Wait. Who is that singing?

I take some pride in my early discovery: At Ribfest 2005, September at Five County Stadium, Zebulon, NC., while there to support the featured band – good friends, great band – and, oh yeah, eat some ribs – surprise – a magnificent voice stopped our tracks dead. Rhiannon Giddens – wow – who is that, and why have we not seen her before?

We got home and I started a search. Turned out Rhiannon was a recent graduate of Oberlin Conservatory now singing fiddle tunes – how curious, how awesome. I fired off an introduction email and began arranging a photo shoot.

Schedules being what they are, it wasn’t until the Carolina Chocolate Drops had formed and were well on their way national attention before we met for a photo session at Stagville Plantation’s Slave Quarters in Durham, NC.

Prairie Home Companion, Grand ol’ Opry, NPR interviews, countless magazine articles, appearance in the film, “The Great Debaters”, and a Grammy for Best Traditional Folk Album – and 4 years later – I asked Rhiannon if she’d sit with Armand Lenchek and I for a video interview.

Here’s and edited 16 minutes of the 80 she spent answering our creative curiosity:

via Carolina Chocolate Drops website:
This is the story in a nutshell. Rhiannon’s father was a classically-trained singer whose legacy was a warning not to study voice before the age of 16. So Rhiannon waited until she was 16 and set off for choral camp. It was great, so she applied to Oberlin College and took on the deepest part of the classical vocal river, opera. “I did five operas and three main roles,” Rhiannon summarizes, “I got into it pretty hardcore.”

“]

Isaiah Mustafa via Wikipedia

Isaiah Mustafa is the man you’d like your man to smell like.

“The minute you think the past was better, your present is second hand – yourself becomes vintage. It’s OK for cloths, not so great for people.”

I’m not sure there is any better advice for the day. The caution is not paying attention to his follow up advice to use instincts. Using your instincts as a creative person means staying within yourself.

Make sure that every influence you’re connected to is filtered through your unique voice. Perhaps it’s best to keep it inside long enough to forget inspiration’s origin. Use the artifact of influence before it’s time and you’re work is a copy.

Without an original voice – without artistic instincts – you resemble a marketer. Producing what you think will sell; a trend chaser.

While copies are OK, they aren’t quality in the full sense of the word; they’re a lie as soon as you put your name on them. Influences, given time to incubate, are the nutrients of your unique voice. No matter how similar the final result, if you’re honest with yourself, don’t you instinctively know when they’re yours or a copy?

I know I do.

Permission To Suck Manifesto laws applied:

5. Industry best practices are not creative. Best practices are maintenance and benchmarking is linear: this leads to that, variation is less professional. The state of the art didn’t arrive by formula or recipe.

6. Your creativity is about your heart, not their surface. Creativity is your world view filtered through your talent. It’s your passion, experience, expertise, inspiration and your rules that drive you to create wonderful things that you’re destined to hate because they’re not good enough, and others are open to admire because they couldn’t do it.

8. Ideas are like lightning strikes hitting you unaware after you’ve been rubbing a cat balloon on a wool carpet for months.

17. Imagination accelerates in the abstract and slows with tangibility. Daydream, maintain vulnerability, innocence and a sense of wonder so that your creativity stays vigorous.

Although Thomas Thwaites is a masters graduate of the Royal College of Art Design Interactions, and considers himself a Designer (of a more speculative sort), it seems to me that he’s just a very curious fellow.

My thought is that Thomas’ toaster building project illustrates two main truths:

1) As a civilization with a variety of cultures, we’re all slave to existing technology. Our knowledge is technology dependent.  Go ahead, try building a toaster from scratch. Try and build anything from scratch for that matter; how about a tooth brush or a pencil?

Allen Kay‘s definition of Technology: anything that wasn’t around when you were born.

2) The second and in my opinion the more salient point is, that while we may not be able to build a pencil from scratch, we can find something with which we can draw; we can toast bread, and we can clean our teeth. All of this can be done if we remain creative at the core.

It’s easy to be obsessed with building a toaster and forget that all we need is toasted bread.

Leaning into discomfort, it’s what the creative professional does if they plan to be successful. Brene Brown, researcher, storyteller and TED presenter, helps explain why we’re so miserable except for when we do. This is the closest thing to video therapy I’ve witnessed.

