Mentors, Missteps, and Midjourney

In 2008, I was a young corporate video producer. I worked in a converted old country house in Scotland, the home of a madcap maverick called Jim. He had been in a wheelchair since, I believe, his late teens or early twenties, and he had built a production company against those odds and more. The business was arguably in the middle of nowhere in Scotland, but he’d figured out how to compete with the top dogs in corporate production in the UK. He was my first mentor. I used to hang out in his office after work or when it was quiet and pick his brain, have an expensive glass of wine in his summerhouse, or get taken to a business lunch where he’d always send something back. He taught me the difference between a leader and a manager, and for that alone, I’m forever grateful.

His Creative Director taught me how to write. I don’t know if we ever had the best relationship; I believed him to be neurotic, overthinking everything, and that he had no idea what was current in the market. I’m sure he thought I was a know-it-all, too big for my boots pain in the ass. But we tolerated each other and were pretty successful.

I say he taught me to write because, for his sins, he was required to critique my work. I once wrote a treatment for a whisky brand, and he had the job of telling me it was shit. It was indeed. I’ve tried to find it to post it with this article as some sort of cathartic experience, but I can’t locate it. Luckily for everyone, it has ceased to exist. I’m sure I went toe-to-toe with him and reasoned for every choice I made, determined to make it make sense. But deep down, I knew it didn’t. Visually, it was interesting, but there was no story. And I knew that.

Anyway, the reason I bring it up is that at the same time as I was writing, I had a designer working on the accompanying art to support my doomed creative vision. It took her days and days. The visual premise was Giant Whisky bottles seamlessly embedded in Scottish landscapes. She did a decent job, but it was a difficult task with little to no budget in 2008 to create something that would sell a client on a high-concept idea with very little substance. Midjourney v6 just knocked out the below in seconds. Looks pretty cool. I may revisit the whole thing just for kicks and send a better draft to that CD.

Midjourney for high-concept visual treatments to sell in creative ideas? I think so. The world has changed.

As you were,

MrMck.