#things i always end up googling for sensory imagery

[24movieworld]

Interview with Cho Jinseok: I’m particularly interested in how artificial intelligence and creativity interact

Conceived in Busan and born in Seoul, Cho Jinseok is a filmmaker who also developed the Cholol Technique for philosophical inquiry by blending contemporary western and Korean practices of argumentation. He studied media and communications theory and Chinese language at university. Colonel Panics is his debut film.

We talk to him about his life, the film, history, technology, art and many other topics.

How does an S.Korean who deals with philosophy, and has studied media and communications theory, and Chinese language, ends up shooting a Japanese film?

A friend in Tokyo approached me a couple of years ago and asked me whether I wanted to housesit their place as they were going away for quite a while. I agreed, made the move to Tokyo and lived there for a while, soaking up the culture, the history and the people. I found the political situation in Japan very fascinating and decided I would like to make a film exploring the intersection of politics, sex, culture and power in modern Japan.

We raised some finance, put together a great cast and crew and began shooting.

In general, could you tell us a bit about the production of the film?

We shot the film in Tokyo, did post-production in America and all the visual effects were done in Australia so it was very much a global production. The shoot itself was tough, we were very low-budget and there were some language barriers to get over but we survived. I think there were some people who felt it was like war working with me and there’s a photo of me taken during filming where I am wearing a military uniform; I think it’s telling some crew members said that outfit suited me and I would make a great North Korean dictator!

Can you elaborate on the title of the film?

The Japanese title is literally “Kernel Panics” as in the computer malfunction that will destroy your computer (it happened to my laptop during production). For the English title I liked the idea of doing a play-on-words with the word “Colonel” doubling for “Kernel”. This use of a military word in place of a technological word was also to hint at the militaristic dimensions of the film, rather than purely technological.

In one of the initial scenes, Kuniko speaks about a technique they used, letting a computer rewrite a story through repetition. What is your opinion regarding the combination of art and technology?

The fusion of art and technology has been an ongoing story for centuries, but I’m particularly interested in how artificial intelligence and creativity interact. Maybe you’ve seen the Google deep dream imagery of the dogs and the knight – for me, it’s one of the most terrifying things I’ve seen, it was like looking into the abyss of a robot’s soul. I actually feel deeply uncomfortable even remembering those images. Even though it is horrific and disturbing I’m strangely attracted to it, I do want to see more ways in which artificial intelligence crafts stories and how they develop their own sense of culture and creativity.

The film also shows a future where virtual reality has taken over. What is your opinion on the subject?

A part of me is scared, I fear we will all end up living vicariously through these VR helmets, no one will want to have sex anymore because the VR experience will be too seductive. Then birth-rates decline and productivity declines and you have this dystopia of addicts. Maybe I already see that when I walk around and see how people are so addicted to their smart phones, you walk around Tokyo and see these people who are just glued to their screen, it’s so sad.

Now the other part of me is optimistic because I think there’s always a fear with bold new technology that it will signal humanity’s downfall. You could argue televisions invading the home had a negative impact on humanity but it didn’t doom us, so maybe I just have to hope VR won’t completely destroy our ability to connect in the flesh world. VR will probably ruin our brain’s ability to defer gratification though, I think you can already see how gaming and computers are ruining our patience thresholds.

The film deals with the issue of “comfort women”. What is your take on the matter?

History is a complex beast and there are skeletons in nearly everyone’s closets; I mean, we always talk about American imperialism and its history of conquest but do we ever stop to talk about Islamic slavery and rampage in the past? That doesn’t fit the narrative some people want to push, but my point is that nobody is immune from criticism from past historical actions.

Having said that, the “comfort women” issue is something which happened, it was a terrible and shameful chapter in history and there can only be healing when there is an honest reconciliation with the past. There were bad Japanese and good Japanese, bad Koreans and good Koreans, bad Chinese and good Chinese in the war. There’s no point today in collectivising an entire people for something that happened decades ago but we cannot deny this kind of past if we all want to move on and heal.

What is your opinion on nationalism in Japan?

I think it is a natural reaction when a pervading sense of weakness grips a nation, from the sexual (look at Japan’s birth-rates) to the economic (their economy has been suffering), and people look for something that they can feel a sense of pride and power in. The politicians supply this as a way of distracting from the real problems in the culture, in the mind, in the spirit.

I feel sickened when I see Japanese politicians worshipping at shrines honouring the wartime soldiers.

I also think there needs to be a more robust discussion about the Emperor’s role in the second World War and just how much leverage he had over the army and the atrocities they committed.

In general, what is your opinion regarding art and politics? Do you think that artists are “obliged” to talk about politics?