Vulnerability and creativity are intertwined. As soon as we learn to be ashamed of our creative selves we need someone protecting our back. Shame is fear; we fear exile once our unique brand of humanity is discovered. Am I worthy of your affection, admiration, respect; venture further along the career path the fear of shame only gets worse.

At its root is permission to suck; overcoming embracing shame and its excruciating vulnerability. “I’m smart enough, I’m good enough and gosh darn it, people like me.” – Stuart Smalley.

You betcha, it’s joke-bait. That’s because shame fundamental to being human – the need for a sense of worthiness – it gives us the courage to lean into discomfort. Our connectiveness to others, our feeling of worthiness, and moreover, our compassion to be kind to ourselves, gives us the courage to be imperfect. In other words: Forgo who you think you should be for the genuine article; the unaffected you.

Brene Brown gives the best TED talk on creativity without talking directly about creativity.  She also has books called “The Gifts of Imperfection” and “I Thought It Was Just Me.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Why bother investing more – money, time, energy – on projects than it takes to consume them? Instead, search the collective for marginally unfamiliar mediocre creativity that will conform by meeting salable expectations. Furthermore, it’s easy to conform because the crowd is on your side when no risks are taken.

It was the mid nineteenth century when Ralph Waldo Emerson lectured about creativity being part influence, part interpretation. What happens when the parts aren’t equal? What if influence devastates interpretation?

We’re getting to the answer. Likewise, around this time – mid/late 1800’s – we find the idea of a meme [understandably a concept returning to the dialogue in this century]. The meme is – more or less – a societal component; a style or concept widely deemed worthy of replication.

The 19th and 20th century memes as influencers evolved much like a childhood game of telephone. Remember? Classmates’ whispers yielded a surprising result of imitation and interpretation. This is a creative model, perhaps a thoughtless one but creative none the less.

One very key creative element is the passing of information in a way that keeps it free for interpretation. It may be as simple as an analogy or an imitation of a meme. Yet, concepts and styles that jump from individual to individual, as if crossing a gap, are naturally interpreted, i.e. Emerson finds his balance, and imitation isn’t duplication.

Don’t underestimate the importance of the gap; it’s a creative gap. The individual owns that interpretive space. Influence is the whisper and senses are interpreters escorted by introspective thoughts and emotions.

The internet has thrown Emerson’s balance out of whack. The creative gap is diminishing as analogy loses to duplication; imitation swaps with cloning, analog becomes digital. On occasion the creative gap literally shortens to Ctrl>C:Ctrl>V; no time for interpretation. Generally yet more precisely, the time of creation comes treacherously close to the duration of consumption.

As if performing on a stage, open on-line culture thrives on recognition. In real life, we tell a good joke and it becomes ours. A reasonably obscure joke has no attribution requirements, i.e. we’re the comedian. Netiquette (on-line etiquette) requires more attribution but only one or two levels back. With independent discovery, you get “finder’s credit” as though the creator is your alter ego; you’re a curator of good taste but deserve byline credit.

The Good: Crowd accelerated innovation. TED’s Chris Anderson presents a notable case in his talk about what the internet has done for creativity.

The Bad: An elevation of mediocrity and low expectations. Consumption is massive and fast with low interpretation and high influence that’s homogenizing creativity.

Following our move from analogy into duplication, we structure our creativity to avoid criticism and receive acclaim deserved or not. It has the effect of homogenizing outcome. The courage it takes to introduce disruptive forms comes with too much risk of ridicule. There is more equity in conformity than rebellion.

To meet the requirements of the “mob mentality” [as defined by Jaron Lanier - American computer scientist, musician, composer, visual artist, and author of  “You Are Not A Gadget”] consuming becomes more important than producing. When culture is completely open, creativity is lost.

The individual matters. The individual makes structure out of mush. Jaron Lanier calls it encapsulation: don’t publish until you’re ready. We are the definers; we have an inner life.

As proof, connectivity has created fame without talent; people who are famous for being famous. In turn, mediocrity (and the occasional garbage) lives an implausibly elevated status because mob members fear the consequence of truth; the massively naked emperor. This is a continual theme in today’s politics.

Consider Wikileaks: here we find – counter intuitively -  mob censorship of individual thought. Give me your honest opinion, and it had better not be controversial or disagreeable. Honesty through transparency, but at what cost? Complete openness destroys individuality; individuality is creativity.

