Greenlight Yourself Part 3: A History Lesson
Riding the Cycles of History
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Last time, I discussed the lies you’ve been told about making creative projects yourself. Misconceptions like “I need money to make stuff” and “I have to do everything myself.”
We left off on one final myth:
“I don’t respect the medium, so I can ignore the medium”
I saved this one for last (and built a whole post around it) because it’s the one that keeps me up at night. This myth represents something much bigger than itself.
On Cycles
Bear with me for a moment, because things are about to get a little woo-woo:
I am a believer in the idea that if you pull back from a timeline far enough, you gain a new vantage point that allows you to see the cycles of human history: Economic cycles, civic cycles, cultural cycles, etc.
There are miniature cycles inside of the bigger cycles, and these cycles mimic the cycles of biology and the natural world.
Fall turns to Winter which turns to Spring, then Summer and Fall again.1
Living organisms are born, they live, they age and die, they decay, and their bodies feed new life.
Early adopters elevate a piece of technology, that technology gains mass adoption, a new technology emerges that supplants that technology, and so on.
It’s the same reason that stories that are structured in a certain, circular way resonate with audiences. For those who haven’t heard me yap about Dan Harmon’s story circle, I’m sure I’ll do a piece on that at a later date.
The beats in these cycles have fuzzy start and end dates and trying to predict exact timing / occurrences based on a past cycle is a foolish pursuit.
But understanding the patterns of one cycle can help you prepare for the next.
I believe that we’re inside of a major turning point in our current social cycle, which will give way to a period of enormous cultural tumult (among other things).
It’s easy to see a thousand different possibilities forking out in front of me, but I’d like to focus this discussion on the implications of these cycles on a career in storytelling.
A New Medium Emerges
Does this sound familiar?
Certain advances in technology enable a brand new medium to emerge. Initially, this medium is seen as a mere curio, a novelty with limited usefulness or entertainment value. Most of the content on this medium can be best categorized as “a way to pass the time.”
Creatives ignore the medium and refuse to take it seriously. How can they? The stuff on it is mindless, short-form trash, measured in seconds as opposed to hours. They will stick to creating entertainment for the existing legacy medium, thank you very much.
But the masses keep adopting the medium. There’s a commensurate growth in the amount of content on the medium, and it rises in popularity as more people find value in it, however fleeting that value might be.
Within a few years, the new medium overtakes the existing legacy medium in popularity. Still, Creatives bristle: The legacy medium is real art / entertainment, and the new medium is a passing fad. Best relegated to the clowns who make ‘content’ for it.
I’m speaking of course about the advent of a tech-enabled medium called “film.”
Did I just blow your fucking mind?
No? You saw it coming?
Okay, fine, fuck you too…
In film’s early days, it was derided as “low art.” Professionals from the world of Stage dismissed the medium as a technical novelty, a fad, an illegitimate joke compared to the artistry of the stage.
In a way, they were right: In film’s earliest days, the technology was relegated to kinetoscope parlors and nickelodeons, where people would pay pennies to see a clip of a horse jogging or a short-form comedy or heist “flicker.”
Even the biggest names in film history weren’t immune from this dismissive attitude.
Well before Jesse Lasky was a founding member of Paramount Pictures, his brother-in-law Samuel Goldfish (great name, super jealous) tried to convince him to work in motion pictures, and Lasky had this to say:
'Sam, I'm a showman... A showman is a man who creates entertainment... something the audience wants to see.... So don't ask me to make pictures —that's the last thing in the world I'd do.'"
–Jesse Lasky (An Empire of Their Own by
)Even early proponents of the technology were skeptical of its artistic merit.
Vaudeville entrepreneur and actor William Brady - someone who partnered with Adolph Zukor to establish a number of early film theatres - didn’t accept Zukor’s vision of film being a medium for real storytelling.
Brady refused to attach his name to Zukor’s Famous Players Film Company for a 25% stake in the company and an annual salary of over $800,000 (adjusted for inflation).
He just didn’t see the same future for film that Zukor saw.
