Cristian Jofre: MTV Makes Me Wanna Use Mac
Cristian Jofre is the creative director of MTV Networks International. He’s an ideas man, obsessed with turning abstract notions into reality. To help his 52-strong team make ideas happen, he recently deployed Macs with dual Apple Cinema Displays across his entire department, all running Final Cut Studio, After Effects, Maya and the Adobe Creative Suite.
Jofre is excited at the impact of new technologies on the creative process. “I’ve seen the transition from needing lots of people to execute an idea to what happens now, when one person can have an idea and execute it alone”, he explains. “Computers help you realise and execute these ideas in your mind”.
MTV’s new offices are future-proof. A year in the making, they boast under-floor HD cabling (each workstation has 3 HD SDI cables presented on to a break out box), Power Mac-matching grey flooring and dual-display-ready desks. Jofre’s vision was to provide an empowering environment to create in.
The installation includes 23 dual-processor Power Mac G5s and an Xsan-driven network, based around five 7TB Xserve RAIDs — providing an impressive 35TB of storage in total.
Jofre has equipped each team member with two 23-inch Apple Cinema Displays, so they gain aesthetic enjoyment working with their equipment and have the screen real estate they need to get complex tasks done. “It’s beautiful to have two screens when you have all these open windows”, he says.
But it’s not just skin deep. Jofre respects Apple’s compelling combination of hardware and software and applauds its early move to deliver powerful and attractive computers. “Computers once looked like refrigerators. Apple made computers that looked nice, creating new possibilities”.
“Tiger is great. I really like Spotlight because I have so much information on my Mac. I was missing a tool that made it easy to search for stuff.”
It’s easy to forget just how recently computers became commonplace. MTV’s creative chief remembers when layout meant pasteboards and Letraset. His first computer game was a simple tennis game called Pong and in 1995, he got his first Mac, a Colour Classic. “Things change so quickly. I have been amazed by how fast it’s moving”, he says. “My generation has been very lucky to go from Pong to Halo”.
Mac OS X v10.4 “Tiger” particularly impresses him. “Tiger is great. I really like Spotlight because I have so much information on my Mac. I was missing a tool that made it easy to search for stuff”. He travels a lot, so he uses Tiger’s Dashboard widgets for weather and currency conversion too.
While Macs are essential to executing ideas, Jofre encourages his team “to get their ideas from outside the computer”. It’s about connecting with the MTV audience, he explains: “You get a much stronger emotional connection with more depth if you use ideas from life than from a computer”. He stresses the virtual nature of MTV, which depends on building that “emotional connection” with viewers. But while high-end tools like Final Cut Pro help MTV make things happen, it is the industry’s consumer-level tools that Jofre feels are transforming the network’s audience.
“Viewers don’t have to be passive anymore. Consumers are using Macs and iLife to become creators. I can express myself with words and pictures in a blog and send it to ten friends. There are millions of these small groups”, he says. “It’s very interesting how things are moving to small communities”.
It’s an evolution of media and expression that Jofre welcomes: “Today’s MTV audience is made up of users, not viewers. They have mobile phones, can take pictures, upload, download, share”. This new generation of tech-savvy viewers can experience the excitement of making ideas happen. It’s a rich cultural exchange and Jofre maintains that “it’s important for young people to have access to information to form opinions as human beings”.
“Viewers don’t have to be passive anymore. Consumers are using Macs and iLife to become creators. I can express myself with words and pictures in a blog and send it to ten friends.”
He likes this “democratisation” of media. “I think it’s very good”, he says. “I know many older people just don’t understand, but the future is not for them, it’s for us. I don’t care if they think technology is killing culture, it’s untrue”. Jofre also dismisses concerns that new technologies will shorten the lifespan of existing media — he sees them co-existing side-by-side. “When TV came along, everybody thought radio would die, and look what happened — now we’re podcasting”, he observes.
Neither does he believe record labels will disappear. “There will still be massive artists like Coldplay, but now there’s room to make and share the music you want to”. Some bands will choose the major label route, while others will use things like MySpace to reach an audience. “You can use GarageBand to put together some tracks and share them over the Internet”, he comments. It’s a DIY culture that’s high in possibility: “Culture is about self-expression. Young people are expressing themselves through blogs, podcasts, movies. This is a new culture”.