Lanier marks a strong difference between the internet and open culture. In this Jaron Lanier talks about the failure of Web2.0 with Aleks Krotoski of The Guardian.

It’s the time of year that is filled with industry predictions.  No predictions from me this year, just realities.  One reality is that we are able to do much more with less.  What’s more, don’t anticipate clients abiding the same thing only better.  They will not be denied.

Technology and talent has proven itself worthy of turning micro budget into an artful result.  The key is to hold the line on what matters.  When money is tight, the line is paper thin between a film spot resembling a college project and a professional production.  Accept a bid and you’re committing to high expectations.

Friend to Permission to Suck, Director/DP David McCarty,  gave me a heads up on a low budget video spot he shot for Hamilton Jewelers.  Impressed, I asked if he would be interested in answering a few questions for a PTS post.  His response was so generous I reproduced it here along with stills and the finished spot.

Where Style Is Timeless: The Hamilton Jewelers

The inspiration behind the project was the current explosion of interest in the early 1960’s era; almost entirely due to the television show Mad Men. We wanted to stage a dinner theater in 1960 where it would be natural to have men and women very well dressed thus offering a vehicle to feature the client’s diamond jewelry.

The storyline is that of a newly engaged young couple. The scene shows everyone in the room involved with the music with the exception of our young couple who are more interested in each other.

This was a micro budget production, so the first obstacle was securing a cheap location that could play as a 60’s era dinner theatre. Second, it needed to look, more or less, dressed and ready to shoot. Third, we needed the run of the place, controlling everything for 10-12 hours.

We found just the location a short drive from our offices in New Jersey. The brother of one of our Senior VP’s just happened to own an Italian restaurant that had an upstairs dining room. He had designed it to look like the old dinner theaters of that era. It was perfect. He was not only closed on Mondays, but he could handle the catering for us as well.

The second task was talent. We were shooting in New Jersey, outside of Philadelphia, and needed good talent. Our usual suspects for styling, hair and makeup were all out of NYC anyway so we cast our principal talent there. We rented a van and drove our talent, stylists, hair and makeup artists down from NYC. The extras all came out of Philadelphia and provided their own transportation. I recruited my daughter and her fiancé to fill in as our third couple.

My Director of Photographer flew in from SF, and I acted as both Director and second camera operator. We both used our personal Canon 5DMII’s and ultra fast “L” lenses, but rented a Red Rock Micro Shoulder Mounted Rig and a SmallHD DP6 monitor. We also had pro sticks with high-end fluid heads on hand and I provided the 1m Glidetrack HD.

Our Producer handled the rest of the crew and the lighting order, which was small. Basically, we had a lighting truck from which we pulled a bare bones lighting package: A handful of Fresnel spots, a couple of Kinos, some flags, and enough board to block the light from the windows.

Our Gaffer and Key Grip was the same guy who rented us the lighting package. He came with an assistant.

We weren’t shooting with sound so we saved on the sound crew. Our intention was to show the idea of the musicians, a little hint to sell the story without being a focal point.  We anticipated plugging in a piece of stock music during post. Our Producer, who happened to be a musician himself, cast friends of his for the shoot.

I’d asked him to see if he could round up a stand up bass player and a horn player. We’d pay them out of our “extras” budget, which meant I’d have two less people in the audience. As it turned out, the producer’s friends were real pros, and they played while we shot them. I was so thrilled with the quality, that I asked the Producer to find out if they’d be willing to record an original piece of music together and license it to us to be used for the piece. In the end, that’s exactly what we did.

The lighting setup was designed to be pretty simple. A key light composed of a couple of fresnel spots bouncing off a wall, flagged to prevent spill. We had another fresnel bouncing off some broken mirrors to provide a little ambiance, and some hair light. The only light that ever moved all day was the hair light, which we used to provide the edge.

The DP shot almost entirely hand held using the Red Rock Micro rig, while I shot almost entirely off sticks, much of it locked off. We added a couple of “dolly moves” using the Glidetrack set on a couple of apple boxes.

Originally, we had no intention of having video playback for the clients. When you’re working on a micro-production, there are just things you don’t get. Video village is one of them. But the Producer and the AC had worked on some other DSLR shoots and had come up with a pretty effective system.

