The Adobe Summit had a full house of its 12000 delegates on day two as Ryan Gosling took the stage to share his experience of the content industry in a fast changing technology world. In a conversation with Adobe’s Chief Marketing Officer, Ann Lewnes, Gosling spoke about social media, what it meant to be a content creator and why he preferred short form content to long form.
Speaking about the evolution of content itself, he said, “We are still watching ‘The Wizard of Oz’ but now we are watching it on a handheld device.” What has changed though, in the mobile age, is that people are watching movies at home so that they could spend more time with the characters. Gosling referred to contemplating shorter form of content. He said, “Perhaps movies could be made in shorter chunks, and in a series so that people could watch them more. A film is like a one-night stand but a series is like a relationship,” reiterating that people wanted relationships more.
He was also candid while commenting on what he viewed social media to be. “The thing about Twitter is that it takes the fear out of public speaking, but not the consequence. I am very conscious that every time I say something, I am saying it to two million people if not more, and I cannot even imagine they are in their underwears because probably half of them are,” he said.
One of the key messages from his address was the democratisation of media and what that meant. As everyone with access to cell phones and film-editing software on their laptops become storytellers, which arguably meant that they had more control over their own story, a whole new world would come into play. “That’s something that Orson Welles tried to get for years,” he said.
