Written Reviews
Written reviews are the bread-and-butter of Why We Watch. These run the gamut from nice and simple reads to a thorough breakdown of a piece and all the crazy insights hidden beneath the surface. It’s where I started and what I’ll always come back to. Why? Well, it’s probably my best artistic, or artistic-related, skill. This was discovered while failing my actual art classes at Alfred State. A simple shift in focus was one of the best decisions I ever made.
Leading by example, taken to a cinematic extreme. The best critics will constructively and kindly offer their suggestions on how a piece can be improved. If they know their way around editing software, they may try to back up their claims with a little project of their own. Fan trailers allow me, and others like me, with no production experience and/or a focus on movies “after the fact” to become filmmakers. If a good movie bombs at the box office, we try to learn why and atone for the studio’s mismarketing. If an adaptation slaps the source material in the face, we try to reassemble the pieces. When words aren’t enough, we get creative. These videos are also on YouTube, and they're all collected, on-site, here.
Podcast Appearances
When you can't get the words out alone, find someone to talk to. I've been fortunate to find and be brought on to some great shows. Personally, it's perfect for when stuck on solo writing and projects. Podcasts are collected in one embedded Spotify player here. They're a crappy company, but Spotify was the best way to put everything in one place, especially one where listens will help the show creators.
Where the medium is often, but not always, the message. And this is a medium that is close to my heart. Sectioning it off as something special just made sense. With animation, you can do anything. For those who can’t draw, like me, animation means that we can discuss anything and still let our imaginations run wild.
Simply put, none of this would have started without superheroes going mainstream. The first time I looked up box-office results was when Spider-Man 3 rocked the world, but the front page of my paper also only rated it two-and-a-half out of (I believe) four stars. How is that possible? I actually started looking up Sony on the stock market, and very basically, it all started coming together. More importantly, a lot of us found our community, our friends, our everything thanks to Peter Parker and Tony Stark.
People on every side of the many, many fandoms out there have enjoyed watching the projects get better and better over the years. And they’ll continue to do so. For every warning sign of superhero fatigue, there’s a Fun Home or Uncle Sam reinvigorating things and demonstrating more of what this medium is capable of.
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