This week’s reading and lecture was about not following your passion because you’ll hate it and, because I hate this concept so much, I’ve decided to focus on people who prove the opposite for this weeks initiative post.
Red vs Blue is an online video show created by Michael ‘Burnie’ Burns, Gustavo Sorola, and Geoff Ramsay. It was started in 2003, being made in the spare room of Burnie’s house. All three creators were already successful in other full time jobs when they decided to enter into the video production industry.
The first episode they ever uploaded reached a massive audience, receiving 20,000 downloads in the first day. The animation style is ‘Machinima’, where the creators use games and other computer graphics to make a show or film. The base for Red vs Blue is the game Halo. Red vs Blue, despite not being the first machinima show, is cited as being the first success of the genre, and they became pioneers of this industry,
Eventually, the original creators (which also included Matt Hullum and Joel Heywood) decided to leave their jobs to pursue this new passion. They started a company called Rooster Teeth, which is today one of the biggest online video production companies in the world. They have many other online shows such as RWBY, Day 5, and Immersion, but have also created a feature film (Lazer Team), games (both video and board), podcasts, and expo’s. The company has grown so large that they have major divisions that are famous in their own right under them, such as Achievement Hunter and Funhaus.
Red vs Blue has continued to this day. It is the longest running internet show, with 14 seasons and 5 mini-series. They have been nominated for and won multiple awards.
Obviously, this took a lot of hard work, and there are many instances of the original founders talking about how tiring it was going to work all day and then spending all night working on the show.
This being said…
Not bad for some guys who dropped their successful careers to follow their passion.
We spent a brief moment at the beginning of the workshop discussing this week (and last week’s) readings, but a majority of this workshop working on our project brief 2 videos. We first showed our videos to our table to get feedback.
For me, this exercise didn’t really do anything, because I didn’t really get any feedback. It just devolved into a discussion about how hard it was to give feedback which was frustrating because that isn’t feedback, and as my project is less obvious, it would have helped to hear whether it makes sense or not.
There’s not a whole lot else I can say about this workshop. It was a doing work workshop.
With this project, I was looking to find a balance between the harsh and the soft. In this case, the harshness is obsessiveness and anxiety, which is shown in the first half of the video. The softness is comfort, intimacy and friendship. I was hoping to show a gradual progression to this side of the video, and thus create a journey for the viewer. The audience should feel like the person behind the video has grown, but also that the journey is not over. This is also why I chose to add the tribute to my friend at the end. It was to show that there are things that, no matter how light your journey becomes, will always stay with you.
There are some elements I really enjoy. The quick flashes of words in the dead flowers and avoid parts of the video are, I feel, very well done. I also really like the timing of the ‘Future’ title over the tarot cards, in terms of the sound effect. I think that the start especially tells a story of obsessiveness, with ‘Death’ flashing after every three flower evolution’s. The door comes on screen and the thunder sound plays after there are four flower evolution’s in a row, which throws off the pattern.
I’m not too happy with the second half of the video. For one thing, I wish that I had swapped around the train and bookshelf videos, as the colours better match the pre/proceeding images and their stories. Also, the train video would have been a more obvious transition from the negative to the positive. I’m also not sure about the font I used for the ‘Life’ title. It seems angry, or hell like, which is the opposite of that part of the video. I also could have done some work on the colours of the photos of my friends, to make them brighter and happier.
Or rather, I don’t like his ideology. I agree with him, on some level. People who work hard at one specific skill will ultimately be better and have a better job than those that don’t work hard but are really passionate about it. Better job tends to equal happiness (ie: a writer who is writing about something they truly care about on a large scale will be happier than a writer who is writing page 13 one paragraph articles for an unpopular newspaper.
However, there are many things that contribute to people losing passion for their work. And it is rarely just ‘Oh I have to actually do this’.
For example: women are typically discriminated against in the workplace. A woman doing incredibly hard work for a newspaper may not be seen as on the same level as a male co-worker, even if that co-worker is not working as hard as she is.
Another example is, one that was mentioned in my tutorial, capitalism. If someone wants to make jewelry, they may work incredibly hard at this. They may make the most beautiful jewelry ever created. However, the stress of capitalism, of supply and demand, may be too much for them. If they are having to work from 5am to 3am, and never make enough money to pay for supplies and food and rent, it is only natural that they will be unhappy. It’s not their passion that is hurting them, but their society.
Cal does not take this into consideration. Rather he ignores the variable of society, and his studies are therefor incredibly skewed. There are some variables that are excusable to ignore but the entire world is not one of them.
I understand that his work has merit, and this advice is very useful for people who may not have found a passion as of yet, but for me, a Scorpio moon, this advice was kind of ridiculous. Follow your passion kids, and be the best you can be. You don’t have to choose.