart-sounding-man trope more than any original tech take on the topic. I was hoping for something that read like Sorkin if he pitched The Social Network to HBO instead of making it for the big screen, and what I got was one part that plus one part BBT, garnish with Workaholics and serve with any Justin Long movie where he disrupts the status quo for the good of his generation.

I am optimistic for future episodes because most of the pilot’s problems can be fixed easily. I am concerned because I’m not convinced what show I want Betas to be is the same as what show the writers want Betas to be.

Photo

Sat, 06 Apr 2013 19:20:11 -0700

I think i am in friend-love with you

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 13:03:07 -0800

noscrnam:

Writer and artist Yumi Sakugawa gets all of this one.

A Normal Life

Fri, 08 Feb 2013 13:54:36 -0800

“We’ve done it,” the scientists proclaimed.

“The map of most average human genome is complete.”

What to call the pinnacle of normalcy?

When Norm was born, there were national news broadcasts

Live on the scene, with breaking developments of ordinary.

While Norm grew up, he was a local celebrity

His mundane home highlighted on any map.

When Norm graduated, his name rang a bell

“Where is Norm now?” was on many’s minds.

When Norm got a job, his face looked familiar

“Do I know you?” “Have we met?”

And that’s as much as we know about Norm

He’s been missing since then.

The Start-Up Prayer

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 03:19:25 -0800

God grant me the serenity to accept the problems I cannot fix with a start-up;
the courage to start-up the problems I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

schadendfreude: 76% of the country thinks a one-loss team...

Wed, 21 Nov 2012 12:30:53 -0800

schadendfreude:

76% of the country thinks a one-loss team dropped a game “for funsies.”

24% of the country be sippin’ on haterade.

My interwebs pal @ellievhall (of ArrestedDecision2012) are doing Touchdown Jesus’s work over here. Take a look before we slip back into mediocrity! (We’re losing a lot of seniors)

Why You Should Try Social TV Apps

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 15:53:00 -0800

Ever since we all started tweeting while watching TV, thousands of media types have been trying to come up with a way to get you on their team. Some sent you stickers, some sent you gift cards, some tried to give you content around the episode you were watching (granted, some methods are more effective than others). Ultimately, I agree with my founder Somrat Niyogi who rightly pointed at switching cost from Twitter as the culprit turning this promising space into a field of duds.

Today, I’m going to give you a few reasons why you should try out that social TV app.

I. Future Social TV: They can’t make what you want if you don’t tell them what you want.

We can all imagine a wondrous, magical social TV experience. Voting for a contestant via an app as opposed to calling in. Seeing comments from your friends appear as you watch the episode. Having the stats of the game you’re watching, one tap away.

A major problem with the second screen space right now is that we’re is looking for an all-in-one app - each of these 2nd screen products on its own is not that impressive and not seen worth the switching cost. This user demand is in direct conflict with the start-ups mantra “nail it, then scale it” (meaning start by doing one thing well).

If you’re at all familiar with start-ups, you know that users (specifically, monthly active users) is the universal currency for success, not revenue. This dovetails nicely with tech trend that indicates more than ever, what a consumer uses has a greater influence on their world than what a consumer buys. Therefore, I encourage you to vote with your actions. If you believe in widespread social TV beyond the Twitter stream and Storify summaries, be an advocate for the foundation of next generation media technology.

When you advocate a service, everyone wins. You are informing the industry, as well as your peers, what you think constitutes a valuable social TV experience.

II. Current Social TV: Foundation for more elaborate services

The current state of the industry is fragmented, and as a result, so will be the experience of anyone partaking in multiple social TV products. On behalf of everyone, I apologize that innovation + business = lots of little incremental steps.

That being said, there are two apps I would like to recommend. You’ve probably seen them around and didn’t care enough to check them out, but now that I got you thinking about the incentives of buying in despite the fetal state of the industry, maybe you’ll investigate.

Miso’s Quips allows you to find a frame of (practically) any scripted program to go with your tweet or Facebook post.
Yahoo’s IntoNow has a feature called Capit, which is similar to Quips. ACR (“shazam”) detects what live show you’re watching, and gives you frames from around that point in time to add to your tweet or Facebook post.