I think all great art deals with the society in which it is produced and you cannot help but touch upon the ‘political’ when you undertake that process. Look at a recent film like Joao Pedro Rodrigues’ The Ornithologist, it is a deeply political film in its own way but it’s also an extraordinary sensory, artistic experience, a masterpiece of the personal and the political.

Cinema is a giant family, there is room for all different types but I prefer films which explore, not dictate, their political dimensions.

Why did you decide to use Yusuke Miyawaki and Tia Tian in double roles?

They both had perfect faces. As soon as I saw their faces I knew they were the only ones who could travel from the present to the future through their facial structure.

In general, why did you cast the particular actors and how did you guide them through the film?

For me the big thing was their eyes and their ability to act without emotion. Many Japanese actors I met tended to overplay it, and I was looking for robots: consciousness is an illusion anyway, albeit a persistent one.

When we were preparing I just wanted everyone to feel like they had a vampire suck the life from them. I wanted people who were like robots.

The film features kaleidoscopic sequences and datamosh. Why did you choose to include them in the film?

I worked with an amazing Australian visual designer called Luke Trevitt and we discussed what would happen if artificial intelligence did the robotic equivalent of ayahuasca. Those sequences were an attempt to visualise that idea. Those sequences were us finding a language to express our ideas about what happens when robotic consciousness loses its’ mind.

The movie also features a number of violent scenes. What is your opinion on violence in cinema?

I love violent movies but I prefer violence when it is at the service of a more considered point. Yes, Colonel Panics has some violent imagery but I think it is to illustrate the connections between Japanese history, particularly wartime sexually violent atrocities, and today’s sanitised and video-game like consumption of violence. But, y’know, nothing in Colonel Panics is as horrifying as the real-life atrocities Japanese soldiers carried out in Nanking, atrocities which some nationalists still want to deny and sweep under the rug; that act of denial is more disgusting than anything in my film.

And what about sex and nudity?

I’m most interested in sex in the context of power and how power flows through the act of sexual intercourse and the sexual marketplace. I remember Truffaut saying something about pornography being the byproduct of cinematic lies about love (I’m butchering his words but it was something to that effect), and I agree, I think a lot of movies have been very dishonest about sexuality and nudity. But then pornography is dishonest in its own way too, so we aren’t left with a great deal of truth about sex in the movies. There are exceptions but overall I’m not that interested in sex in cinema unless it explores the power dynamics between people.

Which are your favorite filmmakers and what kind of movies do you like to watch?

So many, where do you begin? Budd Boetticher, Dreyer, Ida Lupino, Kim Kiyoung, John Carpenter, Jang Sunwoo, Li Hongqi, Nicholas Ray, Pasolini, Fassbinder, Lucio Fulci, Lau Karleung, Joao Pedro Rodrigues, Adam Curtis… Oshima, obviously, as the film is dedicated to him.

The movies I love to watch are westerns, especially those of Anthony Mann. I’m obsessed with American westerns.

What are your plans for the future?

I am writing a film exploring the love and hate between a Japanese pornographic actress and her manager as they go about their business over a 24-hour period, only to find out she has been diagnosed with cancer. It’s a twisted love story like Colonel Panics.

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[martechadvisor-blog]

Native Content 2017 and Beyond: Bedazzled!

Black, white, and grey! They aren’t colors. They don’t fall under the VIBGYOR spectrum. Yet, when someone says, ‘I bought a suit. It’s black in color’, do we actually have a ‘lol’ moment or raise an eyebrow and say, ‘No mate! Black is not a color’. And yes, what is the color of the words you’re reading right now? Black? Confusion here, right? A retrospection on one of our primary school Physics’ chapter, ‘Light’, may clear it. VIBGYOR is native to light!

Ok, let me contextualize native a bit more. You came to know about this ticketed/evented/paid Jazz gig in town and want to promote your next Techno gig in it. True, that the two music genres are totally different. But, when you curate your promotional content in context to Jazz and promote Techno in it (music is the connect!), that content is called native.  

Enter advertisements to the above scenario, its native ads, videos – native videos, and so forth. With digitalization and changes in media consumption, native ads have witnessed a ‘renaissance’. Any promotional content that appears seamlessly in-feed – that never-ending feed on social media walls and inboxes – and can be consumed by the audience without them feeling that they just saw an advert is pretty much termed ‘native content’.

Let’s explore this spectrum of ‘Native Ads’ (we will call it ‘Native Content’) with a 2017 perspective and beyond which has infinite colors and possibilities.

Native fits the ‘Millennial’ wavelength

Millennials on a daily average spend almost 18 hours with media in different forms. And, the primary device they use for this is mobile. Ad spend on mobile devices has finally taken over ad spend on desktops. Mobile as a platform is now experiencing serious amounts of efforts and money invested into it.

