Film Stuff podcast Do Stuff

Lots of creators—especially young, successful ones—publicly admit to being emotionally, mentally, and physically exhausted by their channels. Why is that? And while we know burnout is a real and serious problem, we have to wonder. How much burnout is true burnout, and how much is because many creators are new this: new to managing professional life, new to making art, and new to the notoriously demanding work of filmmaking. We look at creator burnout from many angles and even suggest ways to avoid it.

Show notes:
• Leigh mentions details about how the YouTube algorithm works "as far as we know." That paper she read that made her think YouTube's recommendations are so great? It's from 2014, from a Google research paper titled "Deep Neural Networks for YouTube Recommendations" https://research.google/pubs/pub45530/
• If you really want to understand the algorithm deeply, we recommend following Matt Glielen and the team at Little Monster's research https://www.littlemonstermediaco.com/our-research
• "That original guy who wrote 'Burnout'" is a psychologist named Herbert Freudenberger, who coined the term in the '70s based on his own personal frustrations. He literally wrote the book on it https://www.amazon.com/dp/0553200488/
• Burnout isn't just a YouTube problem, either. Anne Helen Petersen wrote a great piece on why burnout is rampant among Millennials, not just creators https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/millennials-burnout-generation-debt-work
• In 2018 there seemed to be a YouTube trend of young creators quitting because of burnout, overwork, and stress. The Guardian wrote a piece that covered a lot of the same angles we did in more depth https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/sep/08/youtube-stars-burnout-fun-bleak-stressed
• Soo Zee talks about the emotional difficulty that comes from getting instant feedback on your work. The fancy term for this is "emotional labor," and it has a long history of being an unacknowledged form of work, especially on social media platforms. https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebook-content-moderator-interviews-trauma-working-conditions-arizona
• In fact, social media's impact on our mental health is well documented https://www.rsph.org.uk/our-work/campaigns/status-of-mind.html See also https://www.openculture.com/2013/08/why-social-media-makes-us-lonely.html
• James Cameron on curiosity, and why he takes time between his films to explore areas of personal interest https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVfd6fg7QsM
• James Cameron did indeed head to the jungles for Avatar's sequels https://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/mar/28/james-cameron-avatar-2-brazil goin' off to the jungles
• When Leigh says she agrees with Adam Grant's definition of burnout, she's really agreeing with what he argues in this episode about burnout on his TED podcast WorkLife https://www.ted.com/talks/worklife_with_adam_grant_burnout_is_everyone_s_problem

Music: https://www.purple-planet.com

The film world we were brought up in works on an apprentice system, where you attach yourself to a person or team, and usually work on the projects they land. In the world of modern video making, where creators can be full-time and video is a huge part of marketing, that world is evolving. Now there's tons of openings for filmmaking jobs. They're not all good. Some are gold, some are garbage, and in this episode we talk about how to tell the difference. We get super tactical for anyone job hunting or looking to hire.

• This is the puzzle we've been doing. Not an ad, we just think this puzzle company is really cool! https://cloudyfields.com/products/shadow-puppets
• There are a loooooot of ways in which print design and digital design are different (not to mention video and materials design). This is just the tip of the iceberg https://medium.com/inkbot-design/5-key-differences-in-designing-for-print-vs-digital-media-6e69edcfc414
• Leigh wasn't joking. Final Cut Pro 7 is dead. Officially. https://larryjordan.com/blog/apple-ends-all-support-for-final-cut-pro-7/
• We mentioned that producers are usually responsible for key creative hires on a project. What else does a film producer actually do? Production is not the same thing as producing. This great excerpt from MasterClass explains https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-does-a-hollywood-producer-do-responsibilities-of-a-film-producer-and-how-to-become-a-producer#quiz-0
• We highly recommend this excellent article called "The Confidence Gap" about the different ways male and female candidates approach a job ad https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/05/the-confidence-gap/359815/
• We also recommend you look at some of the research around gender differences is hiring. Totaljobs has a whole section dedicated to this issue here https://www.totaljobs.com/insidejob/gender-pay-trap/, plus a tool that checks the text of a job listing to find gender-coded wording.

Our friend Mickey had a simple question about audio mixing. The answer isn't quite so simple, and led us to have a full on film stuff episode about the ways that making films for mobile devices isn't the same as making films for televisions, computers, or projectors. We talk all about it in this episode, including: audio mixing, screen real estate, and why you should never watch Maze Runner on a plane. Extra special thanks to Mickey for inspiring this one!