Using a Black Box video splitter with an aux. battery attached to the rig, we output the HDMI signal to a 17” monitor in the other room for the clients. It worked beautifully. The DP used the new SmallHD DP6 monitor, attached to the rig and fed into the splitter. I could either stand behind him to view, or watch playback through the camera after each shot. The client could watch both live and playback of all feeds, at least from camera A. She just had to trust me on camera B.

The room pretty much came as is; they even had the table lamps. Only problem was they were candle powered. We needed more light so we rented a dozen 40wt lamps and tied them into a dimmer. The restaurant provided the desserts, stemware, drinks and dishes.

We planned to handle hair, makeup and styling on the principals, while the extras were asked to show up ready to go. In the end, while we could get away with everything else, even the extras had their hair done. Our hair guy was a maniac; total overachiever.

Once the talent (both principals and extras) had gone through wardrobe, hair and makeup, we were ready to shoot. Except one last thing. The jewelry. The client actually had a small crew herself.  Together they got the correct jewelry on the correct people, keeping track of exactly who had what. This stuff was the real deal complete with security.

The DP and I had discussed the look we wanted at length, and while there were a few key shots we knew we needed, beyond that, we simply found our shots as we came to them. There were no storyboards, just a story. We work together a lot and had discussed the shoot at length. By the time we had the talent in place, we just went to town.

The shoot was based on a 10 hour day, with talent on a 12 hour day door to door from NYC.

The DP and I worked pretty hard to set the white balance to what we wanted before we started shooting and our cameras were calibrated to one another. We wanted to be a little warm, even to the extent that our whites were warm.

Since we couldn’t show people actually smoking, a smoke machine helped give us the needed atmosphere. The intention was to desaturate the footage slightly in post, but the added smoke pretty much took care of it for me. Therefore, there was almost no grading done in post.

Because of the limited 8 bit color depth on these cameras, you are pretty limited to how much you can manipulate the footage in post. It’s best to go old school and get it right in camera. This is by far the most important thing I’ve learned in several years of shooting with the 5DMII.

The shoot went off without a hitch and we finished on time. (Well almost without a hitch. The van with the talent showed up an hour late because of traffic. We still got it all done.)

The footage was backed up to several drives and that evening I transcoded all the 5DII video files into ProRes 422 (HQ) 1280×720.

The next day the DP, Producer and I all had to catch a flight to a location scout for another job, but when I got back a few days later, I was able to begin editing.

By then, our musicians had banged out a few options for me. They sounded great. Only one problem. The sound was too good. Since they had recorded in a studio, it didn’t feel right, so I imported them into Apple’s Soundtrack, added some room tone, ambient sound effects and even a little reverb to give it an authentic sound. It sounded great and I was ready to edit.

I edited in Final Cut Studio. Because we went to the trouble of getting the look we wanted in camera, I needed only a few slight adjustments here and there; nothing that couldn’t be handled in FCP’s 3-Way Color Corrector.

The voice over was originally done as a scratch track using the voice of an audio editor at our local production house. I loved his voice, a Gene Hackman sound alike, but the client wanted a more traditional VO, so we re-recorded it using non-union talent.

The beauty of creating video for the web is the story can be as long as you can maintain interest. No more :15’s or :30’s. Make it as long or as short as you want. In the end, the piece came out exactly how we wanted. It was a team effort including a trusting client. The client got extremely high value and we all got a nice piece of film.

There is no question that you can do amazing things with micro-production DSLR shoots, but if, and only if, client expectations are managed. You have to know what you can and cannot do being upfront and clear with the client. They also have to trust you. If they begin micromanaging the shoot, you will be lost. When you’re shooting a bare-bones production, there is no room for error.

One good idea, if you can swing it, is to have access to a larger lighting package than you think you’ll need. Something you can pull from, a la carte, if you have to. I’ve not needed the extra, but knowing it’s there is certainly a little added insurance.

Critical is your ability to think on your feet and take advantage of opportunities and the inevitable opportune mistakes. On micro-production jobs, you’re going to be more run and gun so you’ll need good instincts and be ready to make quick decisions.

I find another important aspect of successful micro-production is to have good ideas.  Everyone wants to be a part of something with quality. The budget is irrelevant. If you have a good concept and a good plan, you can get highly talented people to come along for the ride. If you’re a demanding asshole that’s trying to do too much with too little, you’ll create a catastrophe. Build a team of creative professionals and treat them like gold. They’ll break their humps for you and thank you for the opportunity to boot.

