The Verge - Interviews

Interview with Google's Bradley Horowitz (Top Shelf 011)

2013-05-18T19:18:40Z

David Pierce sits down with one of the minds behind Google+ to discuss where it's been and where it goes from here.

Sketching Instagram: co-founder Mike Krieger reveals the photo app's humble beginnings

2013-05-13T16:30:03Z

Mike Krieger is a co-founder of Instagram. Having built the first version of the app years ago, he has been called the “soul” of the company and leads its engineering team today. Before Instagram, Krieger was a user experience designer and engineer at Meebo, a browser-based instant messaging platform. Krieger took a few minutes to talk to The Verge about the roots of Instagram’s many filters, the principles of human-computer interaction, and some of Instagram users’ craziest behaviors. You can find him on Instagram and Twitter at @mikeyk.

How have things been going since you joined Facebook?

We push code to Instagram like 20 times per day. For us, if it’s ready, it goes out. The fact that Facebook [pushes code twice per day] is actually still impressive given how many engineers they have. Now, it’s like, “We would’ve pushed this but Mike needs to support it in case anything goes wrong and he’s in a meeting.” I’m actually slowing down the team if I try to build more stuff, so I need to step back and make sure we’re focused on the right things.

Obviously you aren’t pushing out 20 features per day. What exactly have you been doing?

"At any given point, you’re going to be unhappy with over half of your infrastructure."

It’s mostly performance. Growing from 30 to 100 million [monthly active users] in basically a year or less … As a user hopefully you’re having a similar but better experience, but the infrastructure to support that looks really different now.

There’s this thing in San Francisco called Developer Boot Camp … I gave a talk there and ended up coming up with this slide that said: At any given point, you’re going to be unhappy with over half of your infrastructure, which is true. There are all these ways we’re doing things that could be better — it’s kind of like “painting the bridge.” You go from one end to the other, and once you’re done optimizing and improving your systems, you have to start all over because the assumptions are different.

So, the feed’s faster?

We’ve been obsessive. From day one the thing we wanted to do was make it fast, be it on the client or on the server. Loren Brichter (an Apple alum) had the defining article on how to do this. He said, “Alright guys, everyone’s doing this wrong. You’re trying to have 30 different layers on-screen, but you need to keep it flat — keep it one thing you draw on-screen at a time.” We spent hours [on it]. For v1 we opted to cut a bunch of features in favor of just making what we had really, really fast.

People get away with murder now because they have the iPhone 4 and 4S and the 5. They just have better processors. People are doing more but they’re also optimizing less. Who I love reading is Jordan Mechner, who wrote Prince of Persia, He put all his journals while he was writing Prince of Persia online. He was a kid, like 18 or 19, when he was doing this. There’s this point [in the game] where it’s you and your shadow self. He said, “Well, we didn’t have any memory left to do this other character, so we just took the character and bit-flipped it so there was its exact shadow.” The types of creativity they had to do back then when you had 8K of RAM, to make that work, was crazy.

What’s your take on the current online music space, and how do you think music streaming could / should work?

"Having the wrong timing is still being wrong."

I remember when I was in college an anonymous donor gave Stanford students a year of Yahoo Music Engine. It was like Rdio or Spotify, but 10 years ago. Ian Rogers (of Beats, formerly of Topspin) was the product person on this. I wrote to him once and said, “Dude, you guys had this! What happened?” and he said, “Having the wrong timing is still being wrong.”

I remember that and just being in love, and then it kind of went away. Lala kind of had it, and then that went away as well. And then when Rdio finally came around I was like, “Oh, this is incredible.” To me, the balance is this. I had a morality moment, a reality check while reading about the economics of this. This is actually not a really good way to support these artists. Now, if I really like it, I’ll go out and buy the iTunes album even if it’s mostly symbolic since I go and listen to it on Rdio anyway. It’s my own way of saying, “Here’s some money in the tip jar.”

In college you studied human-computer interaction. Why did you choose that field?

In high school, one of the things I loved doing was this after-school program where you would teach computer skills to some of the maintenance folks at school. I remember sitting with them and realizing some of the concepts we have that seem totally obvious; like when you click on a link, how do you know it’s [working]? Back in the day, it was because the Internet Explorer globe was spinning.

"Why do you click on things once on the web but twice on your desktop?"

The hardest thing for a lot of these folks that hadn’t grown up with computers was clicking on things. They would navigate, take their whole hand and try to hit the mouse and at that point it would move the mouse and they’d miss the link. It was really frustrating. And why do you click on things once on the web but twice on your desktop? Why? I knew I was interested in making that better for people and studying how we can take the goal of what the interface is and make it work for people.

How did you apply that knowledge to Instagram? The bottom-navigation bar inspired a generation of apps.

Before we wrote a line of code we had this notebook, and we said let’s draw the entire app. We came up with this whole feature, once, around being able to annotate your photo. We sketched it out, looked at it at the end, and said let’s junk this, it doesn’t work. We spent four hours doing that, which feels like a long time, but that would’ve taken at least a week or more to build.

The most pivotal week in the early Instagram days was when Kevin said, “I’m going to Mexico, I haven’t taken a vacation in two years. I’m gonna think about some of this filter stuff.” I said, “Okay great, let’s nail down the rest of the app, really detailed, in terms of UI mocks and what the interactions are before you leave.” My hours that week were really funny. I’d wake up around 2PM, code until 6AM. I think that’s my natural state if you leave me and tell me to get something done.

"Before we wrote a line of code… we said 'let’s draw the entire app.'"

In one week we had the basic app. The way we were able to do that and not run off in a totally wrong direction was by having really good UI mocks beforehand.

How do you invent filters?