That company would later go on to become Paramount Pictures.
Incidentally, this dismissiveness is exactly how the Jews (I’M VERY JEWISH, DON’T CRUCIFY ME PLEASE) were able to gain a foothold in this burgeoning medium. From
’s An Empire of Their Own:“Big money, gentile money, viewed the movies suspiciously— economically, as a fad; morally, as potential embarrassments.”
But we are a creative, industrious people (cue soulful shtetl music), and we envisioned the possible future that others could not.
We all know what happened to film as an art form and medium for entertainment: It gained mass adoption as the form of entertainment, both for the masses and critical audiences alike.
Then a new medium emerged: Television.
TV: A New Cycle Begins
In Hollywood, until relatively recently, it was no secret that features were taken more seriously than TV. In the 70’s, 80’s and even well into the 90’s, the pecking order of creative professionals was in part determined by what medium they worked in. Feature writers, directors and producers were regarded as more “serious” than those who worked in TV.
That is, until prestige programming solidified TV as a medium to be revered.
Shows like The Sopranos and The Wire and Mad Men sent ratings and critical respect soaring, which led to Peak TV, sometimes referred to as TV’s “Second Golden Age.” This elevated TV creatives to very well-compensated and well-respected positions of influence within entertainment.
And by then, fucking everyone wanted in.
This is the nature of technological and cultural progress.
Stage was the dominant form of public entertainment for about 2,000 years. Then film shows up, it’s dismissed by creatives from theatre, and after 30 or so years of the two mediums coexisting (1900’s-1930’s), film overtakes plays as the dominant form of entertainment.
Then TV shows up, it’s dismissed by creatives from film (albeit to a lesser extent than the last transition), and after about 30-ish years of film and TV coexisting (1930’s-1960’s), TV surpasses film in popularity.
I made a shitty chart demonstrating these trends:
2 Notes:
You’ll notice streaming isn’t on this chart. That’s because I’ve lumped streaming into the “TV” category, since streaming is a distribution mechanism as opposed to a medium, and the bulk of streamed content is consumed on a TV.
Similarly, I haven’t mentioned Generative AI. I see this more as a technology to help produce content as opposed to a medium of its own. I will definitely address the Gen AI question in a later post, sooooooo make sure to:
Where Does That Leave Us?
Now, after about 20 years of social / UGC coexisting with TV & Film, UGC has already surpassed TV & Film in popularity, and I expect as the medium matures, it will become more well-suited for proper stories to be told on it.
By my math, we’re rapidly accelerating towards yet another gold rush scenario, this time in the social media / UGC space.
This has already begun in music, with huge artists like Billie Eilish, Finneas and Chappell Roan forging their early careers on social platforms.
Next, it’s coming for narrative video.
Soon, I predict, “serious” narrative writers and directors will find enormous success in self-producing their work on UGC and other creatives will pile on.
But by then, these creatives will be stuck knocking at the door of yet another hyper-saturated market.
Imagine saying no to a 25% stake in the proto version of Paramount Pictures in 1912, or turning your nose up at a job in a TV writers’ room in 1990.
That’s exactly how I see emerging creatives who harbor this attitude:
“I don’t respect the medium, so I can ignore the medium”
Some see social platforms & UGC as “less than.” Mere curios focused on short-form content, not entertainment or art. For unserious creators, not serious artists.
Even if that’s the case right now, things are changing quickly, and early-career creatives should consider hopping on the train before it’s in another time zone.
Next time, we’ll discuss skating to where the puck is going.
Stay tuned,
Jon
That was a lot! :) so you're saying I should embrace UGC, I think I'm staring to become a part of it with some of my films shorts, micro shorts. I guess I originally and still do to some extent see them as more like movies than UGC, but I guess they can be both? Is the only difference that I haven't posted them on social media or YouTube? ( which I am considering with a few ) as opposed to going to film festivals and seeing them on the big screen? Maybe I bristle too much at the word "content" maybe I m just yelling at clouds now:) in either case, dig the post. Gives me more to think about as I contribute to green light myself. Cheers!