The "Good Enough" Revolution

Wait... what? This is partly true but REALLY misconstrued in my opinion. People do like accessibility, and simplicity.... but they like LOW COST the most.

This isn't a new trend at all. In fact it's just a really strange way of looking at the same thing. Had the cheap flip video camera been $800 like the sony, people would have bought the Sony. Common people! Since when is buying cheap a new trend?

Because I don't have a Corvette, a house on the beach, or an Arri 435... does that mean I settled for good enough? It means I spent what I was willing to spend. Technology costs money and it's not a trend that people evaluate if a product is worth buying and then act upon it. Why should we buy Microsoft Office, when google docs will do what we need? I think 90% of my Microsoft office program is for doing shi* I'll never need to do... and is only there to stuff the program to make it valuable.

Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free? This is nothing new.

I see what the article was talking about, but I think that's just a somewhat redundant but reworded way of looking at people having to pick between cost and quality. I'm sure if all people had money to spend, they wouldn't settle for less. Sorry but this article seemed like obvious economics 101 to me...
 
Why the BBC can sit back and say "a 5D Mark II doesn't meet broadcast specifications" but simultaneously CNN will be airing video-phone footage.
Click to expand...

Well I think CNN, and alot of news networks allow cell phone clib, because its better then nothing to tell the story. If you just want to hear about what happened, use a radio.
 
Ryan Patrick O'Hara said:
Wait... what? This is partly true but REALLY misconstrued in my opinion. People do like accessibility, and simplicity.... but they like LOW COST the most.

This isn't a new trend at all. In fact it's just a really strange way of looking at the same thing. Had the cheap flip video camera been $800 like the sony, people would have bought the Sony. Common people! Since when is buying cheap a new trend?

Because I don't have a Corvette, a house on the beach, or an Arri 435... does that mean I settled for good enough? It means I spent what I was willing to spend. Technology costs money and it's not a trend that people evaluate if a product is worth buying and then act upon it. Why should we buy Microsoft Office, when google docs will do what we need? I think 90% of my Microsoft office program is for doing shi* I'll never need to do... and is only there to stuff the program to make it valuable.

Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free? This is nothing new.

I see what the article was talking about, but I think that's just a somewhat redundant but reworded way of looking at people having to pick between cost and quality. I'm sure if all people had money to spend, they wouldn't settle for less. Sorry but this article seemed like obvious economics 101 to me...
Click to expand...
i have to say i'm with Ryan here...couldn't/wouldn't have said it better. :beer:
 
Ryan Patrick O'Hara said:
I'm sure if all people had money to spend, they wouldn't settle for less. Sorry but this article seemed like obvious economics 101 to me.
Click to expand...
Seeing nicely appointed people driving their Porshes and S-Classes to the nearby In-N-Out to have a lunch for five bucks does not follow your economics 101.
 
There was a Ferrari Enzo at In-N-Out last time I was there, it was also at the same night club I was at.
 
Yup. This is the wave of the future. as soon as corporation can figure out how to get us to shoot for cheaper at lower quality, thats "good enough"....

Case in POINT.

http://www.gucci.com/us/video/spring-summer-mens-bts/

This is a multimillion borderline billion dollar company, that actually put this on their very slick beautiful website. im positive they spent a few pennies on this.... and didnt bother to look back.
 
I think this is sad state of affairs, and globalisation has much worse to come.

And the article is bang-on, I see it all around me. But to what end? Most of the hardware stuff is produced so cheaply that it becomes unethical, and exploitative practices are in full swing around the world. This will come back to bite us in the ass eventually. When the first world has to compete with third world wages and we all take a dive in the quality of our lives and we can’t afford to by the products any longer.

It's the reason everything is in a mess, cheap products, cheap labour, cheap quality and no value of the human in the process. It may seem good on the face of it but the only true winners are the big corporations that have found this chink the in the consumer armour that the idea of something is better than the reality of owning and using a quality product for a reasonable amount of time.

Great article though and very topical, as I bust my balls to make my business compete on quality rather than price. Very telling.
 
Last edited:
Cranky said:
Seeing nicely appointed people driving their Porshes and S-Classes to the nearby In-N-Out to have a lunch for five bucks does not follow your economics 101.
Click to expand...

Those people just realize you can't get better than In-N-Out. It isn't a value-based decision, it's one of quality.

Silly rabbit.

e
 
One thing the article is missing is the difference between convenience, and restriction. MP3 is so successful because it's convenient... without restriction. If you look to nature... wether it's water, wind, gravity... anything... nature TENACIOUSLY finds it's way around restriction. Sony keeps trying to rule the world with restrictive formats (price, data management, compatibility, etc) for instance... and people just got sick of it... it's nature.

The "good enough revolution" is nothing new. It started with the industrial revolution... and hasn't stopped since. Don't kid yourself about that... MOST people have ALWAYS consciously chosen fast and cheap over "good".