Why two image-grabbing services? For one, a social TV service should promote screen literacy (if we’re talking about screens, we should speak the same language). Imagine including that actor’s perfect facial expression to go with your joke, or sharing an Easter egg you spotted in a show’s background with the frame to prove it. Second, they’re supplementary to the current social TV status quo, which is posting to your largest audience (Facebook and Twitter). They’re not trying to make you change your behavior, they’re trying to improve it when the time is right. Third, even without taking all your social TV business to their product, using these apps allows for them to continue designing and working towards something better. Their database will grow, meaning they can design something more omni-capable without fighting empty rooms and antsy investors. And finally, because they help make…

III. Future Social TV: A complete picture

Nielsen’s ratings are a common point of contention for anyone interested in television. Whether it’s a fan whose show got canceled, or a scheduler trying to optimize promotion and viewers, the ratings has evolved into a de facto recorded history for the medium, despite designed to simply determine ad sales rates. Up until now, there were very few quantifiable, widely-available resources to study the entire ecosystem. Social TV is the incredible opportunity to get a much bigger glimpse into one of the largest, yet most enigmatic industries, all while positively augmenting our collective experience.

Currently, Social TV is a “live-only” concept, in that it exists, functions, and disappears alongside the airing of a program.(1) Networks are happy to have another reason to get fans to watch live and watch commercials, and Twitter is happy to help. You know as well as I, however, that live only constitutes a (shrinking) portion of television viewing. Left out of the equation is DVR users, pirates, and the entire West Coast. As an academic, industry professional, or fellow TV nut, we know what damage an incomplete picture can cause (see: Nielsen).

(1. Social TV experiences on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, et al. orient around a real-time system that was misappropriated for TV. A dedicated Social TV app would orient experiences around screen time, not real time. This is non-negotiable, because time-shifted viewing will slowly dominate TV consumption.)

We should fight for the democratized system that most completely expresses the television viewer. By using and sharing services that recognize and facilitate time-shifted viewing, we’re not just casting a vote of confidence in the value of a more comprehensive picture, we’re voting against the incomplete picture, which is currently dominating the space.

IV. Afterthoughts

Hopefully I have given you some perspective into the challenges of working in entertainment technology. From up here, Silicon Valley and Hollywood look like a odd couple pairing of The Unstoppable Force and The Immovable Object. They overcome their differences…while fighting crime. Fall 2013.

In closing, explore social TV. There are a lot of interesting services out there, so if you find a good one, keep it around. The world will be better for it.

edit Feb 2013:

A spoiler for the west coast is trending!You did it, East coast!
— Brian Collins (@BrianWCollins) February 8, 2013

Photo

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 16:07:00 -0700

474

The Perfect Match

NFDHOF #2: "Things Will Never Be The Same Again" Event Pilot

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 18:23:00 -0700

Almost a year ago, I introduced my disdain for overused narrative framing devices with this post on the Documentary Narrative.

I find myself inspired once again, this time by the ugly duckling of this Fall season’s lineup: Revolution. What is it about Revolution that has caused such resoundingly mixed feelings? I wanted to go inside and crack the case, and what I found is this year’s Narrative Framing Device Hall of Fame winner: the “Things Will Never Be The Same Again” Event Pilot.

You know what I mean - when the pilot of a series centers on the drama and intensity of The Mythology Event. The power goes out in Revolution. The plane crashes in LOST.(1) The advantage to starting your mythology series with this Event Pilot is that your pilot crackles like how a trailer only shows the best parts. They come out looking like miniature movies with ad breaks, and your entire premise is explained, which means you have your best shot at getting commitment from any curious audience, back to see if E2 is as good as the pilot.

1 To a large degree, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip started with their show’s major mythology right off the bat, with Lorne Michaels analog Wes Mendell exploding into rant, tearing apart the only thing that mattered to anyone: the show.

Inexplicably, as if required by some Hollywood writers’ guild clause, what comes immediately after the pilot is a two-part schematic that works as long into the season you need it to:

The journey of your A Time(2) exercises your setting in the main timeline by showing the trials of someone within your premise and its corresponding setting. Answers the question “What would it be like to live in a world where #{premise} happened?”
The B Time launches into flashbacks to the days leading up to and following The Event, tying sometimes mythology, sometimes arbitrary events from the past into these one-off A-plots.

2 I use the term “Time” to represent the timeline of an episodic story arc (present or flashback) which may contain not only a linear plot, but one or multiple connections to plot of other timelines as well.

There are a lot of good reasons to adhere to the Event Pilot structure when starting a show. For one, the extra screen time of the main characters cuts down on supporting cast costs. It also leads with the show’s best leg forward with that pilot, in the crucial ratings game. But like any good narrative device, it’s only a framework. Like we associate the concept of “people” as the fleshy bits around our bones, the show we’ll devour is what is draped over this serial narrative skeleton.

