Tag Archives: art

Content Curation: The Diamond in the Rough

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Curation- The act of curating, of organizing and maintaining a collection of artworks.

Films aren’t  just for Hollywood anymore. After walking around the Warner Bros. Studio lot today, I realized just how much history there is in Film & Cinema after only one hundred years. However, the rules are being re-written; today being a filmmaker is a simple as making a quick trip to Best Buy. Find some of your friends, record some goofy moments, grab a laptop and upload to YouTube: done. In the age of ubiquitous cameras, videos are not hard to make. Obviously the quality of these videos vary; for every independent film posted on YouTube there are five stupid teenagers doing stupid things. But the sheer volume of content creation is what’s impressive, and that makes the concept of content curation even more important.

Check out this video done by Matt Quest:

For more info on Gear & Shooting, check out this article.

It’s an incredible video, something that up until the past few years no independent filmmaker would have been able to produce. Footage like that used to come exclusively from teams of National Geographic photographers. These days, all it takes is one guy, a GoPro, and a quadcopter. But how do you access these videos? How do you even find out about them? That’s where content curation comes into play. Everybody watches videos on YouTube; how many times do you actually watch Youtube’s recommended videos? Youtube’s stumbling steps into content curation may be flawed, but they’re a step in the right direction.

Consider instead Netflix’s approach, detailed in this article. At Netflix, content curation is literally a science; they use thousands of unique tags and identifiers  to label movies comprehensively. When users first sign up for Netflix, they are asked to pick some genres of entertainment that appeal to them. Netflix uses that data and pulls the most relevant films from its database, based on those tags. Additionally, users can rate films and television from zero stars to five stars based on how much they liked the content. You may have heard of Netflix’s million dollar contest to improve its rating algorithms.

Netflix is a master of curating content because it combines big data from two sources: detailed descriptions about every film and television show it has available; and user preferences, both what you personally have told them you like, but also what other people who have similar interests as you like. By having all that data, Netflix has made itself the current king of curation. And in a world where 100 hours of content are uploaded to YouTube every day, curation is king.

For more information on Netflix & Big Data, check out this article. For a more cautionary look, check out this article from Salon.

Art vs. Entertainment or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Enjoy Bad Movies

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My name is Jackie Legs!
Source: imdb.com

All right, I’ll admit it: one of my absolute favorite movies is Kangaroo Jack.

Yes, this Kangaroo Jack, which currently holds an 8% on Rotten Tomatoes tomatometer[1]. I know that critics don’t think it’s a good movie; heck, I don’t think it’s a good movie. For a long time that created a certain sense of unease within me because I felt that, being someone passionate about film, I should only like “better” movies. Films with substance and emotion and power. I’d look at contemporary movie blogs or discussions and see people listing movies like La Vita è Bella or Casablanca as their favorites. I love both of those movies, but I also love Kangaroo Jack.

Films seem to be having a similar problem. I’m not talking about “the Industry”, or independent filmmakers. I’m talking about the battle between art and entertainment that each movie faces. They’re distinct sides that are easy to define for pretty much every moviegoer: If I give you The Godfather and Grown Ups, it’s not hard to sort them. Given that, it would be easy to say that one category of film has more value than the other, but I feel that to do so would be too much of an oversimplification. Yes, I agree that Marlon Brando has more acting chops than Adam Sandler, but to judge movies solely on that basis is to lose part of why films exist in the first place. They are a form of artistic expression, to be sure, but films are also meant to entertain. Is it not called the entertainment industry?

Therein lies my problem: I see The Godfather as a work of art, but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t entertained by Grown Ups. I think many people feel the same way; not everyone’s favorite movie is on AFI’s 10Top10. And to be honest, that’s not a bad thing. Why is it wrong to enjoy Pacific Rim just as much, if not more, than Once Upon a Time in America? At the end of the day, if I want to come home, eat dinner, sit down with my family and watch giant robots beat the crap out of giant monsters, I should be able to do so without feeling guilty for not watching a cinematic experience (although I’d argue that Pacific Rim is an incredible cinematic experience; props to ILM). Not all movies can be cinematic; not all movies should be cinematic. And that shouldn’t be embarrassing.

It's like Transformers vs. Godzilla!
Source: Schmoesknow.com

            So the next time someone asks you what your favorite movie is, just go ahead and tell them. It shouldn’t be embarrassing to enjoy movies that are entertaining – that’s why we watch them. Movies serve a different purpose for everyone, so don’t worry if you haven’t seen Citizen Kane – Die Hard is a solid choice too!

— Tristan Amond