What Creators Must Learn From Barbie vs. Oppenheimer
Plus how to say more with less, and why your vlogs may be boring! (~5 min read)
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Warning: We use big words today like “behavioural psychology” and “progressive summarization”, but we promise it’s all in the spirit of making you a better creative.
Let’s get started!
Are you a Barbie, or are you an Oppenheimer?
Chances are, you’ve already decided which summer blockbuster you’re seeing first. It’s thanks to powerful brand rivalry and visual storytelling that most of us have become one or the other.
It’s a powerful tool. If these movies weren’t in “competition”, would you have cared anywhere near as much? Either way, it’s an interesting case study for creators.
A key takeaway you should see is the strength in knowing your lane. How much of YouTube looks the same, sounds the same, feels the same? These movies have embraced their own unique identities and aesthetics, but they have not suffered. Remember, people like contrast in the media they consume. The last thing you want is to slot in quietly.
Once you’ve stood out from the crowd, your audience now sees you as something they can attach themselves to. You can become part of their social identity. That way, they’ll fight your corner when you’re not around. Be loyal to yourself, and your audience will be loyal to you.
So what is your style? In every second of your video, consider:
Camera distance - how close are you?
Camera lens - what’s the relationship with the background?
Sound design - what can and can’t we hear?
Brightness & Contrast - what can and can’t we see?
Colour - what do the colours suggest?
Environment - what do the surroundings suggest?
Blocking & Staging - how do things move around space?
Find your voice by answering these questions, and keep creating an impact!
Unfinished Chronicles
Previous week’s goal: title and thumb done, edit started ✅
Next week’s goal: assembly edit finished, graphics started
This next video is shaping into a really fun editing exercise. Hoping to get the heavy thinking behind me next week, and start animating.
There’s so much power in saying more, with less.
For starters, it allows you to get your point across in the most effective and impactful manner. And most importantly, it allows you to remember only the absolute most important parts of something.
This is useful for so many things - be it storytelling or note-taking. Progressive Summarization, as described by Tiago Forte, is the best way to distill information down to only the most essential parts.
In a situation where you find yourself writing anything - a script, or notes on a lecture - follow these steps:
Take notes how you normally would, with each new topic as a new bullet point, and subtopics as a dash underneath the main bullet
After your initial pass, go back and reread your notes, this time highlighting the most poignant points
After that pass, reread again, this time underlining only the most essential points of the highlights you already made
By the end of this process, you’ll have a document that not only allows you to zoom out and look at your story, script, or notes as a whole, but one that has clear pointers to the most important parts. Tiago then says to summarize your progressive highlighting in concise, easy-to-read bullet points above the main block of notes.
Above is Picasso’s Le Taureau, a series of lithographs that Tiago uses to further illustrate his point. Starting with a detailed drawing of a bull, Picasso distills its shape and form down to nothing but a few lines. His act of distillation stripped away the unnecessary so that only the essential remains.
Progressive Summarization isn’t a method for remembering as much as possible, it’s a method for forgetting as much as possible. By doing this, you allow yourself to focus on only what’s absolutely necessary to your story, notes, or work.
Less distractions = better work.
Have you ever entered a conversation with someone who only talked about themselves? Was it an enjoyable one? It probably wasn’t. Now — would a viewer say the same thing about your video?
I recently met this early YouTuber in NYC. They were bright, driven and uploaded consistently. On paper, everything looked great yet, they weren’t getting results.
Their videos were weekly vlogs of their friends and when I watched them… honestly, I felt bored.
I didn’t connect with the characters, didn’t feel any transformation, and didn’t see value in continuing to watch the video. This creator was so focused on the micro problems of the video, (how should they edit this part, this song here, that there…) that they didn’t zoom out.
Finding a new viewer online is the same psychology of striking a new conversation in person. What keeps it going is first finding common ground. Are you both interested in NYC? Cats? Fashion?
Once you find this common ground, you’re now interested to learn about each other. “Oh, I love NYC! Do you like this spot? Where do you live? When did you move? What do you do?...”
Same goes for content creation. At the beginning, focus on that common ground. For this person, it was a shift from random events in a video to focusing on the big picture of their group of college friends graduating and becoming adults. This allows for a more symbiotic connection with an audience.
Content creation is behavioral psychology in a new medium. Just remember to zoom out and you’ll see how.
Unfinished Chronicles
Previous week’s goal: Finish pre-production and film my next video. ✅
Next week’s goal: Bring down the barrier to create my short form content.
Ahead of schedule on my long form! Should come out tomorrow :) This week, I am traveling to 3 cities in 4 days for Nickelodeon which is scary but fun…