Troy: Introduction & Goals

Written on: April 24th, 2021

First off, I want to thank you for taking the time to at least be interested in this journey of ours. We’re kind of just putting all of this out there with no expectations. As of writing this, we have no active followers or supporters. So if you’ve taken the time to go out of your way to read this, I appreciate you and I hope we’ve brought some value to you in some way.

Let me first introduce myself. My name is Troy Tintiangco and this is my baby. I am currently 26 and not employed. I have worked in a lot of different mediums, mainly in the digital space. I’ve been filming since I was 12, started experimenting with motion design and graphic design at 16, and have been just making different things since then. I like making things.

I’ve spent this past quarantine year working on my mental health and trying to figure out where I want to be career wise. I’ve been working with the idea of “Simplex” since I was at least 18 and this past August I began to finally flesh it out and understand it better. A month or so ago, I reached out to a few friends to get involved with the project and here we are.

This post officially marks the actual (public) beginning of Season 1 for Simplex Minds. The last post was just an introduction. I still can’t believe we’re finally going after it. After all of the sleepless nights laying in bed thinking, brainstorming about what this project could be, we have a team and we’re working towards our first season. I’m super proud to be able to even get this far with this project and to do it with the support of creatives I’ve had the honor to meet and know these past years is a blessing.

So you said this is the beginning of season 1, what does that even mean? What’s a season?

The idea behind seasons is to give the 4 of us, as a group, a set beginning and end date for the content we are going to produce. We are all doing this on a volunteer basis right now and I want to make sure I am not asking too much out of my friends. The last thing I want this to be is a chore.

I don’t want us to get into a “post everyday, for everyday, forever” kind of cycle. Personally, I think that can get unhealthy. I don’t believe you should have to work everyday of your life consistently to be successful. Breaks are healthy. I also believe breaks are necessary for creatives to prevent burn out and be able to be creative again. It’s fuckin hard and stressful to be creative every single day of your life.

I also believe quality will drop if we’re writing and making content because we need to post something on ___ day. I want everyone to be making content because they want to. I want everyone to be working on something they feel is valuable to themselves and to others. Once we put the “we have to post everyday” expectations on this, we lose that purpose.

If we tell y’all we’re doing this in seasons, y’all won’t have those “post everyday forever” expectations. We’ll have time to breathe. TV shows do it, why can’t that translate with this?

Breaking this up into seasons will also allow us to develop each season separately and allows us to experiment with each season. We may do something one season and not do it the next. I want to keep it fresh for y’all. I want y’all to not feel like you’re getting the same recycled content every season, where’s the fun in that?

I will say we do not have a budget right now, so we can’t do too much as of now. We probably won’t be able to do too much more next season, but we’ll get there. I’m talking big picture here. That’s just the vision. The season structure gives us a lot more creative freedom. We’ll see how it all develops, but I really like the creative freedom that comes with seasons.

The time between seasons is undecided, but we at least plan on making sure each season has a clear beginning and a clear ending. We’ll let y’all know when season 2 is planned to start. Let’s just not get too far ahead of ourselves. We still need to work on season 1 lmaooo.

For the first season, we’re going to keep it simple and not get too big. We decided as a group to each write 5 blog posts on the different creatives we look up to. This in turn makes Season 1, 20 weeks long with 1 post per week. Every week we’ll be diving into a different creative and break down why we think they are making the complex look simple. From the meetings we’ve had so far, the different artists each person is planning to write about right now are really diverse. I’m really excited to see what everyone writes about.

The main purpose of this first season is to establish. To establish our voices and to establish the first section of the Simplex Minds process. “Understanding the complex.” This season we will just be trying to learn and understand from the artists/creatives we look up to. We won’t be learning directly from them, but we will be learning from their pieces, their journey, their aesthetic, etc. Maybe in the future we’ll be able to connect with them directly, who knows?

As of writing this, we haven’t fully developed any of the content we will be posting in the future. Everything is in the brainstorm stage of development. All we have right now written down are our goals for season 1.

If you have made this far in the post I commend you and here are my goals for season 1 lol.

What do I want to do for season 1?

For season 1 there are many different things that I want to do.

Most of it is behind the scenes work beyond the regular content that you will be ingesting, but don’t worry I’ll write about my process through those endeavors too.

Mainly in season 1, I just want to learn and progress.

Creatively, I want to become a better storyteller. I want to go more in depth with the different ways directors/writers tell their stories.

At its core, this is going to be a storytelling platform. I want to be able to effectively tell the stories of the creatives that we have the opportunity to work with and collaborate with.

I also want to be able to effectively portray my own experience. How cool would this be if this pops off and y’all could get transported to this point in my life where I have absolutely nothing figured out? Is my story any more important than anybody else’s? Absolutely not, but I personally want to come back to these in the future and read the things I posted about and get transported back to this moment in time. I suggest you do the same too. You’ll forget more things than you’ll remember. Take the time to document your story. You’ll be surprised how different you are and how much things have changed over the years.

Stories come in many different forms and the mediums we use are just tools to tell such stories. I don’t know where I’ll be getting my inspiration from when writing these future posts, but I’m not trying to limit myself to a certain medium. You can learn from anywhere. Just depends on how you look at the information you’re absorbing.

By the time the season ends, I want you, who’s reading this, to want to share your story with us. I want y’all, the community, to be as involved with this as much you can be. I want this to be a fun place for creatives to be able to interact with. I want this to be a place y’all go to to feel safe. I also have a lot of fun plans with the Instagram stories to get y’all involved.

I just want season 1 to feel like a collective journey between our creative team and you, the reader. I want y’all to be on this section of our life journey with us. I want y’all to progress with us.

I want you all to feel and be able to understand our team on a semi-personal level. I am pushing the team to be as personal as they are willing to be. “As they are willing to be.” They will share what they want and won’t share what they don’t want to. We’ll see what happens. Hopefully at the end of the season y’all can see yourselves in some of us and we can help inspire you in any way we can.

Overall, I just want to have fun with this. I want to bring forth our learning and development process and at the same time give as much creative freedom as I can to everyone involved.

Welcome to the start of something with great potential with people who have great potential. We aren’t sure how things are going to go. We have no clue how this is going to end up. But, that’s the beauty of it.

Simplex Minds Season 1, begins today.

... also I want to eventually be able to write and direct my own original series. Just putting it out in the universe. Future Troy, you got this. Wow, can’t believe you’re making it happen. That’s crazy. Keep killing the game future Troy.