michaelhersrud:

‘Press Pause Play’ is a documentary film about the rise of creativity due to accessibility, new digital tools, cost effective methods for making and endless possibilities for distribution. In order for a creative person, a writer, filmmaker, musician, artists, etc., to be acknowledged and viewed by the masses, he or she typically had to be trained in that discipline, worked for a number of years, know the right people, and then maybe have a chance at ‘success’. Today, anyone with an idea and a self-driven, self-learning attitude can create and distribute work and become successful over night.

The danger of this new democratized open source & social media revolution is that if everyone can be an artist, design, musician or writer, with access to the same tools and sources, then will bring about our own demise through mediocrity and self-absorbed acts of creativity?

This documentary was definitely worth watching and is probably the best I’ve seen regarding this hot contemporary topic. My biggest criticism is that the film really focused on music as a major source of content. I would like to see more about writing, design and other visual arts as well. Perhaps a version two.

You can watch the documentary on itunes or watch a free version on vimeo.