My final thought: be realistic. You can shoot a $500k film or something 1/10^th the budget. Either one can be great. They won’t be the same scope, but if you maximize what you have and do everything you can to bring every dollar on the screen, it can be great. The trick is to never try to shoot a $500k film for $50k.

Any new clever combination of A + B = Creativity, and there is more access to “A” and “B” than ever and more tomorrow than today. This is obviously true. Also obvious is the love of creativity in everything; people who never thought of themselves as creative are feelin’ it, and those who are in traditionally creative fields are pressured to be more imaginative.  Isn’t technology wonderful?

Well… to be honest, I’m getting little tired of hearing about how creative I must be; F%$# you, I’ll be who I am – you go and be fresh and new and different, I’m going to concentrate on being a better me.

Yes, we were born to be creative; hell, we were born out of a creative act. But here’s the thing, while creativity is the core of human existence, aren’t we all powerfully drawn to virtuosity? Virtuosity is human excellence of skill, fluency and style. It’s the heart skipping grandness of human achievement.

Creativity is a common and natural act. Yet, being a virtuoso is the ultimate analog goal requiring sacrifice. Great musicians, fine artists, writers, and even athletes inspire awe in what is possible when a life is devoted to skill honing and potential accomplishment. Success is visceral.

For example, when we think “virtuoso” our thoughts go to great musicians. Mastering an instrument isn’t something one can hand off to a machine in order to further increase skill complexity [architecture for example]. It takes a lifetime of devotion and it’s that devotion combined with accomplishment which draws our admiration.

The devotion to a skill that produces useless beauty is virtuous. Aesthetic aptitude + highly skilled craft + just enough creativity to be interesting = Virtuosity. This equation says nothing about being original just to be original.

No matter how fresh, mediocrity is the middle state overflowing with human weakness and unevenness. We’re pushing for fresh creativity but Larry Bird in the ’86 NBA Championship game defines virtuosity.

Virtuosity demands respect; it’s the complete loss of static in communication, it’s the defeat of flaws in the act of performance with a resonance that sends the human spirit. The virtuoso is a supreme victor in a battle over the average creative mediocrity.

Ira Gitler is an American jazz historian and journalist, listen to how he describes Art Tatum, the virtuoso pianist, in this video. Gitler is in awe of the skill Tatum achieved in one lifetime. It’s spectacular, it’s unique and it’s original Tatum. Tatum’s level of virtuosity set him apart; his virtuosity was freshness, everything he did was newly created because his level of musical skill is so rarely reached.

Zenph Sound Innovations is a creative company designing algorithms and deliverable software able to reproduce the virtuosity of artists like Art Tatum or Rachmaninoff on stage. It’s further demonstration of the lengths we’ll go to experience virtuosity. A recording isn’t good enough, we want the experience. We want to be intimately familiar with the performance down to what it feels like to be him.

Zenph’s obsession will succeed in creating a performance snapshot, a clearer portrait of virtuosity; the result, not the origin. Their technology is exciting. Our understanding of performance will be enhanced but it’s still a copy closer to a parlor trick than virtuosity.  To be authentically original is to make the sacrifice to be a virtuoso.

I’m willing to bet a huge ransom that an original low tech recording of Tatum will retain an higher value than a masterful performance reproduction of Tatum’s playing a la Zenph.  What does it say about virtuosity when reproduction quality isn’t worth as much as being closer to the authentic original?

Take a look at the technology behind performance reproduction in this video. John Q. Walker, PhD – Chairman & Chief Technology Officer at Zenph Sound Innovations.  Gave this presentation for TED in 2007.

Jon Entwistle

Check out this great 7 minute film by Jonathan Entwistle and Justin Brown.  If your interested in more, be sure to read the interview with Jonathan at PhotoCineNews.com website.

[via PhotoCine News]

This is The Good North, a short film shot on a Canon 7d by director Jonathan Entwistle and cinematographer Justin Brown. It was won a multitude of award nominations, and combines a tight script about racism, some wonderful location shooting in the north of England, and great acting performances.

