Jenny Death When?: Combining the Past with the Present

The digital age came with its expected death notices.  Old technologies and companies that were doomed from the start: typewriters, vinyl records, and polaroid cameras come to mind first.  But alas, somehow people still use typewriters and 9.2 million vinyl sales don’t exactly spell death for vinyl records. The same can be said about polaroid cameras.  But unlike typewriters and vinyl records, some adjustments have to be made for the new age, which makes sense because the Polaroid is the most visual and distinct of the three.  The Polaroid represented spontaneous memories and photo worthy moments. It was even the focal point of Taylor Swift's 1989 album cover: steeped in nostalgia and beckoning you to consider it as an major part of your life
But now, photos and cameras in general have such an integrated place in society now, that unlike vinyls and typewriters, they blend into society as a social tool rather than stand alone as solely memories and moments. They are tools to express your lifestyle and life story and can build an social image or social cache for you, view-able to anyone you choose, and this is done almost fully in a digital format. Photos can be anything you want: moments, a story, a running journal of sorts, the choice can be yours. In the process, the instant physical photo has been replaced by the instant digital photo, a form much versatile that it can even become physical like the Polaroid, although many choose not to. A Polaroid photo used to hold the cache of valuable yet in the moment photo taking. Now, because cameras are everywhere, not foresight or conscious decisions are needed for photos: they are more disposable than ever, far from what the Polaroid photo's cultural value was. So the challenge for Polaroid now is, how do you take instant physical photography, something that's removed from popular society in almost every way, and reintegrate it?

        Well, Polaroid thinks it reintegrate physical photography with the Socialmatic, the all new, eggs in one basket camera that intends to transcend modern times while filling traditional roles (note how the name they gave clues consumers in on the intent of the camera)

Right now, you’re probably thinking that with whatever Polaroid could hope to do for sake of relevancy can be done with a phone, and probably even better than any actual camera maker.  And that may be true, but detractors forget one thing: the physical aspect of amateur photography.  Computers can play music arguably better than vinyl, and the ear can’t tell the difference between a FLAC file and perfect vinyl, but people still buy them for the physical aspect of vinyl, and the same can be applied for pop photography.

Last year, Taylor Swift released 1989, the most popular album of the year, with the cover as a Polaroid of herself, clearly keeping the Polaroid photo relevant in the cultural schema, albeit in a commercial nostalgia sense.  Yet that seemingly shallow attribute is  the foot in the door, because nostalgia is not damning if driven correctly.  Just as vinyl was a nostalgia niche that grew into an industry driven on connection to physical medium, the Polaroid can do the same.  Photos lost value through the digital age and regained some through social media, especially Instagram, and through digital scrapbooks like Shutterfly.  This process involved digital photos become disposable by nature, but gained value through social media (Instagram) and the opportunity to make them a physical entity (Shutterfly). Yet, they still have lost that value that a single photo can bring to the owner. Polaroid photos used to not be in huge number, so photos counted. Combining this with disposable nature of digital photos, the Polaroid company thinks it can corner this logical progression by combining all of this with the current trend of nostalgic physical objects, creating the Socialmatic.

The Socialmatic can take a digital picture (smartphone-esque dual camera), upload the picture on social media, edit the picture, geotag it, and print it instantly.  It looks almost exactly like the Instagram app logo, can stand on its own via a thick square body, and appeals to the Pintrest/Instagram demographic (mainly female young adults).  The camera includes a full Android tablet OS 4.4.2, so the possibilities really are endless.

It would be so easy to take this device apart and call it a fad.  But there’s just too much in it.   It honestly speaks for itself: it has all the features any social photo taker would want, features Zero Ink printing where all it takes is special film and there is no ink to fiddle with, producing stunning pictures with no quality variation.  Obviously, the barrier is that it is a separate device to purchase, and it is expensive for now, but the product itself is no gimmick: it is the true Millennial’s camera.  It is not trying to create social dialogue, it is the product of social dialogue. The social dialogue is what the modern photo taker does with their photo: its a personal, public, and chronological timeline that serves so many purposes as time passes, and the Socialmatic does just that, servicing every mode of photo taking for the modern mass photo taker would need.

Something to keep in mind is that prior to this device, the digital photo has social cache and can fit into the narrative of someone's life, while the physical photo is a memento for a event or time in someone's life, is a marker on the timeline (so to speak). But, with the printing and digital photo combined in one device, things start to blur. What if you combine the social narrative of your life with the memento photo? This can be done with the camera, taking photos and creating the social narrative with many photos (digitally) and print the ones representative of major parts or emotions in your life. This way, all your photos have value: you can have 200 vacation photos, and one portrait at the beach that encompasses all you felt at the time.

In this fashion, things really do blur in the best way possible: everything on this is on-demand. Printing, editing, posting, it's all at your disposal. It's intuitive, portable, cute, stands on a surface, and is a tablet. It clearly works for families and the Instagram population it is currently pushing for, and that's key. It's just the $299 price tag that limits it, probably due to having such an advanced computer inside it! Marketing for devices like this (Honda Insight (2000/2014), Microsoft Surface, Microsoft Zune, etc.) were ahead of its time and it's superior break-away from consumer mainstays were not properly advertised. And if having another device that seems not useful is a consternation to you, let me remind you that the iPad is the most awkward successful device, not doing a laptop or phone's job well, and still powering over the Surface, which does laptop and tablet both well.

Polaroid has run out of time. It has reduced the value of its name overtime with failed marketing and the Socialmatic is the hail mary for the company. It could be ahead of its time, as we are still in the midst of the smartphone/camera revolution, but with the past now coexisting with the present, now’s better than ever to make your own 1989 cover. -Sunil Mahajan

Jenny Death When: Useless 3-D Movies

What people don't get about a gimmick is that it can be popular and still be a gimmick.  Popularity does not excuse the gimmick-iness of something.  And 3-D movies do just that.  

Remember Avatar? Remember how the first time you watched it in 3-D, trying to revel in the awe inspiring effects while battling the niggling feeling that you're stretching the amount of awe you are trying to squeeze out of the $25 per ticket you spent, only to realize the morning after you witnessed  Pocahontas in space with Michael Bay as a secret consultant?

Getting sent to the realm of bad post-production.

This is what I mean.  Movies with either poor plots, poor use of 3-D effects done in post production, or both (e.g. Divergent 2) have flooded the market the past few years, and have produced a steady decline in revenue and movies released in 3-D.  And while there are movies that do the release justice (Interstellar, Gravity) the balance weighs heavily on the side of hastily released 3-D versions of movies, in hopes that people buy into the gimmick that the 3-D movie must be good, no matter how it was made of what the movie is.  

Clearly, a movie like G.I Joe is not a visual masterpiece nor does it try to cater to magnificent visuals that can benefit from 3-D.  So even though revenues are boosted by 3-D ticket sales, the gimmick is still revealed: 3-D does not automatically guarantee a superior movie viewing experience.  Post-production 3-D never works out well, as many a headache and stretched out shaky-cam shots can show.

As a final thought though, 3-D movies themselves should not be eternally damned.  There is a place for them, but a very small space, that is only occupied by the likes of Metallica, Life of Pi, and Gravity as of recently.  They just need to be considered for 3-D release before the movie is even planned.  

Obviously we shouldn't watch bad movies.  But what makes a bad movie, and what saves it? Is it 3-D? The director? The studio?  The answer is yours, but it definitely isn't just one of them.  Whether you think gimmicks are used or not, just decide if you're going to fall for them.