Kevin did most of the filters in the early days. A lot of that was going through … Flickr collections and seeing what happens when these photos age. Or, even looking at photos of ours from our childhoods that were only 20 years old at the time, but had already gone through some process and had some mood and just trying to reproduce it. In Photoshop we’d create the effect and translate that into code.

We’ve gotten better at this over time. I was going back to my first photos and we all had borders on our photos. We had way too much color correction. The photos you’re going to look back on five years from now are not the ones that are super processed, but the ones that maybe had a shade of a mood versus the plain photo. But not so overboard that it’s unrecognizable.

So why did people stop using borders?

I think it’s because looking back you want the photo. The borders were actually mostly unintentionally amazing marketing tools from day one. What is this photo? Oh, it’s an Instagram photo because it has that border. The New York Times had an Earlybird photo on its cover. Of all the coverage we’ve gotten, that was the coolest moment. It wasn’t even coverage of us, it was just using an Instagram photo. It was a Yankees player. You knew it was an Instagram photo because of the Earlybird border. But I think people gradually tend towards the more subtle, not super-editorialized version of the filter. I think we also defaulted [the borders] to off, which has a huge impact on what people do.

Seen any crazy user behaviors?

I love seeing people use and adapt the product. Adrian Grenier took advantage of it by doing three photos in a row: he built this mosaic by posting one photo at a time so at the end he had a whole mosaic. It was pretty cool, and then you realize that the next photo is probably going to throw it off. We used to have four up, four photos to a row [in profile view], and we’re like we want to make our photos bigger, since you can’t really see these thumbnails. All of us agreed that this was a great direction and when we shipped it we got these letters like, “All I do is make my mosaic!”

"I don’t think mobile-only is a sustainable thing to do long-term."

There’s a great xkcd comic that’s release notes for some software application and they’re like, “Hey we fixed a bug where holding down the spacebar increases your computer’s temperature” and some people said, “Man, I had hooked it up so when the temperature increased it actually meant this different command!” With 100 million people, somebody is using your product in some interesting way. If you change it… you’re going to break some use cases.

What took so long to develop a web version? Has it met your expectations?

There were third-party sites that would do it, but each had its own identity. That was definitely a need that people were filling. We could tell. It’s really funny to look at your web logs and to see what people are doing, and so many people would get 404 errors since they were trying to type people’s usernames in there. That was a gap we are really happy we filled. I’m really glad we did mobile-first, but I don’t think mobile-only is a sustainable thing to do long-term.

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The illusion of simplicity: photographer Peter Belanger on shooting for Apple

2013-05-08T15:00:04Z

You’ve almost certainly never heard of Peter Belanger, but you’ve definitely seen his photographs. In fact, you may even see his work every day, and it’s likely that you own some of his most famous subjects. Belanger is the man behind some of Apple’s most iconic product images, a San Francisco-based product photographer at the top of his field. Apple is but one of his clients — he’s done work for everyone from eBay and Nike to Pixar and Square — and we sat down with Peter to talk about his work, his background, and some very, very expensive gear.

Where are you right now?

I just put the kids to bed and I’m waiting for Mad Men to download from iTunes.

Your portfolio shows your focus (and prowess) as a product and advertising photographer. How did you find your way to that specialty?

"I could actually make a living doing what I loved."

While studying photography I was in a program that really pushed the creative side of the industry (concept and meaning more than technique). The goal was to hang in a museum. At one point I decided I wanted to learn a bit more about the commercial side of photography and applied for an internship in San Francisco. I could see there was a lot of work in the area for commercial photographers due to all the product companies around Silicon Valley. This was when desktop publishing and computers were just taking off. I liked the aspect of working with clients and solving puzzling challenges with each job. I also liked that it seemed I could actually make a living doing what I loved.

What artists inform your work or inspire you the most?

There isn’t any one source that stands out, but I do like looking at current magazines to see creative images and new styles. I often find influences in images that might be a completely different style than mine, but have great lighting or a unique set. Movies and television shows are also strong influences.

The technical details behind your photographs seem to vacillate between deceptively simple and incredibly complex. Sometimes it’s tough to see the product from outside of the lighting rig. Can you describe in general how you plan and execute a shoot?

The biggest factor is how many photos need to be accomplished in a day. I try to keep the shot list reasonable so there’s time for me to light each product uniquely. Ideally, I consider the material of the product and how best to light it. Sometimes it’s easier to light the materials without a surface getting in the way (since it can be added later). When I’ve had ridiculously complex sets around a product it is a result of needing to light something very precisely and be able to control each highlight and shadow independently.

If I’m not given much time or the product isn’t very cooperative I have to simplify my lighting. On one job I was shooting expensive leather shoes with actual snakes crawling out of them at the Academy of Science. I decided to use very forgiving light on that project because the snakes were moving and doing their own thing and I only had a small window of time for each shot.

What camera is nearest to you at the moment?

Canon 5D Mark III, this is my go-to camera. My base lens is the 24-70mm; if I could only have one lens this would be it. It works in almost all situations. I’m always impressed with how shallow the depth-of-field looks at f/2.8 with this lens.

You’ve created images seen by millions of people every day, but most people probably have no idea that you’re the photographer with whom they’re so familiar. I see your images every day walking around New York City. How did you come to work with Apple so much?

When I was starting out I freelanced for agencies that had Apple accounts. Over the years the agencies evolved and many of the designers and producers moved internally at Apple. Because I had a working relationship with lots of them, they kept using me. I feel very lucky that this relationship continued.

Can you describe the creative process behind an Apple product shoot?

"I think of my lights as layers that I can adjust individually to get the desired results."

