Wistia: Don't forget the people
A story of my favorite marketing campaign and the hope I have that the team behind it will right the ship.
Heads up: I wrote a LOT for this one. If you enjoy it, please join me on the journey and subscribe. I’ll be here every Saturday at 5:05am PST…
Creative ideas are born out of constraints.
In 2018, Wistia, a video marketing platform, released a life-changing docu-series called One, Ten, One Hundred (or OTOH). It was written, directed, produced, and hosted by Chris Lavigne and Dan Mills, both of whom are still employed by Wistia and making videos for them to this day. Each episode opens with the line that opens this piece: creative ideas are born out of constraints. The premise of the series is that Wistia is paying a production company called Sandwich video for a $1,000 ad, a $10,000 ad, and a $100,000 ad in order to see what increasing budgets do for creative ideas.
The series was life-changing because of what it meant for me, who I am, and what I do. My career path has not been that of a traditional individual who wants to make movies. I am, effectively, a professional YouTuber, and I have been for quite some time. I am driven by the opportunity to tell stories and make videos entirely on my own. In my journey as a solo creator, I’ve welcomed tools that help me create more efficiently. If I can visualize my idea as quickly as possible, it helps tremendously in getting to the final result.
Until watching this series, I don’t think I fully realized the importance of putting down the blinders and letting other creative voices in.
This is why One, Ten, One Hundred resonated so much with me. I was able to see what money was able to afford: people. As the sliding scale of the budget increased with each ad, you could see how the people involved increased. More people meant more eyes, not necessarily more opinions changing the creative vision, but expertise that helped inform the entire creative process and ultimately tell a cohesive story.
My professional journey began as I soaked up the stories and experiences of my family as they navigated the film business of Los Angeles. My father the Location Manager, my aunt the Set Decorator, my sister the art department coordinator. The people I see in OTOH are the same kind of people who came to my birthday parties, family barbecues, and holiday celebrations. I see my family in One, Ten, one Hundred.
The docu-series ended up centering on one individual: Claude. Claude directed all three ads. As they say in the series: if you watch the story in reverse, as the production budgets get smaller, the common denominator is Claude. With each influx of cash, Claude was able to focus on the story, handing off the more technical elements to other experts.
While Claude is the main character, the story doesn’t come together because of him but because of his trust in other people to help him pull everything together. We see Megan, the Director of Photography come in at the 10k spot and lift the burden of operating the camera which helps tell the story.
We see Dawn come in at the $100k level as the Assistant Director, an incredibly crucial position that makes it possible for the entire ad to be filmed. Keeping the crew on task and making sure they get all the shots. Dawn’s work isn’t technically seen on the screen. You don’t see a set she laid out, you can’t blame her for something being out of focus. Dawn keeps the trains running on time and if there’s creative wiggle room, she’s there to figure out if they can make it work and when it’s time to move on. You don’t get the $100k spot without Dawn. You don’t get the $10k spot without Megan.
Before watching this series, I had this expectation for myself that if I just had enough money, I could actualize my own creative vision without any help. It sounds silly to say now, but I saw people as obstacles, not helpers.
I was wrong.
Through showing the audience the importance of people in OTOH, I trust the team at Wistia to tell a story that emotionally resonates with me. Above all else, the story had something to say. The reason the narrative moved me is because of the characters I became familiar with. It wasn’t because folks like Claude or Megan or Dawn told me that they were important, they showed me through example why their labor costs the amount it does.
Chris and Dan clearly recognized this too. You can tell from their explicit takeaways in the final episode. I found them true but almost unnecessary to state due to them being proved to anyone with basic media literacy.
If you run a company and you want to invest your capital efficiently in creative.
Invest in creative people.
More creative hands on deck improves the quality.
Video gear has diminishing returns.
There was something else I noticed on my second watch-through. I don’t feel convinced that the Wistia crew believes that last point wholeheartedly. I saw a fascination with the tools they were using and at times elevating them above the people who expertly used them. Marveling at the technology of the camera used in the $100k spot, fixating on the monitor used in the $10k spot which even drove them to purchase one of their own.
But perhaps most egregiously, the end of the series results in a fascination with a tool that had no bearing on the story whatsoever. As the credits roll we see Dan and Chris retrieving a drone that crashes into Walden Pond.
I found it disappointing that the denouement is not a focus on the people who made the story happen, but on the equipment that wasn’t technically required. A drone is an instrument that can elevate the simplest story, but lacking intention results in a default screen saver you might find on a Windows XP era desktop computer.
There’s another reason this stood out to me.
We’re 7 years removed now from the One, Ten, One Hundred series. Wistia is still going strong, Chris and Dan are still with the company, still experimenting.
This year, Wistia released another project. The project is billed as a Million Dollar Pixar-style short made with AI in one week. They wanted to make an AI Animation which was Pixar quality that was fast, cheap, and emotional. It’s a story about Lenny the dog, Chris Lavignes personal pooch (and Wistia’s mascot), and how Lenny is tasked with delivering a VHS tape to Wistia HQ. I encourage you to form your own opinion on the video in lieu of taking my word for it. I’ll share a link to it here.
There’s a number of problems I have with the short. I’ll try to be brief, but for some context: at one point the article you’re reading right now was 9 pages long (shoutout to my Sister and Aunt for offering copyediting services for free).
