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Choosing the Longform and A Quote From Tim Minchin
This Week's Note
Choose the Longform
Historically, marketing a larger piece of work has been the primary use-case for short form content. Movie studios created trailers to draw in a larger crowd, comedians condensed their set to promote their special, and authors published synopses to garner interest.
What’s unique about today’s approach to short form, is that our focus has shifted away from using it as a marketing piece, and towards using it as a form of creative expression in and of itself. Unfortunately, most creative people can’t sustain themselves or their careers by process of solely making short form projects. Not only do the economics (for most people) not make sense, the call to extend our run time, to invest our capacity into long winded projects becomes (for most people) impossible to ignore. In essence, we’re seeing that short form falls short when it becomes the totality of our creative practice.
I’m becoming convinced that regardless of how awkwardly our long form projects fit into the bezels and digital bounds of our phones, feeds, and attention based algorithms they are worth the effort. We’re now seeing where a career composed exclusively of short form will likely lead, and I’m okay with heading down a different path.
This Week's Resource
​A quote from Australian artist, Tim Minchin​
"You don’t have to have a dream. Be micro-ambitious, work with pride on whatever is in front of you. Be careful on long term dreams, if you focus too far in front of you, you won’t see the shiny thing out the corner of your eye."
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