The team at Apple always has a really well developed shot list and sketches of what they need. I work with their talented art directors to translate those sketches into photos. We start by getting the position of the product and then move forward on lighting. Because Apple products have such carefully selected materials it is incredibly important to light the product in a way that will showcase the various materials accurately. I pick an area to start with and think about how that material needs to be described. Once that section is done I move on to the next. This is how my sets get so complicated! I need to have control over each and every surface so when the client asks for a highlight to be elongated, I can do that. It’s similar to working on a file in Photoshop: you don’t do all your work on one layer. I think of my lights as layers that I can adjust individually to get the desired results.

When you create images, how do you balance working in the camera, versus post-production?

I try to do as much in camera as possible. Even shots that are achieved in camera need some post production. This is because no matter how well a product is made, when you magnify it at 100 percent, you see more than the human eye can see. Something that looks smooth as you hold it will have scratches, chips and other imperfections once magnified. However, there are times when I shoot in what I like to call "Frankenstein photography." I shoot various parts and combine everything later in Photoshop. This technique is great when I want to avoid reality (like my donut series) or when I can achieve something that couldn’t have been done in-camera. I did an album cover for The Brokenmusicbox this past year where the image was crafted out of various pieces to achieve a combination of elements and lighting that wouldn’t have happened any other way.

What do you photograph for fun?

"I'm the dad that shows up to baseball games with a 400mm lens."

My kids! I know that sounds boring but it’s not. I’ve been taking a photograph of them every day since they were born. This is a great outlet for me because it’s very different than my normal work. It’s something I can do and not worry what a client or anyone else thinks. Without that pressure I can take risks and experiment. I’m the dad that shows up to baseball games with a 400mm lens. I can hear my kids say to their friends, "It’s just what my dad does — ignore him." At the end of each year I make a photo book with 365 photos for the kids to see. I just finished book ten. It even landed me a job photographing my family for some Apple marketing materials.

If you could watch any other photographer work, who would it be?

It would be cool to spend time on a shoot with Anton Corbijn. I’ve been a fan of his work for a long time, especially since he’s worked with so many musicians that I have listened to forever — like Depeche Mode and U2. He has a much more documentary-like style and different clientele than I do. His images have a strong style and while they may seem simple they also have a story within.

What tools and apps do you use to work every day?

For software I use Aperture for Canon Raw conversion and to archive camera files, Capture One for Phase One Raw conversion, and Photoshop. xScope is a small but very useful app. Evernote and Dropbox help keep my office paperless and organized, Blinkbid for estimating and invoicing. I try to keep up to date with my photo gear. Up until last year I only used Profoto lights. I wanted to expand my lighting so I added some Broncolor lights. In the studio I shoot with a Phase One digital back with a Sinar X view camera, and Phase One 645 camera system. Outside the studio or doing handheld work I use a Canon 5D Mark III.

"I love figuring out how to photograph something rather than being shown what someone wants."

What’s your favorite movie, period?

True Romance is one of my favorites. There is an intensity of passion. It showed the extent people will go for those they love, blurred the lines between right and wrong, and had some great lines as well. I wanted to name our first child Alabama after the main character, but my wife vetoed it.

What or who is your dream subject?

Products that aren’t out yet and haven’t been defined by millions of photos. I love figuring out how to photograph something rather than being shown what someone wants.

Images courtesy Peter Belanger

Science writer Mary Roach: ‘everything I learn is pretty shocking and weird’

2013-04-17T15:21:14Z

For someone who never set out to write about science, Mary Roach has certainly proven herself up to the task. More specifically, Roach has become something of an expert at exploring weird, uncomfortable, sometimes taboo questions — from how quickly a cadaver decays to how paraplegics can achieve orgasm — and doing it with an unmistakable combination of candor and comedy.

Her new book, Gulp, takes readers through the alimentary canal to explore the science of human digestion. Along the way, Roach samples rancid olive oil and whale skin, shoves her hand inside a living cow’s stomach, and follows a human fecal transplant (it’s exactly what it sounds like) from donation to insertion. We caught up with Roach to learn more about the ins and outs of science reporting, the weirdest facts about digestion, and how she decides which far-out topics merit the signature Roach approach.

What got you hooked on writing about science, instead of spending your career covering something else?

To be honest, it turned out that science stories were always, consistently, the most interesting stories I was assigned to cover. I didn’t plan it like this, and I don’t have a formal background in science, or any education in science journalism. Actually, I have a bachelor’s degree in psychology. But whenever I got a call about doing a science story, I was always drawn to the assignment. I guess for me, it’s sort of like being in continuing education classes all the time. You’re always learning something new, and that’s what I really like about it.

You just finished Gulp, a book about digestion. What was the weirdest thing you learned in the reporting process?

Keep in mind that I come into these things with no background, so everything I learn is pretty shocking and weird to me. But I was really surprised to find out that we have a second set of nostrils, in the backs of our throats towards our nasal passages. When we chew, some of those [ed: airborne] molecules actually enter this nose and help our brain figure out what we’re eating. I really like wine and gin, so now whenever I drink either one, I try to exhale with my nose when I have some in my mouth. It makes a huge huge difference in what you can taste.

What’s the toughest part about science reporting for you?

"I come into a book with the same sense of awe as my readers."

Hands down, the fact that I don’t have a degree in any type of science. I’m always on thin ice with getting stuff straight. Even if I have the basics, or all the little pieces of a story, I’m always at risk of missing some big part or misstating some important detail. When I’m done a book, I always give it to someone with expertise in the topic and tell them to flag all of my stupid mistakes.

At the same time, this means I come into a book with the same sense of awe as my readers. I’m discovering all of this stuff with them at the same time, this feeling of "holy shit, I cannot believe that!"

You certainly seem to pull it off. Which means other writers want to know: how do you work? What’s a day in the work life of Mary Roach?

