Sorry, I don't mean to go on, but there was one other thing that was quite interesting about the conversation tonight. It's something I've seen talked about here a lot before, and understood instinctively, but never really understood rationally or articulated before.
At dinner, there was the usual confusion from TV people about "What's the point?" in reaching a few hundred or thousand people - surely it was better to be able to reach a few million people like they did with broadcast TV. And in explaining it - explaining the connection, the immediacy, I realised how much more satisfied I have been producing videos - mostly those I made in 2005 rather than the odd bits I've shoved up in the last few months - which reached a few hundred or thousand people and which elicited responses and connections with people - how much more satisfying that has been than making the films I made that went out on Channel 4 in the UK and were watched by 2 million people and had good reviews. I realised that, explained it, and the penny really dropped for me - and more dramatically for the TV people I was talking to - that making something that's actively watched by just a few, with human contact from even fewer who didn't have to contact to you but did - is more satisfying than making something that's passively viewed by a thousand times as many anonymous strangers. Not to advertisers, of course, but to me as a creator. That's something that's ILLOGICAL to hard core MSM creatives and management, where the advertisers' commercial goals have over time merged with their own good intentions and creative goals - a survival necessity. It was unsettling for them, grappling with the idea of not judging success by audience numbers. I mean, I didn't really understand this satisfaction 'illogicality' fully until just now, and I *do* it. At least now I partly understand why I'm so excited about doing it. Instead of thinking that maybe I'm crazy. And maybe now I'll let myself put up more films. Ho hum.