I’m not saying the Event Pilot is a bad expository mechanism. Two of the three examples I mentioned earlier are great shows. LOST’s first seasons, probably the copycat-inspiration for the structure, used it to quintessential effect. Instead, I think these narrative framing devices can be perfectly neutral, as strong or as weak as its contents.

Unfortunately, the structure is unnecessarily restrictive, and not a one-size-fits-all solution to every compelling premise. Revolution just happens to be the perfect example of Event Pilot gone bad.

I’m sure the writing staff of Revolution had good intentions. Drew out their season, chopped it up, and wrote little episodes that moved the plot along and adhered to the mold. What results is a complete fragmentation of pilot and E2. J.J. Abrams and company were so set on writing themselves into a formula, they forgot to ask themselves if they could build on their pilot, rather than diverting from it.

On top of chopping momentum off at the pilot, Revolution makes the all-too-common mistake of replacing serial direction with episodic direction, thinking the narrative structure can be a replacement for episodic intrigue and resolution. It starts with cutting even an enormous plan down into the amount of episodes a network primetime drama requires. The distance in the story covered can get so small, that the little episodic plots lose the connection to the intensity of the premise’s rising action. If the plots of different Times are connected meaningfully enough, it can offset the need for an A-plot that “brings you back,” but if it doesn’t, you end up with a lot of nothing.

Even if Revolution had the substance to fill out its frame, it lacks a heap of other things we’ve come to expect of top-tier dramas. Last year’s top dramas Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Game of Thrones, and even Homeland had exceptional mise en scène. (3) It’s a real missed opportunity of Revolution to not let the premise speak to the show’s mise en scène - imagine the possible thematic exploration of the dark, or the keepers of knowledge in an internet-less age. Instead, Revolution trudges through its own plot methodically, with a rather static screen tempo, never stopping to look around and make good TV.

3 It also lacks any original standout talent (sole standout Giancarlo Esposito being a returning favorite from Breaking Bad).

Essentially, the Event Pilot structure is strategic and restrictive, but certainly not a substitute for a deliberate narrative, and expository style. Shows like LOST used the Event Pilot formula to perfection, but thus far, Revolution appears to bring nothing new to a tired structure that doesn’t even fit the bill that well. Revolution may find its groove, but shows like Awake have proved that with some dramas, there’s no recovering from the slump of a bad first few post-pilot episodes.

Regardless of what happens to Revolution and the countless LOST clones still in the work, I’d like to congratulate the “Things Will Never Be The Same Again” Event Pilot into the 2012 class of the Narrative Device Hall of Fame. You were a success with a few, the cause of the failure of a few more, and will be overused until someone comes up with something better.

My housemates are homebrewers and we had just finished watching...

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 20:07:00 -0700

My housemates are homebrewers and we had just finished watching the entirety of the Avatar: The Last Airbender. I’m not a graphic designer by trade, so these beer labels were a bit of a learning pet project.

Room Key Card collection + Pick Punch = INFINITE PICKS (Taken...

Sat, 18 Aug 2012 12:08:20 -0700

Room Key Card collection + Pick Punch = INFINITE PICKS (Taken with Instagram)

Pop Tortes: The Legend of Korra Season 1 Roundtable Discussion

Thu, 16 Aug 2012 17:47:00 -0700

Pop Tortes: The Legend of Korra Season 1 Roundtable Discussion:

poptortes:

After The Legend of Korra ended its first season back in June, I asked a few of my Twitter friends and fellow Avatar/Korra fans to participate in a roundtable discussion about the first season. I knew that opinions about the finale were mixed, and I wanted to explore how different people reacted…

Like Korra? Like Avatar (the animated series)? Then read this discussion on them that I participated in! (For the record, I have since completed the original series)

My house’s GoT finale viewing party.

Sun, 03 Jun 2012 23:56:23 -0700

My house’s GoT finale viewing party.

Oh, my sketch of the Gorge at George. Sasquatch review upcoming.

Tue, 29 May 2012 23:41:27 -0700

Oh, my sketch of the Gorge at George. Sasquatch review upcoming.

QUEST

Sun, 06 May 2012 15:29:04 -0700

QUEST:

At risk of turning my personal blog into a curation of cool things made by friends of mine, you should check this comic out. To call it a “strip” would be inadequate, as it incorporates interactive elements with unconventional presentation to create an elevated storytelling experience. I love this direction and can’t wait to see more graphic storytelling in this style.

zargap:

This is QUEST, my first completely computer-made comic. It’s Photoshop, HTML, CSS and a little jQuery. I was really excited to work on an art thing using my HTML skillz since I’ve never really done it in a visual way like this. It’s mostly a tech demo/proof of concept, I hope to tighten up some of the art in the next couple of weeks.
Working on this convinced me to have an HTML component in my senior project, but I don’t really know what that means yet.

