Literally anyone can pick up a camera and take a snapshot. Most can even take a pretty good snapshot. But to take a photo­graph requires a bit more. A photo­graph does not document, or if it does, it does so only acci­den­tally. The photog­rapher must not seek to capture a scene, a moment, an object, a person. The photog­rapher, as against the snap­shootist, extracts a narrow, carefully delimited slice of light. The skill with which he carves makes him a tech­nician. The slice he selects makes him an artist.

Our first production assignment in film school was to film and edit together a silent short, then give it a sound­track that completely altered the emotional response of the viewer. It was a demon­stration of the equally-​​​​matched emotional power of picture and sound. It was a chal­lenging exercise. Today, I present you with two videos, both of which use nearly the same sound­track, but with different pictures. This inverts the exercise. Watch them both, then tell me how each made you feel. Don’t think too much, and don’t try to limit yourself by thinking which is better. Just watch and observe your automatic response to each. [ . . . ]

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Remember when you worked at that company? And they made you watch those cheesy indus­trial videos about sexual harassment in the workplace? You know, the one you slept through because it was so awful? Did you ever wonder why they’re so awful? Because the producers realize their target audience is an unin­ter­ested but captive one, so they try to over­com­pensate for the general lack of enthu­siasm for these things. They are uniformly heinous, but some are more heinous than others. Here’s one touting Microsoft’s SP1 for Vista: If you have any awful indus­trial videos, send them to or post them in [ . . . ]

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