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[Synthack]

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[Michael L]

I want to see lots of exciting code, cutting-edge motorised sliders,and dramatic conflict around presets, compatibility and skeuomorphism.

[Synthack]

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[Michael L]

Being serious for a moment, check out youtube interviews with developers.
This 3-part series with Steve Duda is pretty good:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOUkI5hH2HY

[dune_rave]

this is interesting. also would like a documentary bout plugins

[Synthack]

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[kidslow]

I'm a documentary filmmaker and I don't see how you make a doc about plugins that would be interesting to the general public. I find them fascinating and inspiring as tools, but not as fodder for a non-fiction story. Like how would you see the story of VST plugin development told in a way to make it appealing outside of a small niche? Is there a beginning, a middle, and an end to the story? All good docs have at least that. Is there a conflict or general interest angle that crosses over, or some lesson to be shared that transcends music? These are all questions that any filmmaker should ask about any project before embarking.

There's a great doc about the font Helvetica, so any subject is possible to tell well, but a bunch of talking heads yammering on about the history of plugins sounds like snooze-o-rama. Fiscal renumeration is not part of the equation, let me tell you, and they take years and years to make, so why would a filmmaker venture out on such a mission to tell such a niche story. I'm sure someone will come along and do one as a labor of love eventually, but you'd sort of have to either be young and/or naive to want to take on such a project. One could go out and try to raise money from the marketing departments at the big plugin companies and try to create a sponsored work, but then it's just marketing and not film.

I'm genuinely curious because this is the intersection of two of my biggest interests and I suffer from a failure of imagination to see beyond a fairly generic film directed towards a tiny audience.

[Synthack]

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[kidslow]

Sounds like you're a good candidate to tell the story and I'm not. But without money these things take time, and I don't mean months I mean decades. Believe me I know. I'm not aware of many documentary filmmakers who make films to make a buck. It's the wrong racket for that. Sure Youtube and things like Twitch have evened the playing field of possibility, but there is still a barrier to telling a compelling feature-length work of non-fiction.

I've got I Dream of Wires on my shortlist and will probably watch soon. Synth Britannia is a more straight-forward historical doc, but does a good job. A good story can be told about Plugin development no doubt, just it needs a hook to make it universal and interesting. I am firmly from the school of either do the best job you can and make it as widely appealing as possible or otherwise why bother?

[Downangle]

On Apple TV, there is a documentary series called Watch The Sound that covers different types of music tools and their histories. There's an episode about distortion, drum machines, reverb and others. While not specifically about plugins, they cover the history of Autotune. They also show how they made an impulse for (I'm not sure I have this right because the reverb plugin costs like $900 and I will never be able to afford it so I didn't pay a lot of attention) Acustica Audio something or other. I loved the series, but what surprised me is that someone from work recommended it to me. He's not a musician at all, but he loved the series. I don't know how popular the series is with the general public, but even non musicians find some of this stuff pretty interesting if it's presented in the right way. I think if you did a documentary, you would have to include things like Zebra HZ being used in Batman, or other stories about which tools were made popular by popular musicians.

[dune_rave]

hope some marvel guy look at this topic and immediately get inspired then start heading to the studio to organize a meeting about making a film about plugins rather than making a film about superheros : )

[Michael L]

*Update* Just watching this right now. It's awesome! See now if we can compile a bunch of these developers talking about a lot of the same topics regarding the industry i think it would be really cool.

You can do that right now!

Start a kvr thread inviting people to share their favourite videos on plugin or app development.

This talk at McGill by Robert Henke of Ableton presents a 'hook' of how tape & recording changed the process of making music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwOaYxSJGqI

Also, four years after the above talk Steve did an interview at Loop:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cp0rtLaXBio

[harryupbabble]

if i have the time, the skill, the resources, etc... i might myself make a video about xoxos. i would certainly watch it if someone else made such a video. i like independent people, like justin frankel and xoxos and...

[vurt]

if i have the time, the skill, the resources, etc... i might myself make a video about xoxos. i would certainly watch it if someone else made such a video. i like independent people, like justin frankel and xoxos and...

xoxos would be much like, taking all the manson prison videos, and just changing every fifth word to "robot-lobster"

[harryupbabble]

videos. plural. and just how many manson prison videos have you been watching? hahaha. they must be interesting to you somehow?