The truest truth I've ever known

Last month, I was sitting in a taxi cab with my friend and Director of Photography, Neil. It had been a long shoot day, and we were both grasping at the last ounces of energy in an effort to make it to the wrap party. It was around 11pm, the Madrid city lights flashed through the corner of my eyes. Ares sat in the front seat, quiet. A rare occurrence.

Neil and I chatted about the day, basking in gratitude that this is a real job. I’d recently read David Lynch’s biography, Room to Dream, where he talks about how making films is really just about common sense. I agree with that, yes, and would add that it all springs from intuition. Neil and I spoke about why we love filmmaking so much, and how fiction often feels more real than anything in real life. Finding locations, casting, assembling a crew — days, weeks, months, years of effort — culminate in a finite set of moments on set. Every person there has a mission. Their own interpretation and way of making a story come to life, whether it’s through art direction, costume, hair and makeup, casting, photography, or production. That collective effort, applied toward a vision of something that could be, is the truest truth I’ve ever known. Spectacle, as it turns out, breaks through reality.

Lately, I’ve been going online and wondering how much more the internet can hold before it bursts. Is there a point in which the amount of content, the absolutely fucking absurd amount of content, collapses into pure and silent nothingness? Sliding the idea of hyperreality here feels almost boring at this point. ¡Ground Hog’s Day! But seriously, in which moment do we discover that when signs and images proliferate endlessly, they stop referring to anything real at all? Nowadays, the plethora of “authentic moments” that saturate our feeds has only turned into another case of Simulacra and Simulation. The more “real” content tries to be (behind-the-scenes, day-in-my-life, the raw, the unfiltered), the more it becomes another genre, another simulation.

The pressure on people and companies to get attention is relentless. I get that. I ran a consumer tech company until beginning of last year. It was intense then, but the situation today feels 100x of what it was just a little more than a year ago. The pressure on founders to be filming themselves, building in public, and hiring tens, if not hundreds of creators to perform authenticity is its own kind of madness. I want to highlight the fact that my description of the current state of affairs is not a criticism of anyone, we’re all just out here to win. But I do believe there are additional ways to pierce through the simulation that is powerful, poignant, and culturally relevant.

This is how we think about it at JoCo.

1 — F is for Fake Fiction

My business partner Vince likes to talk about media in two buckets. The first is content, it includes doom scrolling, the Netflix “background noise” shows, anything you would put on autoplay. Our brains have a natural tendency to want it because it requires no thought or curiosity, and creates a brief illusion of rest. But this content makes us feel hollow, and leaves no imprint on the soul. The second bucket is defined by artifacts that challenge us, in one form or another. Maybe it is a good film, a television show, or a beautiful composition. These things reinvigorate us, leaving us with something to digest after the curtain closes.

It is entirely possible to make media within the second bucket, even if it has a commercial agenda behind it. One simply has to think intentionally about the world you’re inviting someone into. The fantastic thing about film is that it is multi-sensory, it takes us on a journey through words, sound, images, music, each element working delicately with the others. It is a waste to use the medium, and not take full advantage out of it.

My point about fiction earlier gets at this. Today, we see so many launch videos featuring founders that explain what their company is building, what the product is all about. I guess that’s why they’re called videos, and not films. But if the goal is to get your vision out there, convert viewers into fans, and have people experience the world you’re building, then I’d argue that a film has a much greater capacity to do that. Films have the power to transcend the pure intellect and reach into the emotional, the subconscious. Every person that sees a film will experience it differently. Fiction has the ability to let us form personal relationships with those characters, to see ourselves in them.

2 — Why the Fuck Do You Exist?

Most companies work outside-in. They analyze what the market is saying, how they can inject themselves into the discours du jour, and position a product against competition. At JoCo, we work inside-out. We sit with founders, uncover the core truth of why they do what they do, and create from there. When you find that ‘essence’, it becomes a near-infinite source of material. Each artifact, whether it be a film, a manifesto, or a marketing campaign, springs out of that self-knowing. I write about this topic in more detail in this essay.

It is a hell of a lot easier to write an original screenplay when you have a sense of what you want to communicate beyond the information itself. What I mean by that is that there is so much more to a story than problem, solution, and the market. The personal experiences, sources of inspiration, and references of a founding team are all rich source material that we use actively. Understanding your vision is important, but basically moot unless you get a sense of the underlying philosophy of the person envisioning, or better yet the reason why they think the way they do.

3 — Push Culture Forward

Tech companies understand that what they build can transform the world. Birthing these innovations to life, often with extensive resources, also creates an opportunity to push culture forward. We’ve been mindlessly throwing out the term ‘brand’ for so long that it feels we’ve partly forgotten what it means. In its simplicity, it’s a platform that allows you to say what you mean, spread the lore, and leave an imprint on society.

I believe tech companies could take better advantage of this opportunity by telling stories that make people fucking feel something. How cool would it be if your company made people fall in love with you, in the way that fans fall in love with musicians? I don’t know if it needs to be all that different if you take your storytelling seriously.

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Anyway, as the taxi cab turned through the streets of central Madrid, Neil and I sat quiet for a moment. We’d just spent fourteen hours building a world that doesn’t exist. And yet, the making of this film sure was the truest truth I’d ever known.

At least until the next one.