#Production Value

[daveinediting]

As always, once I start focusing my thoughts on a specific creative challenge, at some point something somewhere inside my brain starts connecting the dots and expanding the canvas.

I have no idea how that works, it just does. 🤔

Anyway, I've been at this for the last coupla weeks, considering how a particular stage production should manifest itself. How it should look, feel, and sound to an audience. And a few days ago I managed to set some objectives and strategies to the endeavor: the kind of experience being crafted... and some specific tools that could be used to craft the experience. An essential first step.

Over the weekend, I had the pleasure of attending the album release party for a local band. It was profoundly energized from start to finish, a show fit for even larger concert venues with its huge production value both in visuals and sound. I paid attention to my experience, how I responded to each song performance in the moment... and I paid attention to how the audience, packed wall to wall, front to back, responded. Which is basically me observing what excels, how performances land, the energy dynamic of the audience across the entire show, what the different experiences between the song performances are... and why.

The concert definitely gave me a heightened appreciation for production value and the impact it has on audience experience.

So then a coupla days go by and I'm hanging out with a friend who's a musician. They're sharing some music with me that's absolutely captured their reverence. So we listen to the songs and I realize some things.

The first is that some songs work better than others in concert. Because "in concert" is a wild sonic environment. It's not an environment made for appreciating subtleties and details. It's a crafted experience. And within that experience, certain things are possible and certain things are not.

I listened to one song that was simple in its production that would definitely land in a concert environment (which caused and still causes me to remember another such song that failed in that environment but I know why it failed). I listened to another, quite different song with spoken vocal loops and complex rhythms that would also fully land in a concert environment. And we did talk about the kinds of songs that wouldn't work as well and why. Among which are songs that are dense in language that doesn't get processed in real time when competing with complex music arrangements and just the energy of the room.

In a live environment, each word of a song can land and land hard... as opposed to other songs where the music might not be memorable and most of the words can sort of mentally slip by without leaving evidence of having been heard.

Or even written.

We kept listening because suddenly I was learning a lot. Having an insight-fest. As in traditionally what's crafted for record is performed for a live audience. The best recordings, of course. The most popular. Which makes sense in a prior world with older technology and different assumptions.

But how about this?

Certain creative endeavors are best experienced as recordings

Certain creative endeavors are best experienced live, and

Certain creative endeavors can exist at their best in both circumstances either as is or in some variation.

Meaning...

Release some efforts for recording only. Release some efforts for live experiences only. And release some efforts for both.

And then a fully formed experience came to me.

Why?

I'm guessing because of the critical mass developing during this moment of insight upon insight. So now I have an idea for the stage production I've been considering the last coupla weeks. Doesn't have to be the beginning of the show... but it can be.

The idea is based on one of the songs in the stage production that references the city of Paris. Which made me think of traveling. Which made me think of family vacations. Which made me think—because I'm of a certain age—of family vacation slide shows of old. Or family vacations as captured on 8mm film and shown in the living room with a projector.

And so on.

Later, I was talking to the composer of the stage show, pitching them my idea on how that piece of the show could work. And then they had an idea of how they thought what I described could be performed another way, each idea leaning into a different objective for the audience experience. Which is great. Because they're trying to craft an audience experience. And where the song lands in the overall performance and what the demands of that moment are...

Will determine the how of how the song should be presented.

Anyway... it was a helluva morning.

The kind I love most.

😁

[popculturevault]

[holdoncallfailed]

SPILLED.

[uncanny-tranny]

The leftism/anticapitalism leaving people's bodies the zeptosecond you imply that disabled people who aren't "productive" still matter in society and need to be treated like intrinsic equals who have a place in this world:

[toadstool32]

bath time

[romansmartini]

they got david tennant in a slutty little waistcoat screaming and shouting and crying and getting hurt and overall serving nuclear levels of cunt. we live in such a beautiful world

[framerate24]

How To Kill Production Value: Freejack (1992)

Production value isn’t something most people think about when watching a movie, though it’s there, and it’s crucial. In this instance I’m referring to vehicles though the same thing can be said about other aspects of production, such as locations, buildings, clothing and physical props. I happened to be watching Freejack, a somewhat cheezy movie revolving around a race car driver, Alex Furlong…

[officialbabayaga]

literally super 8 (2011) my belovéd

[elonomhblog]

who is she?

she invests in herself. she is healthy and wholesome.

she gets what she wants, easily. she is wealthy and abundant.

she knows herself inside and out. she is confident in her ability to achieve whatever she desires.

she is a polyglot. she loves learning and reading. she is productive and efficient.

she gets along with everyone. everyone loves her.

she always looks put together. her style is immaculate.

(images are from pinterest)

[ellie-the-plant]

i drew this instead of revising for gcses

[sinnabee]

You do moons ass Mondays right

so do suns ass Sundays

your wish is my command, anon

everyone say hello to sun ass sunday. but of course, as the rule goes... suns out? guns out. >:3c

i will be barring the castle doors and fortifying my defenses in preparation for the uprising, but no, i am not sorry for this

[fenrhi]

He has the kind of sadness in his eyes that you find only in Eastern European gay porn

[thepixiediaries]

getting back into writing is like *writes one paragraph and has to take a long rest*

[serious-goose]

there's a subsection of the internet where upping the production value actually makes your content worse. like a lot of us are actually nostalgic for the simplicity of the early internet. trying to make content that's 'tv quality' doesn't make it better

[s-insomnia]

"artists deserved to be paid" and "this is a horrible decision" are two statements that should and do coexist