I work out of a little office with 11 other writers and a few people in the radio business. We share office space in downtown Oakland, and that’s where I do my research and my writing if I’m not out on a reporting trip. I have a nice little office, with a nice little window in it, but I do basically spend huge amounts of time in what you could consider solitary confinement.

"I’m basically a professional pesterer."

I usually work Monday to Friday, 9-to-5 banker’s hours, but not because it necessarily has to be that way. I guess that just makes it easier, because those tend to be the hours that the rest of the world is working.

I spend a lot of my time on the phone, pestering people. What’s new in your lab? Can I come visit your lab? When can I come visit your lab? I’m basically a professional pesterer.

Your books have run the gamut: space, sex, digestion. How do you decide what topic to devote a book project to?

It’s largely a process of elimination. A lot of interesting topics out there just won’t work for me. People have suggested that I write books about sleep, or drugs, but those are largely internal — a lot is going on inside someone’s body or inside their head — and I have a hard time making that compelling. I like scenes, events, on-the-ground reporting.

"But there’s no magic potion for coming up with the right idea."

A topic really has to be broad enough so that I can cover a bunch of research and a lot of different angles, but it also has to be appealing to a lot of readers, because publishers like selling books. And let’s face it, so do writers. But there’s no magic potion for coming up with the right idea; you can’t just sit down and decide that you’ll find it in the next two hours. It often just pops up right under my nose, or in the case of Gulp, I guess it popped up inside my nose.

If you had to pick, what’s the one scientific breakthrough you most hope to see in your lifetime?

I get really excited about specific therapies, personalized therapies. Like, let’s say taking a piece of someone’s tumor and testing a bunch of treatments in a lab and being able to come up with the right therapy for that specific patient. Right now it’s still really expensive and it might still be a ways off, but I think we’re on the verge of a huge breakthrough right now. Who knows how long it’ll be, but that’ll be a big day. And I think that’ll be pretty amazing.

Speaking of digestion, let’s say you have to pick your last meal. Right now. What is it?

We’ll start with 12 oysters from pretty much anywhere, as long as they’re fresh. Then I’d have to have beef pho, with the raw beef that you put into the soup yourself and let it cook as long as you want it to. And somebody’s gotta do a good job on the broth, because this is my last meal. Then I’d have a few al pastor tacos from the Sinaloa taco truck in Oakland, where I live. And some really good ribs.

For dessert, a perfectly fresh mango and some perfectly fresh cherries. But I don’t care so much about dessert; I’d rather save myself for the main courses.

Finally, a very, very dry martini, because I need to be a little bit drunk before the executioner pushes the button, or whatever he’s going to do to me.

Image credit: Chris Hardy Photography

‘Room 237’ director Rodney Ascher on the weird world of ‘The Shining’ conspiracy theories

2013-04-12T14:34:18Z

Stanley Kubrick’s classic The Shining is about a family facing death in the isolated Overlook Hotel. Or maybe it’s an indictment of genocide, whether American or German. Maybe it’s an apology for faking the Moon Landing, or a series of intricate visual puns. It all depends on who you ask — and Rodney Ascher, director of the recently-released Room 237, has asked just about everyone. Ascher’s first full-length documentary, Room 237 explores the weird world of alternate Shining interpretations, talking to five men and women with often wildly divergent ideas about what the movie means. We sat down with Ascher to talk about Stanley Kubrick, narrative, and how technology has changed the way we watch film.

Though a huge boom in Shining theories has been fostered by the internet, several of Room 237’s subjects recall a time when they couldn’t count on anyone else understanding their interest — or, until home video, even being able to verify their theories. Jeffrey Cocks (who discusses Holocaust themes) has published several books, and reporter Bill Blakemore’s essay on The Shining and the Native American genocide was published in 1987 and is still widely cited. Today, theorists are more likely to have websites or video series. "People are both able to watch the movie closer than they ever could before, and that they are able to share ideas in ways that are more powerful than you ever had before," says Ascher.

Eventually, one theorist screened it running forward and backwards on the same screen

Despite its age, Ascher believes nothing can touch The Shining for interpretive popularity. "Inception was maybe going neck and neck with it for a little while while we were working on [Room 237] but very quickly tapered off," he says. "People are more actively combing through The Shining in microscopic detail than they did when it was new or are doing for any contemporary film." With every new technology — from VHS to Blu-ray — there’s a new way to watch the film; eventually, one theorist screened it running forward and backwards on the same screen, looking for more visual quirks. "After you’re done watching and re-watching in successive mediums," Ascher says, "the final stage — or maybe there’s still another one coming — is to manipulate the movie and watch it in a new way."

For Room 237, Ascher chose to discard the standard talking-head documentary style, leaving the subjects as faceless voices and cutting together scenes from Kubrick films that echo what they’re saying. A comment about feeling watched by unknown agents, for example, is paired with a clip of Tom Cruise looking around the corner at a shadowy figure in Eyes Wide Shut. It sounds gimmicky, and it is — but it works flawlessly, in no small part because so much of the subjects’ theories are based on the same principle of reinterpreting and recontextualizing everything. It’s a way to drive home how easily one can find weird synchronicity in film, whether you’re trying to pick out hidden meaning or just doing the basic work of connecting what you see to what you hear.

Room 237 doesn’t force you to subscribe to the interviewees’ opinions, whether they involve analyzing the house’s impossible layout or asserting that Kubrick faked the Apollo 11 mission. Some pieces of each puzzle will seem inarguable — whatever his reasons for doing so, Kubrick seems to have intentionally created a set that couldn’t possibly fit together — but it’s harder to argue that Jack Torrance’s choice of typewriter is supposed to evoke the Holocaust, or that Danny’s Apollo 11 shirt is a nod to conspiracy. Ascher isn’t, however, asking us to impartially observe or mock either. "Our idea was to try to present each of these ideas as persuasively as possible," says Ascher. "And that’s an interesting challenge… trying to make the audience of 237 watch The Shining through the eyes of these other people." He also quickly scrapped the idea of trying to find a "true" meaning: instead, the film is "about what happens when the movie leaves the filmmaker’s hands, and the audience is left to put the pieces together with whatever tools they have."

