Multitasking has become a driving force of modern life. And while the seemingly never-ending to-do list has become more of a universal feature of daily living, how we tackle the tasks ahead of us is distinctly unique. As such, OZY asked three rising-star filmmakers to each create a short film about how they view multitasking.
School of the Art Institute of Chicago grad Sasha Fornari, having decamped from Chi-Town to Philly, along with his wife Olivia and their 2-year-old son Max, has got some ideas. Not only about creating “content” for arts organizations, which he’s done, but about the creation of fully animated video spots with original graphics.
You see, one of the more significant notches on Fornari’s belt had everything to do with being the motion designer on President Obama’s re-election campaign. An ongoing affair stretching throughout the whole campaign, Fornari had to gather, grab and weave in multiple design elements into the president’s online videos, a bulwark in a new type of online campaign. And not just design elements and original graphics but motion graphics, all bent toward trying to make simple sense of everything from the prescription drug doughnut hole to student loan reform. The payoff? These ended up being some of the most viewed videos of the campaign.
[Thanks, Obama.]So it’s with this full head of steam, not to mention his work for the Joffrey Ballet and the Chicago Opera Theater, that Fornari got the idea to go meta on us. Specifically, bending all he knew to a very purposeful end: the creation of a video spot on the modern bane of the multitask and the multitasker who multitasks.
Originally posited as sort of a darker take on how focusing on too many things can lead to distractions, Fornari zagged into something slightly sillier and much more colorful. Animated using Adobe After Effects, Fornari and his team used both original and found iconography, Kyle Oppenheimer created the music and sound design, and Noah Meisner executive-produced to create a video about focus. Total elapsed time: four weeks.
We’re hyperstimulated and it’s becoming difficult for people to focus.
Sasha Fornari
Which might leave you wondering if multitasking is a useful accommodation or just a curse framed by unpleasant modern realities.
“The question is a tricky one because it varies from person to person,” says Fornari, who claims the obvious: He’s actually good at multitasking. But ”we’re hyperstimulated and it’s becoming difficult for people to focus, so that’s part of what the video is about: trying to focus while falling down rabbit holes to places you might not have intended.”
“Having access to so much content and information is sometimes lovely,” Fornari winds up. “And sometimes a huge distraction.”
And on that note, ladies and gentlemen: Fornari’s wholly distracting video about our multitasking mania.