New audio formats have always been about convenience (for the seller, or consumer, or both)... and when a new format comes out for improved quality BUT WITH INCREASED RESTRICTION... it fails. I was excited about DVD Audio... but I quickly experienced issues due to DRM on computers, no compatibility with any of my DVD players, and other problems when trying to listen on a different computer w/o the same software. Nobody is going to pay top dollar and then ALSO deal with a bunch of bullsh*t on top of that... to experience the best of anything.

Convenience and cost have always been the crux of consumerism for the masses... but don't forget that there are better quality options in any category then there have EVER been. Nobody is forcing people to choose a crap standard for anything... they are choosing it NATURALLY... just like water will always erode a channel through the lowest path of least resistance.
 
Last edited:
Yes, and this argument over restriction or limitation to access was a key complaint I had regarding P2Viewer when the P2 technology first hit the market. Panasonic, at the time, required that a serial number be entered to get P2Viewer. In reality and documentary markets, many people need to be able to simultaneously review footage, often in several different locations - and out of the NLE environment. Logging, writing and on and on - people need a way to simply view the footage.

Contrary to their usual policies, Sony immediately provided the free XDCam Viewer / Proxy software to anyone who wanted it, which helped them push XDCam squarely into the reality market in a big way.

Thankfully, Panasonic's poorly-conceived P2Viewer policy didn't last, though they have never caught up with Sony in this market. The damage had already been done.
 
That's a great example... XDCam is the defacto now... for the type of stuff that I've been involved in. (Field production type stuff... light ENG, etc.)

That's what I mean when I say "nature" is saying "screw this" as soon as some product makes a process more restrictive... when another product does not.

It's not a good enough revolution... it's two camps... it's creme and whey... (to paraphrase Talking Heads)... same as it ever was... same as it ever was. Quality trickles down over time... so when new tech slams the market at a blinding rate... it's just going to take a while to raise the bottom line... i.e. today's "good enough" would have been miraculous 10 years ago (obviously not for everything... like mp3 vs. CD).
 
Batutta said:
What is McDonald's food but mediocre crap
Click to expand...

:undecided

I'm gonna have to go ahead and disagree with you as well. It's not mediocre, it's #^@*-ing delicious! Fast food in moderation, of course. Even Anthony Bordain eats at KFC sometimes....

My theory is McDonalds food is laced with something highly addictive like crack, even the smell makes you want to buy it.
 
Deepfocus88 said:
My theory is McDonalds food is laced with something highly addictive like crack, even the smell makes you want to buy it.
Click to expand...

It's called salt...and it IS highly addictive. We can't live without it. :beer:
(I bet your mouth is watering just thinking about it)
 
It's MSG... remember "accent" which "makes food taste better"?

Fat, salt, sugar, MSG... mmm... my mouth is watering... I'd love to discuss a non-discuss topic regarding this... because I've always wondered why a "refined " biological machine would be so internally driven to self-destructive choices.

We are riddled with nerves that so effectively protect us through crippling pain... and yet inside... we actually CRAVE bad crap that brings us no benefit whatsoever. Weird.
 
Sorry guys, just because something tastes good doesn't mean it is good. It's good enough, and pumped full of enough of what our taste buds crave that people eat it constantly. I eat it. But I never delude myself into thinking it's food of any kind of quality. We crave bad crap MattinSTL because that stuff doesn't exist in nature in concentrations high enough to do us any harm. We became attuned to salt and sugar because those foods in nature have high protein and calorie content and would keep us strong and energized for longer periods of time. But now we got MSG and high fructose corn syrup and other synthesized crap that can be injected into foods to unhealthy levels, and food companies realized that the more stuff they inject that into, the higher their profits.
 
By that mindset, we should just engineer a 'smoothy-like' slush formula which has all the necessary vitamins and minerals which optimally runs the human body. We will all just eat that and anyone who chooses yummy taste over economical and practical nutrition in baby food form will be settling for 'good enough'. It's hard to draw a line, especially on food which is objective with nutrition and subjective with taste.

In order to see if we are a good enough society, we need all people to be able to afford what may be the 'best', but then again, we also need to take taste (not food taste, but just subjective likeness) into account. Because liking something can be subjective.
 
Last edited:
I can not stress this enough. sometimes good enough really is good enough. And that is, well....good.

If your client is putting an informational video of testimonials on their website, do they need to be shot on the RED, or 35mm? No. SD is good enough.

If your movie takes place in a small house over the course of a single night, do you need 10K HMI's? No. Some Arri 1ks and 650s are going to be good enough.

If you are shooting a low-budget short and you can spend 1K on gear for the whole shoot, are you goiing to pop down 4 hundred bucks for a gitzo boompole? No, a painters pole will be good enough.

Some times good enough = what gets the job done. "better" is not an objective measure.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top