Millennials link their browsing and advertising experiences together. This means that any irrelevant or annoying ad results in immediate blocking. 64% of millennials use ad blocking software on content that muddles mobile sites. This suggests that they’re also very likely to block banner ads as they appear alongside articles, unlike native ads that are in-feed. With 91% of millennials discovering most of the content in-feed, native holds strong ground. Native content, by design, is meant to be read in-feed, which makes it integral to mobile browsing experience. As millennials now comprise 27% of the worldwide population, they (and their mobiles) have been and will be the skateboards for native content this year (and the years ahead).

Mike Kelly, CEO, Kelly Newman Ventures:

Ad blocking and banner blindness, banner ad retargeting, and the likes have created an increasingly negative consumer experience. Native advertising and content marketing done properly can engage users and foster interaction with the brand, which is what digital advertising is all about.

Native content: The sensorium beacon

“Find a truly original idea. It’s the only way I will ever distinguish myself. It’s the only way I will ever matter” – John Nash

Russel Crowe reiterated the above lines beautifully in ‘The Beautiful Mind’. Neuroscience tells us that reading is one of the strongest sensory perceptions. When a native headline is read, neural pathways in the brain are triggered that can create subconscious brand associations and decision-making. And, when that native content is original, it finds a special space in our brains. Try and recall some original lines from your favorite movies or books and you’ll know what we’re talking here!

Be it that last breakup text on WhatsApp or a piece of native CRM content on a B2B blog, the impact in the sensorium is deep. That’s what has made native content effective. Whether it’s 2017 or 3017, the human brain may evolve, but the sensory perceptions associated with words will remain strong.

The 2017 native ROI: A marketer’s spectroscope

For many years now, click-through-rate (CTR) has been the go-to spec for marketers to gauge engagement and ROIs on native content. It’s time that as a marketer, you move to something more substantial and insightful. Some call this crucial metric as ‘time on page’ or some say, ‘attention minutes’. Call it what you want, but take it seriously.

Every morning, while sipping your favorite brew, you go through your mobile apps and come across links. You click some of them. How many of those do you read on an average? Similarly, if you are a content specialist working on an ABM article for a blog, there will be ‘n’ number of tabs open on your web browser. Do you read them all? This is purely why gauging native content on the basis of CTRs don't give you the bigger picture on its consumption.

Attention minutes provide you the ‘reality’ of your native content’s effectiveness. This, in turn, allows you to get better with your next effort or know what worked well. There are few things through which you can further fortify the insights gained from attention minutes.

Track the traffic sources

By linking your attention minutes to the source which generated that particular traffic, you get a clear idea about which source is hitting the spot for you. You can focus your native content budgets on that source.

Scroll points

When you map scroll data to attention minutes, you get an idea on exactly which parts of your native content where most engaging. 

Form of content and type of device

Tethering attention time to the type of device and content helps you identify the right approach. For instance, you can determine if an infographic is being overlooked on mobile while the same is garnering attention on desktop. This enables you to dig deep to the cause of it. Image load time, fonts, choice of colors, and more such reasons!

Headlines

This helps marketers to find the engagement-heavy native content headlines and hence, distribution of budget can be optimized weeding out void clicks.

Social reach

Native content can’t be shared directly on social channels as it’s sponsored to appear on a specific space only. As a marketer, make sure that all your relevant brand identities appear within native content. Brand logo is an absolute essential. Leverage native by placing the links to your brand’s social pages around it. This way, you will identify how much social reach was generated through the engagement levels with native content.

Gleaming B2B native success stories

Sometimes, marketers or brands, in general, want to stay on the backfoot for native content. This is mainly because native content is always sponsored and brands tend to shy away from such investments. Maybe the thinking is ‘if you have to advertise, may as well do it openly!’ But, there are many inspirational, successful native content partnership stories which may make you spare some of that budget for native.

Hanna Fritzinger, Head of Marketing, VigLink:

According to Forrester, affiliate marketing will account for $6.8 billion in the US digital ad spend by 2020, a figure that is growing more than 10% per year. Affiliate links are inherently native, as they lend the user total control of their experience on a site. These links, strategically placed on a page, aid in delivering a reader to their desired destination without the disruptive, frustrating consequences of display or banner ads. With the rise of ad blockers, publishers will also continue their focus on generating new revenue streams, and the use of native solutions, specifically affiliate marketing, support their revenue and user experience priorities alike.

In a recent survey conducted by VigLink, the majority (67%) of publishers suspected their use of affiliate marketing to increase in the future. One area we continue to watch for growth will be the news publishers who previously wouldn’t have considered affiliate for their revenue or engagement strategies. We’ve already seen tremendous growth in this sector with publishers such as MSN, The Daily Beast, Post and Courier, and The Daily Caller, and suspect to see affiliate marketing continue to flourish within this elite group.

