| Recorded at | October 21, 2016 |
|---|---|
| Event | TEDxMidAtlantic |
| Duration (min:sec) | 11:37 |
| Video Type | TEDx Talk |
| Words per minute | 148.07 very slow |
| Readability (FK) | 69.03 very easy |
| Speaker | Dan Bell |
| Occupation | presenter, YouTuber |
| Description | documentary filmmaker |
Official TED page for this talk
Synopsis
What happens when a mall falls into ruin? Filmmaker Dan Bell guides us through abandoned monoliths of merchandise, providing a surprisingly funny and lyrical commentary on consumerism, youth culture and the inspiration we can find in decay.
| 1 | 00:12 | In the last couple of years, | ||
| 2 | 00:13 | I have produced what I call "The Dead Mall Series," | ||
| 3 | 00:16 | 32 short films and counting about dead malls. | ||
| 4 | 00:19 | Now, for those of you who are not familiar with what a dead mall is, | ||
| 5 | 00:23 | it's basically a shopping mall | ||
| 6 | 00:25 | that has fallen into hard times. | ||
| 7 | 00:29 | So it either has few shops and fewer shoppers, | ||
| 8 | 00:31 | or it's abandoned and crumbling into ruin. | ||
| 9 | 00:37 | No sale at Penny's. | ||
| 10 | 00:38 | (Laughter) | ||
| 11 | 00:40 | I started producing this series | ||
| 12 | 00:42 | in early 2015 | ||
| 13 | 00:45 | after going through kind of a dark period in my life | ||
| 14 | 00:47 | where I just didn't want to create films anymore. | ||
| 15 | 00:51 | I put my camera away | ||
| 16 | 00:53 | and I just stopped. | ||
| 17 | 00:56 | So in 2015, I decided to make a short film about the Owings Mills Mall. | ||
| 18 | 01:03 | Owings Mills Mall opened in 1986. | ||
| 19 | 01:06 | I should know because I was there on opening day. | ||
| 20 | 01:10 | I was there with my family, | ||
| 21 | 01:11 | along with every other family in Baltimore, | ||
| 22 | 01:15 | and you had to drive around | ||
| 23 | 01:17 | for 45 minutes | ||
| 24 | 01:19 | just to find a parking spot. | ||
| 25 | 01:21 | So if you can imagine, | ||
| 26 | 01:22 | that's not happening at the malls today. | ||
| 27 | 01:25 | My first mall job that I had as a teenager | ||
| 28 | 01:28 | was at a sporting goods store called Herman's World of Sports. | ||
| 29 | 01:33 | Maybe you remember. | ||
| 30 | 01:34 | (Singing) Herman's World of Sports. | ||
| 31 | 01:36 | You guys remember that? | ||
| 32 | 01:37 | (Laughter) | ||
| 33 | 01:38 | Yeah, so I worked in a lady's shoe store. | ||
| 34 | 01:44 | I worked in a leather goods store, | ||
| 35 | 01:46 | and I also worked in a video store, | ||
| 36 | 01:51 | and not being one who was very fond of the retail arts -- | ||
| 37 | 01:58 | (Laughter) | ||
| 38 | 02:01 | I got fired from every single job. | ||
| 39 | 02:04 | (Laughter) | ||
| 40 | 02:06 | In between these low-paying retail jobs, | ||
| 41 | 02:11 | I did what any normal teenager did | ||
| 42 | 02:14 | in the 1990s. | ||
| 43 | 02:16 | I shoplifted. | ||
| 44 | 02:19 | I'm just kidding. | ||
| 45 | 02:21 | I hung out with my friends at the mall. | ||
| 46 | 02:23 | (Laughter) | ||
| 47 | 02:24 | Everyone's like, "Oh my God, what kind of talk is this?" | ||
| 48 | 02:28 | (Laughter) | ||
| 49 | 02:32 | Hanging out at the mall could be fun, but it could be really lame, too, | ||
| 50 | 02:36 | like sharing a cigarette with a 40-year-old unemployed mall rat | ||
| 51 | 02:41 | who has put on black lipstick for the night | ||
| 52 | 02:44 | while you're on your break from your crappy minimum wage job. | ||
| 53 | 02:52 | As I stand here today, | ||
| 54 | 02:54 | Owings Mills has been gutted | ||
| 55 | 02:57 | and it's ready for the wrecking ball. | ||
| 56 | 03:02 | The last time I was there, it was in the evening, | ||
| 57 | 03:04 | and it was about three days before they closed the mall for good. | ||
| 58 | 03:10 | And you kind of felt -- | ||
| 59 | 03:11 | they never announced the mall was closing, | ||
| 60 | 03:13 | but you had this sort of feeling, this ominous feeling, | ||
| 61 | 03:16 | that something big was going to happen, | ||
| 62 | 03:19 | like it was the end of the road. | ||
| 63 | 03:21 | It was a very creepy walk through the mall. | ||
| 64 | 03:25 | Let me show you. | ||
| 65 | 03:34 | (Music) | ||
