Who Cares?

A question came up during a talk with Philip Bloom, Vincent Laforet & David Leitner at the Vimeo Awards which raised the issue of consistency across a variety of delivery formats. What the issue boiled down to was that we work hard to craft a very specific look for our films only to have that work maligned by inferior or poorly calibrated displays on the receiving end. Be it TV, web, mobile etc. David Leitner argued that we must come up with a standard for display technology to allow our precious vision to come through as we saw them. The problem, as Philip & Vincent argued, is that you'll never be able to control every aspect of how your audience sees your work and I'm inclined to agree.

When I look back on the films that made a lasting impression on me growing up, films like Die Hard, Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Aliens, I have to realize that what I originally saw was a heavily compromised version of beautiful work. My usual viewing format was a pan & scan VHS tape (or worse, over the antenna on TV) and a CRT TV well past it's prime. What I have to remind myself is that these films, these images, these stories resonated and continue to resonate with me not because of the format they were displayed in but in spite of it. I've since seen all of these films closer to, if not directly in, their intended formats and while I prefer them this way, I appreciated them no less in their compromised form.

Perhaps we all need to take a step back and realize that we can only make our films look just so perfect. At the end of the day, if the story is great and the images support it then we've done our job well. So let's all get out there and tell some great stories through a veil of technological compromise because when you get right down to it, who cares?


Watch the video that inspired this rant below: