Too Many Cooks

The idea behind hitRECord, "the open collaborative production company directed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt" is a pretty swell. hitRECord's main presence is as a website where people load sound and visuals which are all available to be used by hitRECord members to construct Internet friendly content. hitRECord has put out some books and recordings and short films and today it debuted hitRECord on TV on the Pivot channel.

Sticking to hitRECord's collaborative ideal the show is unlike anything else on TV which makes it pretty neat in its own right. But the show isn't particularly original. hitRECord on TV has a cut and paste fast edit collage aesthetic, much of the two episodes that aired tonight on Pivot looked like hip ads for Target or McDonald's...Blasts of funky photos and cute drawings and selfie video of cool people doing cool things or just talking to the camera.

There were also some short films and collaborative video essays and a fairly amusing slightly too long song and dance number featuring Tony Danza and Joseph Gordin-Levitt. But hitRECord's collaborative focus meant a lot of hitRECord on TV was messy and unfocused.

Sort of tying all the lose pages of hitRECord on TV together is Gordin-Levitt acting as a cool yet friendly smooth talking master of ceremonies. The topic of both episodes was introduced by Gordin-Levitt to theaters full of people cheering and holding up smartphones and cameras as if capturing video of an event was something revolutionary.

After his initial "Welcome, to another edition of Thunderdome!" speech to the theater audiencs Gordin-Levitt is mostly seen throughout hitRECord on TV in selfie looking video clips with changing backgrounds and various effects on his image. His dialog sounds scripted and his comments sound like standard narrated TV fare where familiar ideas (such as episode #2's theme of fantasy) are presented with false tones of amazement.

It's all rather disappointing because it seems that Joseph Gordin-Levitt genuinely believes in the idea behind hitRECord. He's excited about the end results of the collaborative efforts that created hitRECord on TV. And though Gordin-Levitt definitely seems like a fun loving guy who is interested in the creativity of others and who uses his celebrity as a tool one has to wonder how many people are involved in hitRECord not because of the the collaborative ideal but because of Gordin-Levitt. And rather than inviting the whole world to make stuff it would probably be better if Gordin-Levitt put his celebrity behind a few projects he believes in.