Why I created MediaTag.io
Hello! I’m Gui, founder of MediaTag.io. This is one of the posts detailing my thinking behind the creation of MediaTag. Sometimes the decision is obvious, sometimes I have to weight the pros and cons of several options. But in any case, the outcome has to appear simple from the point of view of a visitor.
Here I explain why what drove me to create it, and how it helped me be more creative.
A few years ago, I was trying to understand how to write a full screenplay. I could write short films — I had done that before — , but a story that spanned 100 pages, with consistent characters that all had an arc, all around a central and compelling theme… that’s something I hadn’t managed to do yet.
So I set out to learn how others did it. I watched films. With a specific focus on how the story evolved. I wanted to understand the story on all its different levels. On its first and formulaic level; where the plot points were, what the initiating event was and how long the resolution took. The 101's from screenplay books.
And I also wanted to understand how the themes were introduced and developed. What steps the story took to get us to know a character. How that character grew.
It was also important to see where the film took its time. Where it delved in exposition, and where it accelerated.
I needed to understand the map of a film. Its rhythm. Its pulse.
All I had was a papers and pens, so I watched films and took notes. Such as:
- 00:15:00- the protagonist gets captured
- 00:24:00- he escapes
Taking notes was easy. But I quickly realised one major problem; if I wanted to re-watch the scene matching a specific note, I had to find it manually. I wished I could just click on my note and it would open the film at that specific moment.
But my paper wasn’t smart enough. At least not yet.
And that problem only became bigger as the number of films increased. If I wanted to see similar moments in two different films, I add to open one, scrub to the right time, then open the other one.
That was a drag, and I would simply lose my train of thought, forget what I was looking for, and probably lose a couple new ideas in the process.
In short, that wasn’t a good method.
So I set out to build a tool that would make this process easier, allowing to take notes inside films.
This is what it looks like:
This simple tool made it really easy to understand how films were designed.
I could understand it at different levels. I could understand how long each act or scene took. How long was needed between the moment a character got intro trouble and when he got out of it.
This also allowed me to see where the tension increased, where it softened. Where I got bored, or where I got excited.
Basically I could tag things as I discovered them, while watching the film.
And if I could do it with uploaded films, I had to do it with online videos too.
So I made this tool work with Youtube and Vimeo.
What happened then is I started to also learn from the short films on those platforms!
They are such a rich source of inspiration. One major, vastly major, advantage they have compared to feature films, is that they are not limited by market and distribution rules.
Features films cost a ton of money and require large crews, whether they are blockbusters or indie. They have to be at least 80 minutes long to be in cinema. Those are big constraints that limit the range of stories that can be told.
Short films, on the other hand, are completely free style. They can be bolder or more experimental.
So you find all sorts of styles and tones, which means there is even more to learn from them.
But if I can take notes on film…
…then I can take notes on anything!
Yes, inspiration does not only come from films.
The goal of MediaTag is to help people write, not only to understand how films are created.
Inspiration appears so many places. In conversations, conferences, photos, books, webpages, anything.
So the goal of MediaTag is to help take notes on any of those. But for now, we’re going to keep it simple, and we’ll take notes on just digital media.
And those are photos & webpages.
Once you have those a tool that offers those capabilities, it becomes really easy to get inspired by what you love, and most importantly, remember that inspiration.
And an immense advantage of collecting all those little things that gets your mind going, is that you keep them together. And by going through them, you make new connections.
And new connection create new ideas.
And with more ideas you make new connections.
And so on.
That becomes a virtuous circle.
Since having created this tool, I managed to write several screenplays. One of them even received an award. My last short film was selected at the London Short Film Festival and Aesthetica Festival, making it BAFTA recognised! And now we are on our way to get that feature produced.
MediaTag isn’t just a way to write notes in films, it is a way to take notes on any media; videos, photos and webpages. It is a way to write your thoughts easily and organise them quickly, so your creative juice is always flowing. Try MediaTag.io for free.