Director: Jonathan Entwistle

[via http://jonathanentwistle.com/films]
I was born in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, UK in 1984. I left the north of England for London at the age of 19, after living in Leeds whilst completing an art Foundation course. I studied Fine Art at the Chelsea School of Art & Design. It was here that I gained experience in the formal visual arts, most specifically the moving image.

I applied for film school directly after completing my BA(Hons). I went to the London Film School to complete my MA where I was awarded a Skillset grant based upon the strength of my application to complete my studies there. I graduated in April 2009.

Cinematographer: Justin Brown

Official Selection 54th BFI London Film Festival 2010
Official Selection 24th Leeds International Film Festival 2010
Official Selection 11th Circuito Off Venice 2010

Shot in one day for £250 ($400). The Good North is a response to a rise in British far right-wing politics.

The people of a small rural village come to terms with the recent beating of an Asian teenager.

My life is a trial of slow hunch and error; semi-baked ideas patiently awaiting resolution. Epiphanies are ideas that move suddenly from semi to mostly baked after a slow burn. They benefit from 10,000 hours of practice, knowledge and tipping points but ultimately rely on staying connected to adjacent possibilities to facilitate the serendipity of adaptive re-purposing.

A superb titles by different authors:

Drive – Dan Pink
Outliers – Malcolm Gladwell
Linchpin – Seth Godin
Where Good Ideas Come From – Steven Johnson

Steven Johnson has been making blog appearances through his RSA Animate and TED videos, but his latest book is the unabridged version of his five year research into the formation of good ideas. He breaks it down into seven chapters: The Adjacent Possible, Liquid Networks, The Slow Hunch, Serendipity, Error, Exaptation, and Platforms. Each chapter of Johnson’s book fits comfortably with experience yet offers a significantly alternate angle.

Ideas don’t happen in isolation. One thing leads to the next as we stand on the shoulders of giants. There needed to be a carbon atom before discovering oil, just as there needed to be Kranz before Prince. Clearly some adjacent ideas are more enduring while others are more harmful to a genre but we don’t move forward without error.

On my “to do” list:

Find ways to creatively mingle.

Bump elbows with dissimilar yet like minded creatives; “like minded” meaning open and curious, dissimilar meaning not always agreeable. A denser mix gives rise to more sparks that facilitate idea baking. Will the creative genius be demoted to the merely talented by virtue of our new “Third Place”; the internet? The breakthrough coming from out of nowhere will henceforth be traceable to many adjacent connections.

On my “to do” list:

Find a collaborative space to work.

Good ideas are new connections made from previous knowledge.  The key is knowledge; anything else relies on ignorant chance, which is good but highly unreliable. Knowledge of a genre takes time to explore.  It’s harder to find the adjacent possible without knowing the adjacent exists.

On my “to do” list:

Keep learning but take care not to build a house of mirrors; diversify.

Serendipity is practiced luck; luck that you can rely upon. Stuff happens randomly when at rest; serendipity is to creativity what entropy is to thermodynamics. Serendipity is the uncaptured idea, like energy unavailable for work until acted upon by a force.

On my “to do” list:

Stay open. Let accidents happen. Embrace Serendipity.

Ideas need to be exposed to failure. It’s as though we have to get through the crap to find the gold. Poor information, inappropriate preparation, ill-fated execution all lead to greatness.  Einstein was an idiot until he wasn’t.

On my “to do” list:

Give myself permission to suck.

There is a scrap heap of ideas waiting to be adaptively repurposed; a.k.a. exaptation or in past tense: exaptated.  One-liners become a book if we collect enough of them to piece together in a meaningful way.  Was the appendix really a vestigial organ or one waiting for exaptation in the evolution of man?  A great idea is a great idea but maybe not for the solution you’re attempting to find.

On my “to do” list:

Start keeping an idea book; one that isn’t a computer.

[more via TED website] 

A dynamic writer and speaker, Johnson crafts captivating theories that draw on a dizzying array of disciplines, without ever leaving his audience behind. Author Kurt Anderson described Johnson’s book Emergence as “thoughtful and lucid and charming and staggeringly smart.” The same could be said for Johnson himself. His big-brained, multi-disciplinary theories make him one of his generation’s more intriguing thinkers. His books take the reader on a journey — following the twists and turns his own mind makes as he connects seemingly disparate ideas: ants and cities, interface design and Victorian novels.