ble in the grey area //
There’s a pattern that is common in many creative industries.
Most creators will produce banal and commonplace things when the stakes are low. It’s partly due to the law of big numbers, but mostly it is our cultural resistance towards doing weird things. The vast majority of YouTube videos and Spotify tracks, as well as potluck contributions, craft fair items, and other similar items, are copies.
We actually see the percentage creative work increase when more money or time is needed. This could be due to the fact that the risk and effort separate the hobbyists from those who are committed creators. Here we can find the single chef in a strip-mall restaurant, the independent record label, or the artist school movie project. Netflix can do this magic with a small budget on a good night.
Then we enter the gray zone. The rent for the restaurant is high, the budget of the film is in tens or hundreds of millions, and the record label is pushing a certain artist hard. In this situation, more creativity is the best economic strategy. Why? If you wanted to stay in the middle of the road, then it wasn’t necessary to spend all that money.
The creator is pushed to the wrong decision by a combination of cultural, financial, and corporate pressure. We should be on the dotted line, but instead we ride down the boring road.
Don’t be afraid to take risks.
Money at Risk is never absolute, but always relative. You are in the grey area if you feel like you are.