| 66 | 03:58 | So when I started producing "The Dead Mall Series," | ||
| 67 | 04:01 | I put the videos up onto YouTube, | ||
| 68 | 04:03 | and while I thought they were interesting, | ||
| 69 | 04:05 | frankly I didn't think others would share the enthusiasm | ||
| 70 | 04:09 | for such a drab and depressing topic. | ||
| 71 | 04:14 | But apparently I was wrong, | ||
| 72 | 04:15 | because a lot of people started to comment. | ||
| 73 | 04:17 | And at first the comments were like -- | ||
| 74 | 04:20 | basically like, "Oh my God, that's the mall from my childhood. | ||
| 75 | 04:24 | What happened?" | ||
| 76 | 04:26 | And then I would get comments from people who were like, | ||
| 77 | 04:29 | "There's a dead mall in my town. You should come and film it." | ||
| 78 | 04:33 | So I started to travel around the mid-Atlantic region | ||
| 79 | 04:37 | filming these dead malls. | ||
| 80 | 04:40 | Some were open. | ||
| 81 | 04:42 | Some were abandoned. | ||
| 82 | 04:44 | It was kind of always hard to get into the ones that were abandoned, | ||
| 83 | 04:48 | but I somehow always found a way in. | ||
| 84 | 04:50 | (Laughter) | ||
| 85 | 04:53 | The malls that are still open, | ||
| 86 | 04:57 | they always do this weird thing -- like the dead malls. | ||
| 87 | 05:00 | They'll have three stores left, | ||
| 88 | 05:01 | but they try to spruce it up | ||
| 89 | 05:03 | to make it appear like things are on the up-and-up. | ||
| 90 | 05:06 | For example, | ||
| 91 | 05:08 | you'll have an empty store | ||
| 92 | 05:10 | and they bring the gate down. | ||
| 93 | 05:12 | So at Owings Mills, for example, they put this tarp over the gate. | ||
| 94 | 05:16 | Right? | ||
| 95 | 05:18 | And it's got a stock photo | ||
| 96 | 05:21 | of a woman who is so happy | ||
| 97 | 05:24 | and she's holding a blouse, | ||
| 98 | 05:26 | and she's like -- | ||
| 99 | 05:27 | (Laughter) | ||
| 100 | 05:30 | And then there's a guy standing next to her, with, like, | ||
| 101 | 05:33 | an espresso cup, and he's like -- | ||
| 102 | 05:35 | (Laughter) | ||
| 103 | 05:38 | And it says, "What brings you today?" | ||
| 104 | 05:43 | (Laughter) | ||
| 105 | 05:44 | I wanted to be scared and depressed. | ||
| 106 | 05:47 | Thank you. | ||
| 107 | 05:51 | So the comments just kept pouring in | ||
| 108 | 05:56 | on the videos, | ||
| 109 | 05:58 | from all over the country, and then all over the world. | ||
| 110 | 06:02 | And I started to think, this could really be something, | ||
| 111 | 06:05 | but I had to get creative, because I'm like, | ||
| 112 | 06:07 | how long are people going to sit and watch me waddling through an empty mall? | ||
| 113 | 06:13 | (Laughter) | ||
| 114 | 06:17 | So the original episodes I filmed with an iPhone. | ||
| 115 | 06:21 | So I'd walk through the mall with an iPhone, and, you know. | ||
| 116 | 06:25 | Like that. | ||
| 117 | 06:27 | (Laughter) | ||
| 118 | 06:28 | And security -- because malls, they don't like photography -- | ||
| 119 | 06:32 | so the security would come up and be like, "Put that away," and I'm like, "OK." | ||
| 120 | 06:36 | So I had to get creative and sneaky, | ||
| 121 | 06:38 | so I started using a hidden camera and different techniques | ||
| 122 | 06:42 | to get the footage that I needed, | ||
| 123 | 06:43 | and basically what I wanted to do | ||
| 124 | 06:45 | was make the video | ||
| 125 | 06:48 | like it was a first-person experience, | ||
| 126 | 06:50 | like you are sitting -- | ||
| 127 | 06:54 | put your headphones on watching the screen -- | ||
| 128 | 06:56 | it's like, you're there in the video, | ||
| 129 | 06:58 | like a video game, basically. | ||
| 130 | 07:02 | I also started to use music, | ||
| 131 | 07:04 | collaborating with artists who create music called vaporwave. | ||
| 132 | 07:08 | And vaporwave is a music genre | ||
| 133 | 07:11 | that emerged in the early 2010s among internet communities. | ||
| 134 | 07:15 | Here's an example. | ||
| 135 | 07:16 | (Music) | ||
| 136 | 07:48 | That's by an artist named Disconscious | ||
| 137 | 07:51 | from an album he did called "Hologram Plaza." | ||
| 138 | 07:54 | So if you look that up, you can hear more of those tunes. | ||
| 139 | 07:57 | Vaporwave is more than an art form. It's like a movement. | ||