'Room 237' plays off the satisfaction of feeling like you’re being let in on a secret

The result is a journey through an alternate landscape where even the most far-fetched ideas can seem real, and where every detail becomes a doorway to another world. Room 237 plays off the satisfaction of feeling like you’re being let in on a secret — sometimes, that’s being shown details you’d never catch on your own; sometimes, it’s recognizing a clip from A Clockwork Orange or 2001: A Space Odyssey and smiling at the deadly serious association it lends to an offhand comment.

I wouldn’t say I came away from the film convinced of any of the theories, but it’s a rare and uncomfortable moment when the attempt completely breaks down, and you’re told something you just can’t square with your own perception. At one point, a subject points out a cloud in the opening scene, insisting that Kubrick has put his own face in the sky. Though even he admits it’s difficult to see — probably because it isn’t there — it’s almost frustrating not to be able to accept a part of his theory, no matter how weird it might sound.

It’s possible to read meaning into The Shining without having to believe Kubrick put it there. At one point, Cocks suggests that his interpretation remains valid no matter what the intent, bringing up the notion of the "death of the author." But he’s a lone outlier among the subjects, who often attribute Kubrick with preternatural intelligence. The director is described over and over as a bored genius, a man with an IQ of over 200, a "supermind" dreaming for humanity.

"Unlike me, Kubrick was smart enough to not do any interviews."

"Unlike me, [Kubrick] was smart enough to not do any interviews," jokes Ascher. "Whatever his reasons for being kind of camera-shy himself, that only helped contribute to the aura of the genius mad scientist up at the top of the mountain." Add to that the fact that no matter what The Shining is about, the attention to detail is indubitably there, as is Kubrick’s control over his medium. A David Lynch film might be just as ripe with hidden meanings, but it’s harder to attribute him with the same level of meticulous planning. "It may be overstating things to compare The Shining to the Bible," says Ascher, laughing, "but I think if you’re going to look at the Kabbalah or other deep readings of that, a lot of it is based on the idea that we are dealing with an infallible author."

In the end, though, Ascher thinks The Shining continues to fascinate for a simple reason: it’s enjoyable. "It pretty firmly lands smack in the middle of art and entertainment," he says. "There are a ton of other films more plainly symbolic, but this one is more entertaining and more endlessly watchable than most of them."

Filmmaker Shane Carruth talks 'Upstream Color' and making movies like albums

2013-04-10T15:30:04Z

As the story goes, Shane Carruth took $7,000 and made one of the trippiest time travel movies of all time — one that eschews flashy special effects for a complicated (yet surprisingly cohesive) nonlinear narrative. Primer was a critical darling, but after its release, Carruth went silent for almost a decade.

Upstream Color is the long-awaited follow-up to his 2004 debut. It premiered this year at Sundance (you can check out our review for more details) and is now seeing a limited theatrical release (think: less than 100 theaters) and will be available for streaming and download May 17th. We sat down with Carruth to talk about Upstream, his upcoming projects, his thoughts on Primer’s legacy, and what happened to the now-abandoned A Topiary.

(Note: the first question contains one minor note about about Upstream Color’s plot structure but it’s otherwise spoiler-free)

Present: Upstream Color

Without delving into spoilers, it’s interesting to me how much of Upstream Color is devoid of dialog. I think Steven Soderbergh noted that silence is something that movies can get away with but TV can’t. For you, what else can movies do — this long form, lean back experience — that short-form videos like TV just can’t?

I don’t know that a movie can do something that a TV show couldn’t do. Might be unwilling to do though.

The thing is, I think that there’s a new form, that I’d like to see. It’s more like an album that you put on than an experience that you have once. You’re meant to internalize in one viewing. I’m sort of interested now… No, not sort of — I’m completely interested. That’s the way I think of Upstream, as an experience that you have once, and hopefully you have a full emotional experience.

"It’s something that you put on and internalize the way you would an album."

It’s satisfying on a level and that there’s a story there, but that it’s not something you have to see twice, it’s something you want to see twice or hopefully more. It’s something that you put on and internalize the way you would an album.

I think I would like to see narrative get there, to the point where, like an album, you put it on, you don’t know everything about it, but you listen to it a few times and suddenly recognize all of this nuance and it becomes one of your favorites. That could be something new, and it’d be good to aspire to that.

Do you think a movie like Upstream Color could work in a traditional theater model? Could it do a standard release and see success nationwide?

Like put it on 1,000 screens or something? It’s tough. A movie like it could. Eventually, I think. I really don’t know.

New digital distribution is coming up in a big way. Do you think that that’s going to replace the traditional model, or is that a symbiotic, complementary service or distribution model?

It’s definitely complementary. I don’t know if theatres are going anywhere. It’s possible that we’ll have a world where the same people that are strict about only listening to music on vinyl, or enjoy that, will be the same sort of people that go to theatres to see movies. I can see that, but I don’t know. There’s more than enough reason to stay home now, and people still seem to be going out.

Past: 'Primer'

I really want to pick your brain about Primer. There may be seven or eight timelines that overlap each other, but they do follow a pattern. I’ve seen dozens of different people try to map out Primer. Did you have something going in where you diagrammed it out?

Yup. I had to.

Have you ever shown that to anybody?

I bet it doesn’t exist anymore. I bet it’s thrown away.

