I art directed a series about Risk. It’s based on Allison Schrager’s book, An Economist Walks Into a Brothel: And Other Unexpected Places to Understand Risk.
She defines risk as not being just about avoiding danger; but also about maximizing your reward. In the first video, we interview a former criminal, a poker player, a magician, a psychologist, and an economist to learn how we can all take better risks — and deal with the completely unexpected.
This subject matter is very abstract and, I think for most people, a bit dry. The biggest challenge for this series was to figure out a way to introduce nebulous, complicated concepts in a way that was entertaining. The only footage that we really had for episode 1 was interviews and there were very few scenes. I suggested that we use real objects in order to ground the subject and make it seem more concrete, so we shot a ton of props in a studio and used stop motion to create movement and scenes.
The gifs and images represent some of the studio shoots that we did, if you’d like to watch the full video (paywalled), or more videos in the series, they’re here.