The Letter Unread: My Secret Diary

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 14:33:00 -0700

The Letter Unread: My Secret Diary:

theletterunread:

Despite having kept one for nearly four years, I’m still not sure for whom a journal is written. It can’t be written for other people, for that invites self-censorship (and furthermore, at that point, really, just do some editing and show people a short story if you want attention). At the same…

I do not normally reblog others, but I just had to share this incredible work by my prolific friend Luca. That’s all I’ll say…anything else I could write in this forward would be a disservice (and make my writing look bad in comparison!)

The Start-up

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 10:43:29 -0700

The Start-up

No One Cares About Your Narrative Framing Device

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 01:49:00 -0800

In the past decade, there’s been a lazy trend creeping into television. Scripted comedies are so saturated with this jarring practice, we’re hardly distracted by it anymore. And yet, my dislike for the technique is overpowered by a surprising side-effect.

We can easily point to the success of The Office (UK) as the instigator of the documentary narrative trend. Ricky Gervais and company first effectively utilized the private interview as part of its narrative, and ten years later, The Office (US) is in its eighth season, Parks and Recreation shows no signs of stopping, and Modern Family is coming off a virtual sweep of the comedy Emmys. What is it about documentary framing that makes it so successful?

I first thought about it from a comedy perspective. What is the function of an interview to the commodity of the show (namely, making jokes)? What I noticed is that these interviews are often placed directly in the middle of a beat. In conventional narratives or multi-cam laugh track sitcoms, setting up a joke often means building context slowly and cumulatively throughout an episode. The flexibility allowed by being able to insert a joke’s set-up (the interview) at any point in a scene meant more randomness, less unified themes, and fewer running gags.

I liken the experience to a stand-up act. Anyone can write and perform jokes, with simple little set-ups and simple little payoffs. The best comedians are the ones who have a consistent stage persona, smooth transitions, consistency. The greatest compliment one comedian can give another is to say they have a “polished act” - a unique, unified performance. Conventional sitcom narratives are more like professional comedians, and documentary sitcoms are more open-mic night. That’s not to say pros don’t bomb now and again, and no-names kill an open mic, but in general, greater build-up leads to greater payoff.

So documentary sitcoms are less cohesive, and maybe a bit easier to write, but there are plenty of positives, too. For one, in the grand scheme of narrative technique, the interview is a relatively new device - I have nothing but admiration for anything that attempts to break the status quo. The interview is time-efficient: there can be a much greater density of jokes if each requires less set-up. Finally, randomness is fresh, engaging, and maximizes the chances of delivering a “winner.” I think Family Guy proved that system right: “Don’t like that joke? Wait five seconds and we’ll be going in a completely different direction.”

Okay, the documentary sitcom has its pros and cons, but it’s becoming overdone. Just because I liked Gervais/Carell in The Office doesn’t mean I want all my protagonists to explicitly face the camera and justify why they’re funny. To a certain extent, it always feel like the character being interviewed is pleading for your laugh. First part exposition, second part character comedy, then back to the action to make that exposition pay off. It’s worn, it’s lazy…

…and yet, an unforeseen benefit: The oversaturation of this documentary narrative massively contributed to sitcom audiences becoming jaded and apathetic to framing devices.

Take Modern Family. Either in the show’s pitch or pilot, the interviews were explicitly justified in the narrative - a documentarian is creating a film based on this, well, modern family. Yet the show’s staff quickly realized that no one cared, and now the show gives no explanation for its interviews. They’re just a device, with no narrative implications.

Next up, we have How I Met Your Mother (which isn’t a documentary narrative, but a high-concept framing device). You would think that the explicit, vocal pleas by fans for the identity of the mother to be revealed would indicate that the narrative framing device is still vital to the show’s consumption. Yet you would be wrong, because try to find just one of those same fans that won’t admit that no matter how the mother is revealed, it will be a massive disappointment.

Yes, in both of these examples, the audience is more interested at the art on the canvas than the frame around it, and really, for the most part, that’s the way it should be. Which brings me to my timely and sneaky point of this entire article: Community, which appears to have finally faced its ratings demons.