| 140 | 08:01 | It's nihilistic, it's angsty, | ||
| 141 | 08:04 | but it's somehow comforting. | ||
| 142 | 08:06 | The whole aesthetic is a way of dealing with things you can't do anything about, | ||
| 143 | 08:11 | like no jobs, or sitting in your parents' basement eating ramen noodles. | ||
| 144 | 08:17 | Vaporwave came out of this generation's desire to express their hopelessness, | ||
| 145 | 08:21 | the same way that the pre-internet generation did | ||
| 146 | 08:25 | sitting around in the food court. | ||
| 147 | 08:29 | One of my favorite malls | ||
| 148 | 08:32 | I've been to | ||
| 149 | 08:34 | is in Corpus Christi, and it's called the Sunrise Mall. | ||
| 150 | 08:38 | When I was a kid, | ||
| 151 | 08:40 | my favorite thing to do was watch movies, | ||
| 152 | 08:42 | and I used to watch movies over and over and over again. | ||
| 153 | 08:45 | And one of my favorite films was "The Legend of Billie Jean." | ||
| 154 | 08:51 | Now, for those of you who have seen "The Legend of Billie Jean," | ||
| 155 | 08:54 | you'll know that it's a great film. | ||
| 156 | 08:57 | I love it. | ||
| 157 | 08:58 | And Helen Slater and Christian Slater -- | ||
| 158 | 09:00 | and if you didn't know, they are not related. | ||
| 159 | 09:02 | Many people thought that they were brother and sister. They're not. | ||
| 160 | 09:06 | But anyway, Sunrise Mall was used in the film as a filming location. | ||
| 161 | 09:09 | The mall is exactly the same as it was in 1984. | ||
| 162 | 09:15 | We're talking 32 years later. Let me show you. | ||
| 163 | 09:17 | (Video) Dan Bell: And here's Billie Jean running across the fountain, | ||
| 164 | 09:22 | being chased by Hubie Pyatt's friends. | ||
| 165 | 09:26 | And she jumps over here. | ||
| 166 | 09:31 | And you can see the shot right here is what it looks like today. | ||
| 167 | 09:37 | It's pretty incredible. | ||
| 168 | 09:38 | I mean, honestly, it's exactly the same. | ||
| 169 | 09:43 | And there they are falling in the fountain, | ||
| 170 | 09:45 | and she runs up the stairs. | ||
| 171 | 09:46 | This is a nice shot of the whole thing here. | ||
| 172 | 09:53 | Dan Bell: I love that so much. | ||
| 173 | 09:55 | (Laughter) | ||
| 174 | 09:57 | I always think in my head, if I owned a dead mall -- | ||
| 175 | 10:01 | why don't they embrace their vintage look? | ||
| 176 | 10:04 | Put in a bar, | ||
| 177 | 10:06 | like, put vegan food in the food court | ||
| 178 | 10:11 | and invite millennials and hipsters | ||
| 179 | 10:14 | to come and drink and eat, | ||
| 180 | 10:17 | and I guarantee you within three weeks | ||
| 181 | 10:19 | H&M and Levi's will be banging on the door trying to get space. | ||
| 182 | 10:23 | I don't know why they don't do this, | ||
| 183 | 10:25 | but apparently, | ||
| 184 | 10:26 | it's only in my mind, it goes all day. | ||
| 185 | 10:30 | (Laughter) | ||
| 186 | 10:33 | Anyway, in closing -- | ||
| 187 | 10:35 | (Laughter) | ||
| 188 | 10:39 | When they first asked me to do this talk, | ||
| 189 | 10:42 | I said, | ||
| 190 | 10:44 | "Do you have the right person?" | ||
| 191 | 10:45 | (Laughter) | ||
| 192 | 10:50 | These talks are supposed to be kind of inspiring and -- | ||
| 193 | 10:54 | (Laughter) | ||
| 194 | 11:00 | I remembered something, though. | ||
| 195 | 11:02 | I put my camera down three or four years ago, | ||
| 196 | 11:08 | and it took going to these malls | ||
| 197 | 11:12 | for me to be inspired again. | ||
| 198 | 11:15 | And to see my audience | ||
| 199 | 11:19 | and people from all over the world writing me and saying, | ||
| 200 | 11:22 | "God, I love your videos," | ||
| 201 | 11:24 | is incredible. | ||
| 202 | 11:27 | I don't know how to even explain it, | ||
| 203 | 11:28 | as an artist, | ||
| 204 | 11:30 | how fulfilling that is. | ||
| 205 | 11:32 | If you would have told me a year ago | ||
| 206 | 11:35 | that I would be standing on this stage | ||
| 207 | 11:38 | talking to all of you wonderful people, | ||
| 208 | 11:41 | I would have never believed it. | ||
| 209 | 11:42 | I am humbled | ||
| 210 | 11:44 | and so appreciative. | ||
| 211 | 11:45 | Thank you very much. | ||
| 212 | 11:47 | (Applause) |