‘Programmatic Native’: An illumination

Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) cleared Native OpenRTB 2.3 in March 2015, and the same year, in September, a partnership between AppNexus and Sharethrough saw the advent of ‘programmatic native’. Many ad/content pundits were apprehensive about the possibility of native content getting traded programmatically. Some still are, yet, one can’t deny the breakthroughs that can be achieved with it. Officially, ‘programmatic native’ has just turned two! You can’t expect a two-year-old to do what a 30-year old does. Still, when the former turns 30 someday, the realm of capabilities are manifold.

Programmatic native has allowed marketers and publishers to metamorphose digital campaigns with ads and content that are meaningful and better performing. There’s also been a proliferation of newer ad buying technologies whose rays have lit up dynamic content creativity and innovations in modern formats. But quite simply, programmatic native is placing unobtrusive ads into the feed flow (and not in the usual banner ad placeholders).

Seen the iPhone X video? I mean the shorter one (on Twitter) – it’s a minute long! With most mobile video content viewed without sounds, marketers are expanding their creative horizons. Brands are now creating native video ads with in-video texts, vividly-engaging imagery, and edgy captions. Native video will be a force to consider as mobile video increasingly continues to be the ‘format of choice’.

An example of a programmatic native. Image Source: Sharethrough

Brand safety and reputation are now a top priority for digital ad campaigns. Off late, Google had to face the brunt of many publishers and brands as their pre-roll ads appeared before hateful, offensive user-generated content (UGC) on YouTube. Chase Bank came to its rescue by conducting a manual inventory of all the sites (approximately 400,000) from which ad space was being purchased. 99% of those were culled out!

Programmatic native marketplaces can be the torchbearers of brand safety and help brands reach a parity on targeting their audiences programmatically. Such marketplaces are grounds for exclusory RTB (real-time bidding) auctions where publishers and marketers can team up to bid on preferred inventory at mutually-approved prices.

Kelly confirms:

Digital advertising is a demand-driven business. As more advertisers deploy native formats, an ecosystem will grow around the spending. We are seeing that now with Native exchanges popping up, more supply coming into the market, etc. I expect this will accelerate as the effectiveness of native becomes more measurable and apparent.

Marketers, advertisers, and publishers watch this space. Keep an eye on the number of times ‘programmatic native’ is being searched on Google from now on!

Native vs Display: We’ve got a winner!! (or have we?)

Well, this is not a ‘vs’ between arch rivals. It’s more of a transformational match up. And, the recent news of BuzzFeed getting back to its relationship with display ads, may leave some of us flummoxed. Scalability, in this case, stands out as the finishing line.

Dave Helmreich, COO, LiveIntent:

Email is one of the few channels we think that Native can scale. Native advertising relies on engagement and content that is appealing to a specific user. Email newsletters and alerts are requested content from a publisher. People request those ads and by nature, are more engaged than other mediums. So, the ground is fertile for driving people to Native experiences in the email newsletter environment. And because there is a certain degree of uniformity when it comes to design in email newsletters, it’s easier to scale. It’s simple for Publishers to capitalize on the enormous investment that brands have made in native advertising, even programmatically. Email subscribers are logged-in, opt-in, and asked for the content. Higher quality content like native advertising is sure to resonate and drive traffic in email. Our beta test of it in new ventures and our history of it in the past has shown exactly that.

Some numbers though, provide native an edge over display:

The numbers for native are good if not overwhelming. But yes, native and display can co-exist in the ad ecosystem, at least, for now.

Megan Sullivan-Jenks, Director of Marketing & Communications, Choozle:

Many marketers dubbed 2017 ‘the year of native advertising’ as big-name organizations started beefing up their native capabilities and drawing back on traditional display ad methods. When it comes to this war on native vs. display, the facts are: native ads have higher CTRs, engagement, and overall view-ability, but native still only accounts for a small portion of overall digital advertising spend. Display ads still reign supreme and will not be going away anytime soon as the dominant purchasing choice for many advertisers. That being said, advertisers need to be more cognizant when it comes to creating display ads to ensure user experience is not compromised – a factor that was a huge contributor to the success and popularity of native advertising this year.

Let there be light!

The confusion or debate over native and display/banners doesn’t necessarily indicate being in a state of darkness! Native content has had a good 2017 and will keep going from strength to strength. Adoption rates may vary, but will only improve. Debates on scalability and budgets won’t stop. A kaleidoscope doesn’t challenge or change VIBGYOR. It just adds a new dimension or perspective to light. That’s exactly what native content is all about – adding a perspective and context with compelling stories. And don’t worry, my favorite color is black too!

This article was first appeared on MarTech Advisor