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“The Good Enough Revolution”
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I have to chuckle remembering that all the way back in 1994 when I bought my first Media 100 and a box of CoSA After Effects, that I was soon on digvid-l and vidpro-l arguing with some of the guys there that sure, my tools weren’t up to par with the million-dollar-plus “big rooms,” but they were good enough for broadcast.
Proof?
The first three seasons of Nickelodeon’s Blues Clues were done by a guy on a Mac using a Media 100, a box of CoSA After Effects, Specular Infini-D, and a box of Elastic Reality.
But while the Avid and Discreet/D-vision guys argued that their stuff was better (which was funny, as no Avid or Discreet/D-vision edit* back then was capable of online finishing), Viacom engineers signed off approval on the then-NUBUS Media 100. A picture which, as I recall, was only 640×480 — but good enough for broadcast, said Viacom engineers.
At only 80KB per frame, it still had the best picture in the market at the time. Oh, and its slow-motion is STILL the very best that I have ever seen on any desktop system, nothing else over the years has even come close.
80Kb at 640×480 was good enough for Viacom engineers.
But I will agree with Tim, this is an OLD argument and I am glad to see that Wired finally caught up with it and think it so newsworthy.
But it makes me wonder if they have bought an Apple Laserwriter and a box of that new-fangled Pagemaker thingie, yet? They may only be 300 dpi and hardly up to snuff like a Compugraphic typesetter, but I think they are going to prove to be quite good enough. They may even change the face of print in the days ahead.
I think we’ll call it desktop publishing. Remember to watch Wired for the latest news and updates…
Ron Lindeboom
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[Ron Lindeboom] “only 640×480”
I can’t believe I forgot 640×480!
I did a job with my UVW BetaSP and Media 100 for a couple of regional American Express spots. This guy was a notorious stickler, and he said to me, “This isn’t going to be any of that 640×480 desktop crap, is it?”
I looked him right in the eye and said, “Your standards are famously high. I know that if the work I do for you the first time isn’t good enough, there won’t be a second time.” He positively beamed with delight.
What did I give him? 640×480 desktop…not SO crap…indeed, it was…
…good enough. When he saw it, he beamed with delight.
Tim Wilson
Creative Cow Magazine!My Blog: “Is this thing on? Oh it’s on!”
Don’t forget to rate your favorite posts!
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I have mentioned my dead dog tactic a time or two. Your beam with delight story made me remeber a time or two the client actually beamed at the dead dog. lol
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This thread makes me think back to college. I was always amazed at the shoddy course work by some fellow students. Why go to college if you are just going to slack off and not get anything out of your time there, and great financial investment? I always found I had to work extra hard if I wanted to do an inferior job at something.
Assuming you have learned the skills and acquired the knowledge needed to complete the job, how could you do anything less than your best?Yes, you always stand the chance of being undercut by competition. Although are hacks who charge too little for professional work really competition? Maybe not on the same playing field, but anyone who takes break from your plate is competition. As with the numerous grinders threads, sometimes you have to walk away.
Mike Cohen
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“Good Enough” also has to do with managing expectations. When the price point for the more cheaply-derived method result is much different, one tends to apply less rigorous criteria for “acceptable” .
Always unspoken in the phrase “good enough”* is the addendum
*(“for the price”).As a guy who does government work, I wince every time at the old saw: “close enough for government work”. That’s a stereotype about relative value and quality I have to fight daily.
What we choose to use for any particular job can run the gamut of very simple and unsophisticated and cheap, to very refined and expensive, depending on what the job needs. It is all very nice to say you do every job at maximum quality. Whatever that objectively means. We put an equal effort at quality into everything we do, but often we scale the choice of tools and methods to the budget and timeline and manpower available, and the ultimate needs of the client.
It’s never a simple equation, more like a Venn diagram of choices. Our circles need to overlap between time, quality, expense, and effectiveness. The clients know little of this, Effectiveness is assumed, and their Venn diagram would have just two circles: cost and timeliness.
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[Mark Suszko] “Effectiveness is assumed, and their Venn diagram would have just two circles: cost and timeliness.”
I agree, my clients with the highest standards were all in government. But I think that in the public sector, “effectiveness” is the place the “good enough” most comes into play.