There’s a bunch of stuff, a lot of props and things that five years from now it might be nice to have, but at the time you don’t want to see them, you don’t want to know that they exist. You definitely don’t want to keep them safe. At some point it becomes the film.

I don’t even want to know what’s outside the edit anymore. I don’t want to accumulate that footage, because this is it now. This is the thing. No matter what experience we had making it or how we got to those answers, these are the answers. This is the thing.

What do you think about people who constantly debate and interpret and try to graph that out? Have you seen any of that online?

I did, when it was — it’s not still happening, is it?

I think it’s been a year or two years since anyone did it. I think the last diagram I saw was from 2010 or 2011.

Gotcha. No. I looked at it initially. I don’t know what to do with it, to be honest. I’m so grateful that anybody cares enough to go and do that.

Who does time travel right? What films have you seen that really kind of nailed it? Looper doesn’t count, because you helped with that.

Right. I didn’t really help with that.

What did you help Rian Johnson with? You have a special thanks for that.

I did. Well, he was nice enough to act like I was — he said something, I think on Twitter, where it had been vetted by me, or whatever. I don’t know what he said. He was being very nice. He showed me the script, and I got to read it. We had some really great conversations about it. He’s smarter than I am, so it’s not like he needs my help or whatever. There was a period of time where we were talking about doing effects. But it was mainly just conversations and stuff.

When I first heard about Primer, it was extremely hard to find. Amazon seemed to always be sold out. Netflix had maybe one disc in the entire company. Obviously that’s not the case anymore. You’ve taken more control, there’s video on demand. What prompted you to shift your digital strategy?

"What’s a Netflix life sentence, what’s that worth?"

Honestly, I really started thinking about it when Upstream was shot. What I really wanted was a metric: how do these things work? What’s the revenue from iTunes if you just put a title out there? What’s a Netflix life sentence, what’s that worth? All of these things. I wanted a test case. That was the motivation to get started on that.

How’s it been so far for Primer?

It’s good. It’s actually really amazing, to be honest. I’m so grateful that it seems to be holding it’s own. It’s old. There’s no promotion going on right now, other than now that we’re talking about it. I’m so grateful that people received it well, that Sundance, that program did, that it got distribution. I’m still grateful to this day that that happened.

Where would you have been if not Primer, If that had not taken off?

I think I would have made another film. Maybe this one. I don’t know what would have changed. I don’t know.

Alternate timeline: 'A Topiary'

When we spoke earlier, you mentioned that Upstream was financed more from friends and yourself. Why did you go that route instead of trying to find traditional backers?

Because I wasted years trying to get a project called A Topiary made. I invested a lot of myself in it. I think it’s a really great film.

How many years?

Primer was nine years ago, so this would have been about three years. I spent about two years writing and perfecting an effects workflow for it because it has a lot of effects in it, and I need the aesthetic to be something that I can count on and done a little bit cheaper than farming it out to third party effects houses. I spent a lot of time on that and found lots of enthusiasm with film financiers.

"I invested a lot of myself into it, and it sort of broke my heart."

Is A Topiary still a work in progress?

No. I’m not pursuing that anymore.

I’m so sorry.

Me too.

What happened?

I invested a lot of myself into it, and it sort of broke my heart, to be honest. I can’t really let myself go down that path anymore, or I’ll get angry about it, basically.

So you’re not going to return to that movie 10 years later?

Maybe I’ll be in a different state by that time. The thing is, it’s taken me awhile to figure out that there’s no common ground between me and the way traditional financing works. I don’t think that there ever will be any common ground, so it’s hard for me to do that. I would have to come up with some unique way to do it. Right now, I’m too passionate about what I’m writing and what’s currently in front of me to take my eyes off that.

Did you consider crowdfunding? Kickstarter? Going after the fans?

I considered it, but I didn’t do it. I might next time. At the time, when I was looking at it, I had a false opinion of crowdfunding, that it branded the project too much. That from that point forward it wasn’t a film, it was a Kickstarter film.

I think we’re past that now. I think it’s a completely legitimate thing, although I do think that you have to have a conscience if you’re going to do that. If you’ve got money available to you as equity, you can’t just take people’s money for free. I think that should be an option — it should be like asking for somebody if you can sleep on their couch. It happens, and it’s necessary, but if you’ve got a place that you can afford, then you shouldn’t be doing that.

Future: 'The Modern Ocean'

Can you talk about what’s currently in front of you?

Sure. I’m writing a story called The Modern Ocean. It’s a continuation of the emotional language that was built up for Upstream. It’s a tragic romance at sea in the world of commodities trading. It’s ships at war.

Will you cast yourself again?

I don’t plan to, but I don’t know for sure.

Interview has been condensed and edited

Footnote: "What I'm seeing is people not even taking advantage of what you can do in a movie. Here's a good example: A movie is something in which people don't talk for long periods of time. That's something that TV doesn't do, and it's something that movies should do and often don't. What I find in movies now is you're told everything instead of being shown something." — Steven Soderbergh (return to question)

Timehop CEO: 'Reminiscing doesn’t have a home online yet'

2013-04-09T15:30:03Z

Jonathan Wegener is CEO and Founder of Timehop, an app that plugs into services like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to show you what you were doing one year ago today. Prior to founding Timehop, Wegener hacked together 4SquareAnd7YearsAgo, an app that surfaced old, nostalgic Foursquare checkins. Wegener took a few minutes to talk to The Verge about the first app he ever coded, a future filled with personal assistants doing our chores, and why it took so long to find a place to reminisce online. You can find him on Twitter at @jwegener.

What are you doing right now?

Typing.

Your Twitter avatar shows you eating a rainbow-colored apple. What’s that about?

