Skip to main content

Will you Play it Safe in 2025?

One of my favorite songs which I learned about early this year. Our boss at the agency played this at one of our town hall meetings.

It's reminder to all creators that we will always be told to "stick to safe ideas" (which is fine, if you just want to get the work done and go home) but there will always be this other voice at the back of your head that will ask, "Maybe there's another way to do this? Maybe there's a better way to tell this story? Maybe you can tell if from a different point of view and make this old story feel like new? Maybe you can spend a few more minutes working on it? How about it? Let's give it a try? Another hour trying to re-write? Let's give it a go!"
What I love about this song is how the lyrics take on the conservative point-of-view and how the visuals show us the exact opposite.

One of my favorite bits of this song is this part, where the lyrics starts to give you a "list of commands", like it's a list of orders that you need to follow...
Toe the line
Don your suit
Hide your truth
Wipe your tears
Don't cause trouble
Find your bubble
Stick to black-and-white ideas
Play it safe
Know your place
Know your lines
Know your limits
Find a doctrine
Get it locked in
Build a box and stay in it
... and the faster the song goes, the more I say, "No. No! Nope! NO!"

And then he ends the song with...
You gotta play it safe
Your mind is like a house
If you keep it locked up tight
You just might keep the world out
... which becomes the cautionary tale for everyone.

This year was not a very productive year for me, as far as making new comics is concerned. Hoping I can get more done in 2025.

And I hope this song inspires you to NOT Play It Safe and that you get to tell the story / song / tale / play / movie that you've been meaning to tell and get to share it with the world!



PLAY IT SAFE
by Tim Minchin
"For five decades the Opera House has stood in defiance of that nervous little voice inside us that tells us to play it safe and keep it simple. This special film celebrates our 50th anniversary, encouraging us all to live on the edge of possible, because when we do, extraordinary things can happen."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Couple of weeks ago, Ms. Diyco featured another campaign made by the creatives here at Harrison Communications. Here's her review about the Neozep "Neozerye" TV campaign: Romancing the mighty colds cure ADS AND ENDS, Nanette A Franco-Diyco BUSINESS WORLD Vol. XX, No. 139, Friday-Saturday, February 9-10, 2007 http://www.bworldonline.com/Weekender020907/main.php?id=marketing_diyco The four television commercials that serialize the life of pretty housemaid Luwalhati, culminating in a storybook wedding to her once-upon-a-time señorito from the imposing mansion belong to an ad campaign awards class all its own. There have been other spoofs of soap operas selling other brand categories in the past. But for several reasons put together, the Neozep series of commercials that began with honest-to-goodness ad teasers that looked and sounded like teasers for true-blue soap operas proved ultra entertaining and more importantly, "reinforced Neozep’s leadership and further s...
Read more
The Flag Bearer I have always found it curious that in Philippine pop culture, there has never been a popular flag-bearing character. In United States, the obvious example would be Captain America; followed by Wonder Woman (with her red, white, blue and star-spangled outfit) and of course, Superman (whose costume follows the color motif of the American flag). They became symbols for the American people during World War II. In the days after 9/11, more New Yorkers were seen wearing their Superman and Captain America t-shirts. If we take a look at other countries, they didn’t seem to see the need to create such a character. Even when Marvel created characters like The Guardian (a Canadian super-hero) and Union Jack (a British super-hero), they didn’t seem to develop a big enough following and have comic book titles that reached the 100th issue or spin-off to become a TV or cartoon show. Here in the Philippines, popular characters like Darna and Panday are not “flag bearers”. I guess, ...
10 comments
Read more