First of all, there’s plenty of evidence that the tools to create this project were not developed with ethical means. If the goal is to strip back the labor required to create a project like this, the bar was certainly close to being met if not outright achieved. This is where a lot of the hate appears in the comment section. I don’t disagree here. At the same time I also recognize that automation is not something novel.
Efficiencies have been found in movie making and jobs have been eliminated in the century since the technology began. With digital cameras, film processing and print labs no longer exist. But this is a change that happened over decades. Perhaps the reason the reaction to AI filmmaking is so visceral this time around is the speed at which the efficiencies are coming. If the Pixar-inspired short is possible today, why should Disney employ animators in a year?
In the U.S. in particular, our existence is tied to employment. We lack an adequate social safety net to catch the folks who are let go. This is a major issue in our current epoch. It is also an issue that the Wistia crew is not responsible for on their own. I don’t expect them to change the world, but this is why criticism of the craft is warranted.
But there is a solvable problem here that the Wistia crew can control: What’s the story? While a project like OTOH has characters you can relate to, situations that underline key takeaways, this Pixar-style short lacked any sort of conflict with consequences. Who am I supposed to feel for? Don’t get me wrong, I have and have had pets, I’m not emotionally vapid, but if you’re telling a story it’s gotta have some sort of situation where if the hero doesn’t succeed, there are ramifications.
I also bring this up because Chris himself is selling this project as being emotionally resonant. I believe him because it’s starring his dog who is getting to an age where this kind of acting isn’t as possible as it once was. I don’t fault him for feeling this way, I just invite him to see the bigger picture here and why folks unfamiliar with who Lenny is might be disassociating.
A two hour docu-series is easier to land this kind of connection than a 2 minute short but time does not get in the way of Pixar. Just give a short like Paperman a watch: they tell an emotionally resonating story with minimal color and zero dialogue.
The only development that happens in Wistia’s version, is the vhs, a tool from yesteryear, continually gets destroyed. I feel nothing for the tape. Lenny, the main character, does not endure a struggle or suffer any consequences. The delivery of the destructed tape has no ramifications for the recipient. If the world is headed in the direction of prompting a chat bot to cook for us, let’s at least have the taste to expect flavor.
I don’t think the Wistia team was wrong for trying this experiment. I’m proud of them for trying something different and challenging the status quo. I just think something has been lost here, something that is unsurprising due the complaints I noticed with One, Ten, One Hundred, but disappointing considering the series’ lasting legacy.
I know I’m not alone in criticisms here, lord knows the folks over at Wistia have been hearing a lot of inflammatory comments. I don’t mean to stoke the fires here at all. Do not take this piece as an invitation to spew further vitriol to Wistia or any of its employees. If you’re considering doing business with Wistia, this piece is not intended for you to write them off.
This video was created with the same thought that was in mind when telling the story of retrieving that drone out of Walden Pond: look at how marvelous this tool is? Isn’t the story about this tool fascinating? Don’t you hope this tool isn’t broken and we can use it again? I’m not sure I care about any of those things.
Chris Lavigne posted a follow-up BTS video about the Pixar-short. I got into the comments on this one and he essentially confirmed my suspicions.
There are far fewer gate keepers to creativity than there were when I first started making videos twenty years ago. There are even fewer gate keepers than just 7 years ago when Wistia made their award-winning One, Ten, One Hundred.
It’s a blessing that making media is democratized so much, and we should welcome more competition, not shake our fists curmudgeonly.
It used to be that successful media was determined by its critics but now the critics are democratized as well. It’s more so the People that have a say in what is good or bad than a writer for the New Yorker or Entertainment Weekly.
I think this is to be celebrated, it’s meaningful that the collective makes up the tastemakers instead of elites in their ivory towers. We owe it to ourselves to ensure good stories are elevated and bad ones are demoted.
But recognize what is lost. Quality is not driven by subjectivity alone. Experts are experts for a reason, they have the experience in what works and what doesn’t work and should be trusted when alarm bells go off. Take your work seriously because no one is stopping you from making the wrong decision. If creative ideas are born out of constraints, and the barriers to executing the work itself ceases to exist, we must put the scrutiny on the work to ensure the story resonates.
The tools used to tell this Pixar-inspired story, Midjourney being one of the primary ones, are a modern marvel. I see the point that a solo creator like myself could use it to fulfill my creative visions with minimal obstruction. I see the point that eventually these tools will be good enough that you won’t have to fill in the margins and the “prompting” will be good enough to technically achieve the style that Pixar has.
I’m confident in the crew at Wistia and their ability to develop their own style in lieu of ripping of the Mouse. I’m sure they will figure out the technical requirements to truly be able to tell a story in as little time as possible.
Decisions are made by those who show up. If the people who show up are skilled with the art of story telling, they can use whatever tool they want to. If we are truly headed for this future, I want the people at the helm to recognize what good work is. I don’t want to navel-gaze at the shovel that digs the hole, I want to care about the hole and why it was dug.
I believe if anyone is capable of holding the mantle of telling a great story through video, it’s the team at Wistia. They’ve attracted many talented people over the years and it’s a testament that both Dan and Chris are still gainfully employed. Wistia, as a collective, is good at what they do.
I hope Wistia remembers the people. The people like Claude, Megan, Dawn… even the people like me.
I’m not a hater. You guys changed my life. I’m rooting for you, but remember I’m also watching you, thinking carefully about the stories being told.
I’m glad you’re here. I’ll see ya next time.