Benny (my cofounder and also college roommate) took the picture of me eating a giant apple back in 2005. I liked it and needed a Facebook profile picture so I used a black and white version. Then I decided to make the apple red. Then I decided to make it Apple Computer-colored, as if I was the one who took the bite out of the Apple Computer logo!

"It’s a wide-open playing field if you can figure out how to make a compelling product."

Why did you start Timehop?

We built 4SquareAnd7YearsAgo at a hackathon two years ago and it caught on. People loved the product and stayed engaged with it consistently, so we decided to double down on it and work on it full time. Nobody had built anything interesting in the space — dealing with historical stuff and being about your personal memories. It’s a wide-open playing field if you can figure out how to make a compelling product.

What tools and apps couldn’t you live without?

Mac OS: Jumpcut, CloudApp, SizeUp. iPhone: Flashlight.

You’ve called Timehop "the ultimate digital history experience." What does that mean, and what does that look like a few years down the line?

Our goal is to build Timehop into the place to reconnect with friends online. Reminiscing doesn’t have a home online yet and we want to be that place. What that looks like I’m not sure. We’re figuring it out as we go.

"I think people underestimate little problems."

What companies in tech do you feel have the most potential to change our daily lives?

I really really like the personal assistant / errand space: TaskRabbit, getMaid, WunWun, FancyHands, etc. I use and love them all. I think those are going to make our lives so much easier. I also think the transportation space is awesome and I love Lyft, Sidecar, and Uber.

How do you stay focused while at work? 5-Hour Energy? Pushups during lunch? Quick breaks in the holodeck?

I plug into a good album on Rdio, put on my headphones, and I focus on a single task at a time. I avoid multitasking as much as possible and give myself long stretches of uninterrupted time to focus and get deep into my tasks. I delegate as much as possible — either to my coworkers or to contractors / service-people, etc.

What was the first line of code you ever wrote?

The first memorable app I built was a QBasic script that animated the New Year’s Eve ball drop. It drew a circle on the top of the screen then redrew it a pixel lower each time, counting down from ten until it said "HAPPY NEW YEARS"

You once created an app called Exit Strategy to help travelers save time by getting on the right subway car. Are you ever going to update it? What other little problems would you like to fix?

Yes, I am going to update it — stop nagging me, Mom! I think people underestimate little problems. If you can figure out how to make peoples' lives one percent better through some little utility or hack or application, they’ll love you for it and they’ll pay for it. Exit Strategy is an example of this. So is Dropbox, RetailMeNot, Slickdeals, CloudApp, and lots of other successful services.

"If you can figure out how to make peoples' lives one percent better, they'll love you for it and they'll pay."

What percent of people check out their Timehop every day?

Close to 40 percent. For a mobile app, that’s huge.

How do you plan to monetize Timehop? Why will that plan work?

We’re focused on growth first, monetization second. Once we get big (millions of users) we shouldn’t have a problem figuring out a way to monetize. But I believe in solving one problem at a time, and right now we’re focusing on growth.

What album has been the most important in your life?

Probably Beastie Boys’ Hello Nasty. It was the first CD I ever owned, and I’ll never forget the first time I put it in the CD player and listened to it straight through. I had never really been into music before that.

What obsolete gadget do you miss using the most?

A car, but I consider cars obsolete. The idea that everyone in the world should own 4000 lbs of metal and get a new one every few years is just crazy. With that said, I love driving — the power, the ability to go anywhere. I’m a big Zipcar fan and think that biking, trains, and mass transportation combined with Zipcar is the future of American transportation.

Read more 5 Minutes on The Verge

Interview: 'Minecraft' creator Markus Persson wants you to 'just make games for yourself'

2013-04-05T16:50:03Z

Despite big-budget distractions like EA's Battlefield 4 reveal, the story of the 2013 Game Developers Conference was really about indie games and experimental game design: a realm Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson is intimately familiar with. And at GDC, The Verge had the chance to sit down with Persson for an interview about his company Mojang, the new consoles on the block, and the future of game development.

Note: this segment originally aired as part of April 4th's Top Shelf: the underdogs of gaming — watch here!

When asked about GDC's rising focus on indie games, Persson said "it gives me hope for the future. Gaming goes in trends an for a bit of a too long stretch it focused on huge productions. Now that games are getting a little bit smaller again we can get some more experimental games going." But what does that mean for indie developers trying to break out on crowded or locked-down platforms? Persson's own Minecraft started out as a small experimental game for the PC, and only made it to platforms like the Xbox because of its runaway success.

"The more consoles the better."

When asked if Minecraft could have ever originally made it on a console, Persson said "no, definitely not. The game was kind of too out there for anyone to bet on it." Of course, consoles — even including Sony's upcoming PlayStation 4 — are becoming more open, and Persson has been an eager backer of experimental consoles like the Ouya. As a major backer, Persson has his name etched on the side of every Ouya console that ships. "The more consoles the better," Persson said, "because if there's more competition they might get more open."

As for the future of Minecraft and Mojang, Persson expressed comfort with the company's position. While Mojang is now much bigger (and wealthier) than your average "garage developer," Persson says the company still retains an indie spirit. "We try to make games we want to make for the sake of making fun games and not necessarily to make a profit," he told The Verge. But what about those garage developers, who could be working on the next Minecraft? For those developers, Persson has some simple advice; "just make games for yourself and try to have a critical eye to what you do," he said. "If you genuinely like the game there will be other people who like it as well."

Playing the Ouya with CEO Julie Uhrman

2013-03-29T03:00:59Z

Adi Robertson interviews Ouya CEO Julie Uhrman who gives us a sneak peak at the the console's minimal user interface.

