J.J. Abrams Champions Sense of Mystery in Era of Information Overload |Excerpt from Underwire | Wired.com

By Hugh Hart, June 10, 2011

“The downside to living in an age of instant information is that not only do you have a sense almost of entitlement to get the answer to any question you may have at any moment, but there’s also this jaded sense of already knowing the answer,” Abrams said in a phone interview with Wired.com. “If having an answer is sort of [only] a couple of clicks away, is it even worth looking up?”

In days of yore, before Ain’t It Cool News pioneered Hollywood gossip reporting, before The Blair Witch Project taught studios how to convert online backstory buzz into box office riches and before Comic-Con International transformed into a virtual megaphone capable of blasting snippets of film content into the geekosphere many months ahead of a movie’s release date, people went to the movies knowing only what they’d seen in a single trailer and maybe a poster or newspaper article.

Studios’ top-down control of movie information was near-dictatorial, but rarely did audiences in the analog era become sick of a picture before it came out.

By contrast, today’s “need to know” mindset requires a steady stream of factoids, artistic pratfalls, unguarded remarks, DIY paparazzi set shots and often an avalanche of official production stills. Information-gorged audiences who eat the big box of buttered popcorn before they get to the theater are less likely to jump up and cheer than filmgoers who have no idea what’s coming.

via wired.com

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