Reminds me, though, of my favorite T-shirt ever, for the late-lamented Aron’s Records on Highland. Not done in by MP3s, but by the one-two punch of a Virgin Records on Hollywood (kaput), and the wondrous Amoeba Records on Vine within a few months of each other.
This was the kind of place where there were highly articulate hand-written recommendations all around the store. The clerks weren’t exactly snobs, but definitely judged you — only they were too cool to say anything about it. I got a tiny smile once when I was checking out, as the guy held my purchase in his hands before he put it in the bag. Dude wouldn’t even look me in the eye, but we both knew that he not only approved, but was kind of impressed.
I tell you all that to tell you this: The t-shirt said,
“Fast Friendly Service. Pick one.”
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Corollary to your t-shirt, Tim; Old fashioned barber shop in my town had a long line of cars in front of their crude eletric sign. It said:
“We fix $7 haircuts”.
They charge more than $7, but to the customer, it is worth it.
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the moral… If you’re gonna take the time to go to college, freakin’ party balls, man.
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Thanks for the posts — very interesting ideas.
re the argument that “it has always been this way.” History has to be written in the context of the time. Napoleon on a horse looks slightly humorous to us – but he looked like a VERY scary guy to his contemporaries. Similarly, imho some of the examples in this thread lack historical context. Re NLE’s delivering low quality as an example of “good enough:” This looks truer in retrospect than it really was at the time. I was an early adopter, and I was not telling clients how compressed the image was – I was talking about the freedom to edit non-linearly, to tell better stories, and to spend most of our editing dollars carefully crafting a show, rather than hemorrhaging cash in an online suite. Nobody noticed the compression, so was it really inferior? Was it merely “good enough?” I don’t think so. It was a terrific advance. (Besides which, until NLE’s offered online quality, most of us used them to create EDLs for a much-shortened trip to the online suite, so there was no loss of quality at all.)
After reading these posts, I think the phrase “good enough” is unfortunate, because it connotes “poor quality,” rather than “appropriate quality.” A better phrase would be “results rule.” If the end product is a 320×240 Internet video, it had better be really entertaining, because if you make a boring show, your Internet viewers are going to be clicking off of it faster than you can say, “But I shot this sucker on a RED and isn’t that fabu-”
The Internet has contributed to a results-oriented culture. So have the advances in technology which have demystified the process of filmmaking. And this current recession has sharpened the client’s focus on results.
Although this is a “business” forum, there are relatively few of us here who are PRIMARILY businesspeople. Most of us (me included) are really more oriented to the various crafts of production, which made us prone to be seduced by HD even while the marketplace was going Flash. If you take a macro view, the people who are involved with “real money” from video are not even on this forum. They’re the businesspeople and entrepreneurs at Google, YouTube, how-to websites, Hulu, etc. I think they would agree with the notion that “Good Enough” is a growing (“disruptive”) phenomenon, because the earlier they recognized it, the more money they made.
From my own experience, the emphasis on results has grown over the years. And I love it, because it has tilted the playing field in my favor. I’m still doing fine, even while the image-conscious post-production houses, with their personal chefs and plush sofas and great-looking receptionists, have had a hard time surviving. My clients don’t seem to mind the spartan editing room… although I suspect they miss the great-looking receptionist. (For you MCP-haters … I didn’t specify a gender.) We don’t have to worry, as we once did, about showing up with a smaller camera; appearances have given way to results.
I enjoyed Tim’s application of “good enough” to us, not that I like it as a possible truth. Anyway, thanks for the thoughtful posts; I just had to share my curiosity about the WIRED article and I appreciate that it struck some nerves among more people than just myself. If you have relied on my interpretation of the WIRED article, you should look it up, because I don’t think I did it justice. There are some interesting examples regarding health care and legal services in there too.
Bob C
(still more likely to buy a RED than a Flip, no matter what WIRED says) -
[grinner hester] “the moral… If you’re gonna take the time to go to college, freakin’ party balls, man.
“
Interviewer: “If you had gone through our corporate training program 2 years ago, you would be qualified for this position.”
Interviewee: ” Why did I go to college then?”
Interviewer: ” Ya had fun didn’t ya!!!”
Mick Haensler
Higher Ground Media
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