'Game of Thrones' author George R.R. Martin on piracy, video games, and new shows with HBO

2013-03-21T19:45:16Z

George R.R. Martin is the man behind A Song of Ice and Fire — the series of epic novels upon which HBO's Game of Thrones is based. A novelist and screenwriter, Martin's career has spanned a number of genres and mediums, from short stories to the 1980s reboot of The Twilight Zone. In addition to the pending debut of season three of Thrones, the author also recently signed a two-year overall deal with HBO that opens the door for him to develop new television projects.

Martin took questions before yesterday's Game of Thrones screening, and along with revealing that he would be appear in a cameo in a future episode, he gave his thoughts on piracy, video games, and what new television projects he might want to develop in the future.

The effect of social media on publishing

George R.R. Martin: You know I think every little bit helps. There's no doubt that we're moving into a new age of media, and the days where a writer could just write his books and have them published and never interact with the public are gone. We do have all these new social media and all these ways of reaching out, and I think that trend is likely to continue. Where it's gonna lead, I really have no idea. You know, I'm partly still the kind of guy that would like to tie messages to legs of ravens to get the word out. But I do use a computer. I have since 1982, so I'm adapting as best as I can to this new world. [In the Q&A session later that evening, Martin revealed what he writes on: a DOS machine running WordStar 4.0.]

On playing Game of Thrones video games

"Video games can be very addictive."

GRRM: I've looked at them. I've met with some of the video game guys, the designers, they came in and showed me some. But I played a few video games back in the 80s and that it wasn't that I didn't like them. It was that I liked them too much. And I think I probably lost a novel or two there, cause I would get hooked on someting and I would be playing it over and over again, and I would be staying up all night. Just one more game, just one more game. So, video games can be very addictive.

Particularly with my own video games. Westeros is in my head, and these characters are in my head, and I've already got sort of a schizoid relationship here because I have the books and the television show, which are slightly different versions of the same thing. If I added video games to the mix I'd really go mad.

Developing new shows with HBO

GRRM: Well you know, the ink on that is still wet, so we really haven't gotten into too many specifics yet. I have a great body of work that predates Ice and Fire, including screenplays and teleplays that I did in days of yore that have never been produced. Novels and short stories that I think would be well-adapted. So that's one resource that I plan to discuss with them, and we'll go over my inventory, so to speak.

"I'll throw a lot of different things at them."

And I also have a number of ideas. I have an idea file with more ideas than I could ever write if I lived another hundred years. Some of them are ideas for novels, obviously, or short stories. But a number of them would work very well as a television show, so we're going to talk about some of that, too. There's science-fiction, there's fantasy, there's historical fiction, which is another field that I love; straight historical fiction. So I'll throw a lot of different things at them and see what they like.

Piracy

GRRM: We are the most pirated show in the world. In a strange way that's a compliment. It's the sort of compliment that you could do without, probably, but it is a compliment nonetheless. I know that a lot of that piracy is taking place in Australia, where for whatever reason they delay the show six months. So people are just anxious to see it. I think we're seeing — we're still right in the midst of a whole new template evolving for television and film entertainment. And the old template, where shows were made in America, and then they were sold to foreign broadcasters who would show them the next week, or the next month, or six months later, or six years later, or whenever they felt like it — that's breaking down. Because it is a global marketplace.

And it's breaking down in publishing, too. I mean my British publishers and my American publishers coordinated to release the last book so they came out on the same day. Because otherwise, with Amazon and other online book sellers, if it comes out in one country before the other country, whoever is later loses thousands of sales because of people ordering it. So you're seeing — and new delivery methods, like Netflix. You know they just released an entire series that's never been broadcast. You just get it, and you get it all at once, and you binge watch it.

"I leave this to the guys in the suits."

I think nobody knows what the final shape of all these things are gonna be. Just when you think you perceive what the new template is, some other new innovation comes along and changes all the rules. So they're interesting times for people. But fortunately I don't have to worry about that. I'm writing about a medieval land where they do communicate by tying messages to the legs of ravens, and they can't get anywhere faster than where they can get on a horse. Or perhaps a dragon, but they're only a few of those. So, I leave this to the guys in the suits and the guys with the really big computers who understand that stuff and they can figure out the business models. I'll just tell my stories.

Do those guys in suits have some sort of responsibility to release content quicker to meet the demand that's out there?

"I think it would cut down on some of the piracy."

GRRM: I don't know if I'd use the word responsibility, but I think it would be good business. I think it would cut down on some of the piracy that's a problem. You know, if Australia was getting the show the same day that America was getting the show, then maybe the Australians wouldn't be downloading hundreds of thousands of copies. But I don't know. Why do Australian broadcasters choose to delay it? They have reasons; you'd have to go to Australia and ask them. But I guess that's a model of how they want to present it to their audience and what time they want to present.

But one of the great things about this show in particular is that it does have such a tremendous global audience. I mean, we are the — globally — the biggest show that HBO has ever done. We've sold in more foreign markets than even The Sopranos, which was I think their previous show. Domestically I think we're about the third most-successful show HBO has done, after The Sopranos and True Blood, but internationally we're up there.

"We are the — globally — the biggest show that HBO has ever done."

And I think it's because some of the other shows are very, very specifically American. I mean The Sopranos was a great, great, great show. Marvelous writing, marvelous acting. But about a mafia guy in New Jersey. I'm a guy from New Jersey. I wasn't in the Mafia, but you know they got all the New Jersey stuff right, but I don't know if in Slovenia, and India, and Singapore they're that interested in guys in New Jersey and what their problems are.

But they're interested in the universals. People can look back to the medieval times. I mean virtually all human civilizations went through some version of this, when there were no guns and people were fighting with swords and armor and so forth, and virtually every civilization has its own legends of magics and warriors with magical powers and heros and villains of the past. So it strikes a universal theme. I think that's why we're doing so well internationally.