The Oscars, Play Buttons, Moving Images and Video Impact: Down the Rabbit Hole With Joan

Can’t wait for Sunday? It’s Oscar night. The entire uStudio gang is getting together to watch the ceremony to see if our slate of favorite films take home the statues. We are all movie fanatics, cinephiles who crave the moving image, which is probably why we work here. Though truth be told, we geek out over the scientific and technical awards as much as the artistic prizes.

I’m talking about this because when I did an online search yesterday, the Google graphic du jour (Feb. 27) caught my eye. It is a beautiful, moving (literally) tribute to John Steinbeck. A quick glance told me it was an Oscar tribute, because so many of Steinbeck’s books have been made into movies, and of course it’s Oscar time.

But no. It was an homage to Steinbeck on what would have been his 112th birthday. No matter. I was moved by what I saw and experienced. I was happy.

Then something else caught my eye – a twinkling video play icon cleverly embedded in the Google logo.

Funny how the “play” icon has become so ubiquitous in our culture that by now it has become a subliminal call to action. We click on it reflexively, with no guarantee that what lies in store will be of interest, only that it will move.

That’s how pervasive video is culturally. We accept its presence and expect it to have impact. When it doesn’t deliver the goods, we press that “other” button.

That got me thinking. What was the origin of this iconographic triangle, this off center pizza slice that, when clicked on, gets the videos we produce going? (I think the way you describe the icon is a kind of mini Rorschach exercise or maybe one of the right brain left brain quizzes currently zooming through the online ozone.)

So I went searching. According to Gizmodo, “[The video play button] first appeared as tape transport symbols on reel-to-reel tape decks during the mid-1960s. In some cases, they were accompanied by the (double triangle) rewind and fast forward symbols. The direction of the play arrow indicated the direction the tape would move. Easy.”

So there you have it. What began as a completely utilitarian symbol for a single function in a tape-based workflow has embedded itself over time into our culture. It transcended its utility to become an icon — a promise of something desirable. A story about to unfold. The world moved beyond tape long ago. In our digital world, the directional Play arrow should be an anachronism. And yet, it soldiers on.

And so does filmmaking. Even as we — the disruptors, the video hackers, the futurists — drag storytelling into the next age, certain things never change. As my colleagues and I fight it out in our Oscar pool, rooting for 12 Years a Slave, Gravity, Dallas Buyers Club or American Hustle, we do so united in our love of exceptional storytelling. It is hard to capture the emotion that is bound up in our love for story. Sometimes the mention of the name “Steinbeck” can unlock it, and sometimes a glimpse of an Oscar statuette might conjure the feeling. But on a daily basis, as we move through the prosaic rhythms of our digital lives, there is one symbol, one icon, that promises to lift us out, however momentarily, of the digital doldrums and transport us somewhere worth being. We need only press Play.