“It takes a lot to change a man
Jason Isbell
Hell, it takes a lot to try
Maybe it’s time to let the old ways die.”
Leaning into the old ways by embracing authenticity and tradition in the face of a dehumanizing technology
I live by the ocean, so I can say with conviction that you cannot hold back the tide. It can also be difficult to stand in the way of progress, especially when the rest of the world is so eager to paddle over the falls. But there are compromises you can make without selling your entire soul.
The Amish, Anabaptists who reject most modern conveniences, make their decisions on what to allow in their community on a case-by-case basis. How disruptive will it be? What are the advantages, and is there a simpler alternative? You might be surprised to see Amish kids running around on in-line skates, but that is, in fact, one of the bits of tech that they have allowed to slip through. The benefits outweighed whatever reservations they had about a rather simple tool that allowed children to exercise and play. In the big scheme of things, I think the Amish take a fairly balanced approach to living in the modern world, as crazy as that sounds.
There was a time when a surname was a reflection of the trade a family was involved in. We can still pick out the obvious ones. Bakers baked bread. Carpenters built things out of wood. Millers milled grain. Gardners tended gardens. There were other, lesser-known trades, nearly forgotten by time, that also began as surnames before becoming the trade name. The Cooper family was one of them. Coopers were known for building wooden barrels and casks used for the manufacturing of beer, wine, and spirits. They bent wooden staves with steam and pressure, before banding them with metal hoops, creating a watertight container for the betterment of the community. They were known as Coopers.
It’s possible that you know someone named Cooper today, though it’s unlikely they are still following in the family trade of handcrafting an antiquated product, lost mostly to history. Coopers still exist, as they manufacture oak barrels for the aging of whiskey, rum, and wine, but it’s a specialty of a specialty, and no longer a trade common to every city, town, and village. You’re more likely to find a barrel made by a robot and sold as a planter than an authentic barrel made by hand and purpose-built.
Time marches on, they tell us. You can’t hold back the tides of progress. There is an inevitability to forward movement, innovation, and change. Nothing stays as it is, and we really don’t want it to. We are always looking to learn and get better. That said, I am forced to question the direction our society has taken over the past half-century, simply because so much of it has been destructive and dehumanizing. Still, I feel the need to temper my fervent desire to return to the old ways because I recognize that I’ve entered middle age and nostalgia is a very powerful, but misleading, force. I don’t wish to be that guy.
I might not have a choice.
There comes a time, as we reach a certain age, that we stop welcoming change and regard it instead with something between suspicion and reluctant acceptance. We either ignore the new tech or willingly let it pass us by, as something that no longer holds our interest. We hit a wall one day, and discover we are simply too old to learn any new tricks.
I was an early adopter of the internet and social media after that. I was on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter long before most people, and was one of the first to abandon them, as well. I am currently on something relatively new called Mastodon, which most people have heard of, but is decentralized and open-source. It’s an interesting community. I also have accounts on BlueSky and Threads, but I don’t use them.
It was TikTok that broke me. I found its assault on the senses to be patently offensive and to this day can not understand why anyone would subject themselves to that level of sensory abuse. Reels came next, on seemingly every other platform, as they jumped on the bandwagon of obnoxious, short-form, vertical garbage. I found them to be an abomination, both aesthetically and as a bastardized form of storytelling. They no longer invited you to discover an unfamiliar world, but attacked you with brutal force. They did not encourage curiosity, but demanded your previous attention. They offered you artificial stimulation and an escape from boredom in exchange for your everlasting soul.
The internet itself has devolved into a serious shit show for most people, as corporate media has undermined the ideal of an independent, decentralized, public utility, and relinquished the town square to bots, trolls, and AI-generated slop. We no longer have television, newspapers, or magazines. We have corporate ghettos where we are fed intrusive pop-up ads and phishing schemes rather than anything resembling engaging human entertainment. Even the shows are designed to keep us anxious, unsettled, and off balance, as they pour on the tension and angst in an effort to hold our gaze and squeeze us for every last ounce of attention.
I’ve had enough.
