AI and Creativity.

I’ve heard a lot about AI taking away creative jobs. I can understand the worry. With 2 minutes of prompting an algorithm, anyone can create mock ups without any technical skills. My opinion at the time was - video killed the radio star. Yes, new things will come along but creative jobs won’t disappear, everything will co-exist.

I had to write a cover letter last week. I stuck it through Chat GPT to see what changes it would make and it spat out the perfectly written version. Fixed all my dodgy sentence structures, GRAMA - perfect and made me sound more confident. I thought shit, this could just wipe it way through every sector, let alone the creative sector. We’re all in trouble.

Then I read it again and although I was impressed, I realised it had taken out all of the personality. When it again, I decided it came across as quite boring. It felt like a robot had written it. I ended up going with the version I had written myself because I genuinely wanted the work and wanted to communicate who I was.

I have no doubt that in the future AI will be able to do a full personality analysis of me, my writing and get a lot closer but authenticity and human mistakes still win for me now.  

A cure for diabetes would be good. If we train the algorithm so I don’t have to smash a bottle of Lucozade at 2am because I went for a jog last night, that would be good.

This is my daughter and I at a recent Mart Parr exhibition. I’m not sure Martin Parr could be re-created by a computer.

Campaign Films

I think of all the different types of content I make, I walk away most proud of the campaigning films I’ve helped produce and probably the first thing I will show my daughter when she’s old enough.

 I produced this for River Action and although I look back and say “oh, I wish I could have done that differently” and “I wish I could’ve spent time on that” I am very proud to have been a part and contributed to this campaign.

Reading and the Internet

Today we went to Waterstones in town. We went to the kid’s section to see if there were any classics for my daughter.
There were loads of kids up to the age of around 7 engrossed looking through all the different books. As we slowly walked through the shop, the kids section changed to teenage books and there was a large section on online safety, pressures of social media and even now AI.

It was a very physical view of children enjoying an activity - reading, which we have done for generations. And then adults came along, invented mass communication, which has had such a detrimental effect on the happiness of children its got its own section in Waterstones.

Having worked on marketing reports written by youth organisations, that are all around the unhappiness of young people/the internet/social media I think the charity sector is guilty itself of just feeding this fire.

I would like to see a campaign for young people that is a social media blackout. My daughter is so happy and inquisitive when she’s reading a book, if there was an opportunity to get back to that moment in life I think everyone would take it.

Next Project

I have been thinking about what major project I want to do next.  

The large, time consuming, documentaries that I have produced myself have all been about place. I have rocked up somewhere, knowing roughly what the themes will be about but then slowly documenting what’s in front of me.

I like making those films. I like the process. And I think patience is the one of the most underrated skills in being a filmmaker.  

I think I need to start making another film. I know it will be about a place but I haven’t worked about what the place will be.

I know that it needs to have a natural narrative (like the football documentary – start of the season to the end of the season).

I know I need to be able to film at the weekends.

Anyway, I’m going to have to be proactive in finding the next project, the next one won’t just fall in my lap.

Documenting Being a Dad

I recently became a Dad.

I’m pretty sure my daughter is the only person that will ever read this so - hi Mabel.

I’ve tried various different ways to document this so far. I started making videos like these:

We were in the pub a couple of weeks ago and this guy came up to me as I walking around with you and said “keep a diary. Everyone always says, no one does it.” So maybe I’ll just try and keep bits of diaries, collate them on here and hopefully they’ll all smash together to become something coherent.

Reviewing Old Work

I think its always healthy updating your website. It’s a good way to look back on projects that you’re proud of. Sometimes I feel I’ve got a little distracted in the last 15 years and I wonder what 23-year-old Adam would say. But going back over stuff I came across some random video experiments that I used to make. The idea was that they were only one minute long and had to be in some way different. I remember carrying around a camera a lot during this period so I need to get back into doing that.