When talking of shows unafraid to go against the status quo, Community is on the short list. It’s a very inconsistent show, and at its worst it can be an incredibly mediocre single-cam. But at its best, Community flies in the face of convention, packing clever writing and dynamic characters into elaborate homages and fringe storytelling techniques. While the aforementioned recent trend is to use convenient narrative frameworks to simply change the pace of typical sitcom fare, Community does the opposite, tackling the most obtrusive, unique storytelling aesthetics, and still succeeding.

Tonight’s episode, “Documentary Filmmaking: Redux” was a perfect example of why the show is so successful yet also so alienating - instead of just using the device to set up quick jokes, the episode was unabashedly centered on documentary filmmaking techniques and values. Instead of the watered down form growing in prevalence, the episode showed how documentaries aren’t just a device, but an entire perspective.

“Some flies are too awesome for the wall” - Abed

Community is that awesome fly.

#sixseasonsandamovie

Punk Rock is Cool, But Try Techno: An Alternate Future of Television

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 20:45:00 -0800

The following is a response to Ryan McGee’s article, “Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s the Future of Television Criticism.”

I’m going to speak directly, on a not too broad scope, and try to sell you on a non-conventional journalism platform in which to publish reviews.

My name is Andrew Seroff, I won’t bury my mediocre lede either. A little biography to keep you reading (since I flatter myself by even writing to the TV critic community): I majored in television at Notre Dame, under the advisement of TVitterati’s own Professor Becker. Since graduating, I’ve become something of an amateur television critic and academic, that is to say, I write about the things I like, but for free. I recently took an internship at a start-up called Miso, which you may know from the last year in news about Social TV products.

I think you’re right to question the current model of television criticism. It’s flat. The only reviews/recaps I read are the standouts, like Cory Barker’s Community timeline breakdown, to name a recent example. It’s a matter of economy. I can’t afford to waste my time reading a review that is more long than it is interesting, I need punk rock. Speaking of which, I’ll skip further agreeing with you and get to the point.

If your cry is for punk rock, let’s look at the Classical model, but from the readers’ perspective. If I want to know what a critic thinks of an episode of TV, I have to first find the review, which in itself can be a pain. Then, I read through what is generally a non-linear exploration of the episode. After that, most reviewers leave a big pile of bullet-point moments they wanted to include, but couldn’t fit in the narrative of the review, left hanging like shallow conversation. “Remember when X happened? That was great.” Finally, a comments section - a true wasteland of discussion. On a less popular blog, good luck finding anyone who also wants to talk about what you want to talk about. On a popular blog, good luck finding the point you want to talk about in the hundreds of comments (and heaven forbid everything has been said once you get there!).

All these experiences - the magazine, the article, the comments - it’s the product of the evolution of online journalism. But the whole experience is outdated. Your cry is for punk rock, for the text of the reviews to defy the form and conventions of this evolution. I got a better idea - ditch grandpa Sepinwall’s Stratocaster and try the keys.

Collaboration between the printed word and the visual image seems like a pretty interesting way to succinctly and powerfully convey points in a way that a 1,500 word review would not.

At Miso, we’re building a platform we call the Sideshow - secondary, supplementary content that appears on your second screen as you watch. If statistics say that everyone likes to surf on their mobile while watching TV, we thought, “Let’s give ‘em what they want.” No, better yet, “Let’s make it easy for them to give each other what they want.” And networks haven’t been shy about trying it out, either.

We’ve run into a problem, though: fans can’t make sideshows before the episode airs. They can only go back in time, creating the experience they wish they had when they watched it. This is where you critics and your screeners come in.

I believe the fundamental problem with television criticism is that it is a two-step process. You watch the show, and then you read the review. There’s so much lost in between those two steps! Imagine instead, a single, streamlined experience, where a review chirps from your smartphone after memorable moments, with a critic’s subjective opinion. A single point has its own comments section, a “Like”, and options to share on social media. Wouldn’t that be some beautiful hybrid world of “TV criticism” and “social TV”?

Well, we’re almost there. With the right combination of smartphone (iPhone) and set-top box (DirecTV, U-verse), your phone can know not just what show and episode you’re watching, but what exact time you are at within it, delivering content as it happens. We don’t have the individual comments section yet, but here’s an example of what we have now.

I realize that journalism is an industry, and critics require page views. Maybe the reviewer’s website hosts the collection of all the sideshow cards, able to be viewed within the conventional website advertising model. Maybe a reviewer’s sideshow gets sponsored. Who knows if a time-sync second screen review would even be popular.

But we’re techno, and we’re only sounding better.

Contact me if you’re interested, we’re in an open alpha.