There are any number of so-called innovations, emergent tech, and fashionable trends that I simply have no interest in participating in. They range from what I consider to be the broad evil of GenAI to the moronic, artistic wasteland of short-form, vertical video. There’s too much trickery and too little craft in the world today, and even the stuff that is real looks fake, even as the fake stuff does its best to look more real.
I find myself backing away from the new and rekindling my appreciation of the old. Not in a hazy glow of nostalgia sort of way, but craft over gadgetry, authenticity over automation. Listening to albums rather than playlists. Exploring books rather than binging series. Walking outside rather than paying to use a treadmill. To be fair, there’s a certain amount of old-man-shakes-fist-at-cloud at play. That doesn’t mean I’m wrong—just old.
I prefer leather, wool, cotton, and linen to high-performance, petrochemical fibers. I grind my own coffee beans and use a French press, not a K-Cup that will outlive humanity. I would prefer a horse and buggy to a six-ton truck, but I can’t be bothered with a horse, and I don’t own a buggy. I’m only a few bad decisions away from trading in my smartphone for a landline and an answering machine, and I no longer know who any of the young, famous people are.
I’m not trying to recapture the glory of my youth because, in many cases, I’m being inspired by generations who came before, and the old ways of doing things. I’m interested in handwritten letters and postage stamps, handmade furniture and crafts, well-crafted cinema, and biting commentary. I am a firm believer in slow news, food, and commerce, and that no one is productive for more than four hours per day—the rest is just to rationalize the survival of middle management, who seem to exist solely to attend meetings.
I don’t have a problem with being a modern-day Luddite, which doesn’t actually mean I’m anti-technology. I just don’t believe that profit trumps humanity, and that quality of life for everyone is a responsibility of the entire society. Sometimes you take the good with the bad, and most innovations are rarely evil in themselves, but are misused for purposes of greed and a thirst for power.
Not all disruption is bad, even though it can seem that way at the time. When Canon developed a DSLR that could shoot full-frame HD video with high-quality lenses, the entire film industry briefly went into shock. Suddenly, every wedding photographer and hobbyist could shoot high-production-value footage. Within a few years, the big film tech players had developed their own less expensive digital cameras, and everything evened out, but the damage had already been done. The democratization of filmmaking had arrived.
I was one of those people who bought the Canon 5D Mark II the minute I saw it. I started making low-budget/high production value commercials and short films. It was nothing short of a revolution in filmmaking. But it never really panned out because the writers didn’t know how to make films, and the videographers didn’t know how to write a good story.
Earlier this year, I was looking through the footage of some of the films that had entered the public domain, and while the cinematography was stunning, I was struck by how little camera movement there was. This is understandable, given that the cameras in 1926 were large, complicated, heavy contraptions, and the industry was still in its infancy. You saw longer takes, more master shots, with action in the frame, and less cutting and coverage. It was wonderful.
So, I have this drone. It’s not my drone, exactly. It’s a client’s drone, but I told them to buy it, and they expect me to operate it at a greater value than it cost. I took possession of it on Friday and have been thinking about how I want to use it ever since. How does this new tech fit into my broader worldview of filmmaking? The funny thing is, I am resistant to what I perceive as gratuitous camera movement, and a drone is typically perceived as the opposite of that.
Unless there is a good reason to move it, I tend to keep the camera stationary. I am not trying to constantly move the frame through the unwarranted use of a dolly, slider, crane, or steadicam. I find that movement-for-movement-sake to be a bad habit of those who use it as a substitute for good composition or on-screen action.
Movement is not inherently bad; it just shouldn’t be your default position. Keep in mind that this isn’t some maxim or edict; it’s just a personal style of mine. If Martin Scorsese wants to walk through a commercial kitchen in one shot, he gets to do that, and I’m certainly not going to tell anyone they can’t move the camera. I’m just saying to stop listening to people who tell you that you must always move it.
Go look at a film called Ida. It was released in 2014 and won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. It was shot in a 4×3 aspect ratio, black and white, with the camera rarely, if ever, moving. Entire scenes are captured with a single, locked-off shot. Action exists on the periphery rather than always being center punched. Subjects hug the edge of the frame, occasionally partially leaving it. It’s a stunning piece of cinema. I’m not saying everything needs to be a Polish, black and white, practically square film about a Jewish Nun that never moves. I’m just saying most of what is out there today is worse than that.
