Happy to say that the biggest project our team has worked on so far is finally out.
If you’re someone who feels an intrinsic drive to create, this one is for you.
There is a lot of slop on the internet.
So I've spent more than $200k answering the question: What is taste?
Not five minutes on cheap Twitter discourse, but consequential discovery.
Our @ColinandSamir documentary is live today.
If you care about slower, more human, more ambitious work, please watch it all the way through.
That attention is what lets us keep making these.
What I learned about taste from Colin & Samir isn't being discussed online right now.
I use a stop motion software called @dragonframe and this is the controller for it. It allows me to go back and forth between frames, take photos, and a bunch of other useful features that make the entire process a bit smoother.
Our @enjoyersmedia team is one of the best post-production squads in the business.
The work we're doing for @ColinandSamir is almost entirely stop-motion.
Time-lapse of @legendofbern hard at work for this one.
Formats we're producing this year for tech media:
- Remote podcasts
- On-location podcasts
- Video essays
- Veritas documentaries
- Podcast documentaries
- Reality TV competitions
- Animated stories
What's old is new again, with a few caveats:
1. We own our IP, editorial and distribution
2. We don't do client services
3. We occasionally partner on production
4. "Tech media" is a growing category
Some lessons learned:
1. If you take too long to ship, you fumble momentum
2. Always be experimenting with new formats
3. Kill what isn't working: shot sequences, formats, series
This remains our strategy.
We are a small team of 6, we all run on agentic harnesses and custom build our own internal tools.
Reach out if your company has a dope story you think is worth telling.
A lot of people associate the rise of “New Media” with @a16z.
But it actually belongs to @ColinandSamir.
And it started when they decided to turn the camera around and document the era of YouTube that would make it more popular than television.
They made it to the top, and then extended the ladder to creators like me.
This is new media. This is Taste.
Episode coming soon.
I genuinely love our team at @enjoyersmedia.
I'm having some of the most challenging fun of my life and it's because of this crew.
Not pictured:
- Director of Photography
- Sound
- Camera Op
- Newest editor
Humbled by how much this team believes in our mission and the massive challenges ahead.
Claymation test #2. I only had an hour to work on this so it’s incomplete; I wanted to make it loop. Pretty happy with how far I got in such a short amount of time though. The one I did before took close to 3 hours and I think the motion in this one is smoother/cleaner.
I started teaching myself claymation today and here are the first two animations I’ve made. The movement on the first one felt off, there was no anticipation leading up to the big movements so I redid it. Neither of them are perfect but I’m pretty happy with the results so far.
The intro to @designertom show State of Play is all handmade and I make sure to make the way the guest appears in it different every time. It’s a small detail but I love it and it keeps things interesting.
This is the making of @tomjohndesign intro.
More coming soon!
I spent the summer interviewing some of the year’s best designers, builders and investors in this community.
I wanted to find out how other people were building, experimenting and playing with tools.
The goal was to turn those 60-minute convos into shorter, more animated 20-minute stories.
But resource limits and scope creep put the podcast on pause.
I hated this, because I really enjoyed those conversations and think you will too.
So instead of waiting, I’ve decided to pivot on the format.
My State of Play podcast will resume in two weeks.
We will be releasing nearly 30 60-minute conversations with some of our favorite people.
And we’ll save the high production rhythm for our docuseries.
We’ll also resume new interviews in January.
God damn does that feel good to share.
Below: @legendofbern cutting up @tomjohndesign