• Frequency distributions on recent iPhones are surprisingly good https://www.reddit.com/r/audiophile/comments/5kdvnv/iphone_7_plus_audio_measurements/
• We talk about Christopher Nolan's most recent sound mix issues, which have come to light again with the release of Tenet. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/nov/16/tenet-up-listen-christopher-nolan-interstellar-sound-mixing
• Roy Anderson's films came up too, particularly his use of background action and detailed framing that's best left to a large screen size https://youtu.be/bLCtJkGKefU
• The Dead Girls Detective Agency is one of Snap's originals, one of the only examples of made-for-vertical programming out there https://story.snapchat.com/p/cb699648-66fd-4483-8269-8b3c1511951d/5888840593047568
• We also alluded to a vertical music video we loved. We meant YELLE's Interpassion https://youtu.be/Neqp_R-xAYs
• Screen real estate isn't just a film concept. It's also used in website design. One Utah Valley University class had a quick primer on graphic safe spaces and dynamic screen real estate http://desource.uvu.edu/dgm/2740/IN/steinja/lessons/04/l04_02.html?m=1
• Also John Wick! We love John Wick and think it's one of the greatest action movies ever made, from the actual fight choreography to the subtitle styling. Apparently other people also love it as much as we do https://www.reddit.com/r/JohnWick/comments/g6b2m0/john_wick_subtitles/
• If you make videos with subtitles, you should definitely read up about captioning standards. The one we follow is CEA-608, which we export to .scc files and upload straight to YouTube.

Coronavirus has affected many parts of the world and during this quarantine/self-isolation period many of us have been consuming media more than ever. Which bring us to this episode, where we talk about how COVID-19 has affected the film industry as a whole and and foremost how it will affect the business side and the creative side of movies and tv in the future.

• Vox article that describes how 9/11 affected movies, tv, and even the music industry afterwards. If you are interested in reading about it https://www.vox.com/2016/9/9/12814898/pop-culture-response-to-9-11

Music includes:
Circus Waltz - Silent Film Light by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100291
Artist: http://incompetech.com/

Another analytics episode! All too often we hear people talk about "good" videos and metrics as if they're universal. They aren't. Case in point: e-learning videos on sites like Khan Academy and Udemy, adult-only videos, and both the ultra-long and the ultra-short (e.g., live sports and TikToks). We lay out how you should approach making a learning video differently, which metrics you should be watching if you're a small business owner, and the epic story of how pornography killed Betamax.

• Lynda.com was indeed acquired by LinkedIn and is now LinkedIn Learning
• YouTube does offer a certification program for specific subjects https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6145904?hl=en
• That cooking Master Class that taught us how to glaze carrots was Thomas Keller's first https://www.masterclass.com/classes/thomas-keller-teaches-cooking-techniques
• The home video format war between VHS and Betamax is an interesting economics story that is still heavily contested. Here are the facts, as they relate to the adult entertainment industry: Sony did refuse to license the Betamax format to pornography companies, VHS was used by a larger number of companies in general, VHS was notably cheaper and had longer recording times that were important factors for the home consumer, the format war also coincided with an era that was more open to pornography consumption in general
• If you're curious about Betamax, enjoy this bunch of old promotional videos from the '70s https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/63824/how-betamax-was-going-change-your-life-according-sony
• Pornhub's data science blog http://www.pornhub.com/insights/
• OK Cupid's data science blog https://theblog.okcupid.com/tagged/data
• We know that Musical.ly is now TikTok, but the anecdote about Musers monetizing on YouTube via compilation videos is insight from before they became the same thing

I quiz Soo Zee about the meanings and origins of terminology used only in the film world. It's tricky because if you search online for some of these terms, you won't get the thing you're actually looking for. That's why it's a game! Here's the full list of terms we went over:

• ADR/Looping
• Stingers
• C-47s/Bullets
• Alan Smithee
• Dead Cat
• Windscreen
• Champagne Roll
• Martini Shot
• Abby Singer Shot
• Rushes/Dailies
• Squib
• Walla/Rhubarb
• MOS
• NG, Hold, Print
• Choker
• 50/50
• Cookie/Cucoloris

If you'd like some visual guidelines to this or some further explanations, B&H has a great page with just that: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/explora/video/tips-and-solutions/guide-film-set-lingo-and-hand-signals