The main argument for using a drone used to be the ability to shoot from a high altitude to provide a broader vantage point from a unique angle. High and wide to give perspective on the larger landscape. Often used as an approach or reveal shot, previously this had been the purview of helicopters, which are both expensive and dangerous.
As drones have become more sophisticated, much of the action has revolved around their ability to be nimble and fast, darting through the forest or maneuvering in tight spaces. I find this bit of cinematic trickery to be mostly self-indulgent and spurious. We do not experience the world this way, and the introduction of such a shot takes the viewer out of whatever world you’re trying to build. It becomes less immersive, not more so.
My client owns marinas, which offer the added attraction of sending $2,000 of gear into a watery grave with one false move. But with a drone, I can achieve shots that would be otherwise difficult, impossible, or unaffordable. Like an Amish kid on Rollerblades, I plan to use this new bit of technology to capture a more traditional form of cinematography that I wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford.
I can slowly move down a dock and continue out over the water. I can shoot from the waterside of a dock to the subject walking or standing there. I can shoot straight down as the subject moves through the frame. I can dolly laterally with a subject as they move down a dock. I can shoot nearly locked-off frames from unique vantage points, without moving the drone at all. I am essentially using the drone for smooth movement or a unique perspective without resorting to large sweeping gestures or chaotic motion. If I do it correctly and use it sparingly, it won’t even look like drone footage. You might wonder how I got the shot, or you won’t think about it at all. It will just look like good cinematography.
There are, apparently, some valid uses for Artificial Intelligence, but critical thinking and creative imagination are not in its wheelhouse. Don’t come at me with your semantical arguments. I don’t actually know how it works or what it’s supposed to be doing. I just know that stealing the work of others and passing it off as your own is plagiarism and unethical in any civilized society. I also know that computers can’t think, and asking them to make value judgments is a critical human error to be avoided at all costs. If used as a tool to weed out noise, I can see it being potentially useful, but autonomous machines will always be a bad idea.
Apple is adding some tools to Final Cut, like searching for a piece of dialogue by scanning the audio, or conducting a visual search for footage for something specific. These seem like valuable use cases that stop short of making decisions for you. “Here’s the stuff you asked for,” seems like a reasonable response to a rational request. I’ll take that robot.
The key for me is intentionality and connection. Does this technology help me live and work intentionally, and does it contribute to greater human connection? Too much of it does not, in my not-so-humble opinion, and I’m sick of a plastic world full of noise and lacking meaning. It’s tiresome and draining, rather than inspiring and restorative.
I’m not terribly impressed with the apparent advancements of the last quarter-century. I’m sure there will be those who will be quick to remind me of all that I would have missed had it not been invented, but I remain skeptical. Is it really better? Are we better off as a society, as a culture, now that we have replaced critical thinking with easy answers, shit out by a computer? I find that hard to fathom.
I’m happy to keep an eye on the tech I think has the potential to improve living, but I am committed to grounding myself in an authentic life in the real world, and fighting my natural desire to isolate myself. I’m no longer interested in jumping on every bandwagon that comes along and will remain skeptical of the reasons for adopting the next new thing, simply because it’s new and next. Just because you invented it, and it’s clever, doesn’t mean I need or want it.
My intention is to ground myself in reality at all times, focusing on authentic experiences in the real world. Digital communication should not be a surrogate for the real thing, but a teaser for what can be expected should you choose to show up. I have no interest in building a digital world for you to exist in perpetually. I simply want to use the tools at my disposal to entice you to experience the reality we are creating here on Earth. It’s a teaser, not the show. To experience the spectacle, you have to actually show up.
It’s worth stopping and thinking about what you’re doing with this one precious life you have been gifted. What part of your soul are you willing to hand over to some greedy corporation in exchange for the glimmer of a dopamine hit? It’s cumulative, you understand? One day, there simply won’t be anything left. Just an empty husk of a human being, no matter how engaged you appear to be, staring at a little screen. You won’t be bored, and might not even be fully aware, but you won’t be truly living either.
That is the real zombie apocalypse.
Follow David Todd McCarty on Mastodon.