Skill Doesn’t Matter If You Lack Taste

Reminds me of Ira Glass on taste and work:<p><i>"Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it's just not that good. It's trying to be good, it has potential, but it's not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn't have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I've ever met. It's gonna take awhile. It's normal to take awhile. You've just gotta fight your way through."</i>

"If you watch the newer Star Wars movies pay attention to the transitions near the end. When they are switching between each of the battle scenes they use Powerpoint style transitions. Dissolve, blinds, swipe. It’s an amateur effect in a movie that is otherwise very technically difficult and visually impressive. The skill is there, but taste is lacking."<p>I'm sure the use of dissolves and wipes in the newer Star Wars movies had absolutely nothing to do with the previous Star Wars movies using those everywhere. I'm sure it was a lack of taste on the part of the editor.<p>If anything those were the best parts of those movies, they were at least consistent.

Taste doesn't matter if you lack skill and knowledge.<p>The linked post is a fine example of a tasteful message falling completely flat because it was argued without skill or sufficient knowledge. i.e. It was pretty much undone by the use of a stupendously and hilariously wrong example: Lucas' love for (and homage to) Hollywood-serial era transitions.

<i>“It is good taste, and good taste alone, that possesses the power to sterilize and is always the first handicap to any creative functioning.”</i><p>- Salvador Dali

'Blaring messages about sales, quickly spoken copy, and flashing graphics are not going to make anyone look fondly on your brand...Rewrite your script. Never use phrases like “4 easy steps.” '<p>Tell that to direct marketers who very deliberately create such advertisements. While your statement may have validity, I would argue a more important point:<p>"Taste doesn't matter if you lack sales."

Taste is subjective and fleeting. The once lauded tastes of the 90s are now regarded as oh so <i>dreadfully</i> pedestrian by enlightened contemporary minds.<p>The crux of taste is rooted in celebrity worship and group think. Taste is a roll of the die and a hope that your vision resonates with those around you. It's no coincidence that every great artist is eventually regarded as jumping the shark; their tastes evolve or remain static, but time tends to displace the alignment between one's taste and the world around them (hence the need to "stay on top" of the latest trends).<p>Taste is almost negligible.

Taste depends on expectation and convention. There's no absolute standard to apply, only local and traditional practices.<p>As others have pointed out, the Star Wars transitions are part of the conceit of the movies. As an old fart, I grew up watching the movie serials that the Star Wars, and Indiana Jones, movies are made in homage of. If you aren't familiar with them then you are watching a <i>very</i> different movie than I am.<p>This is probably one of the reasons that I rather like the prequels; I'm viewing them in the context that they were created in. If Lucas erred it was in expecting future generations to be aware of the context and not expecting them to simply take the movies at face value. Since the movies made <i>a lot</i> of money, I don't feel he erred by much.<p>Lucas also is referencing a lot of post war Japanese film narrative technique; this is less critical to "reading" the film, though.<p>I've never heard <i>anyone</i> who knows about film narrative technique say that Lucas was an "unskilled" film maker. As for the films literary quality, YMMV.

I posit that taste is a skill. There's no reason why someone might be able to work to become better at understanding, distilling, and working with known stylistic &#38; cultural touchstones.<p>Of course, the meaning of "taste" in general is also ripe for a huge argument about semantics between folks with some free time on their hands.

I posit that this argument is true in proportion to how much freedom you have to accomplish a task.

Related reading: Taste for Makers by PG <a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html</a>

Does anyone see the irony in referencing Star Wars in an article on taste. Not to mention the cinematic blasphemy of indirectly comparing Kurosawa to MS Powerpoint!

"when you don't create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability. your tastes only narrow &#38; exclude people. so create." - _why

Kind of ironic that the title of the post is written in an extremely tasteless font.

Skill is secondary to <i>utility</i>