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the self proclaimed "storybreaker" who is exploring and expanding the understanding of human connection in the digital age.
Topaz Adizes and his team at The Skin Deep are in the business of creating content driven by the viewer.
The Skin Deep is a creative studio that “explor[es] human emotion and intimacy in the digital age”. Their first series, {The And}, won the 2015 Emmy for News and Documentary, the 2015 Press Photo Award for an Interactive Documentary and the 2015 International Television and Film Gold Medal for Human Concerns. {The And} series is not just about romantic relationships “between good looking white people” says founder and creator, Topaz Adizes. It’s about human connection. Adizes believes that, in his line of work, he can't simply be described as a filmmaker or director.
"Basically, we all tell ourselves stories," Adizes explains, "like how the world is like this. This is what love is like. This is what New York is like. This is what history is like. Everything is stories. Sometimes you come across some experiences that break your story and then, you have to build them again. Now, that could be a conversation, that could be an accident, that can be a piece of art. You see something and you have some kind of experience that breaks a story. And you create a new one. So, I used to be like, ‘I’m a film director, an image maker, a story teller’. But I’m a storybreaker because that gave me the freedom then to not just make movies."
Before founding The Skin Deep, Topaz Adizes had films that went to festivals such as Sundance and Cannes. According to Adizes, he was more than ecstatic to gain exposure but after the festivals, nothing really happened. Then, he posted the film “Password” to Vimeo. After being picked up by Vimeo as Short of the Week, "Password" received over 400,000 views.
Adizes says this is when he realized the impact of releasing projects on digital platforms. In doing this, Topaz and his team at The Skin Deep engage and move people in the way that he always wanted.
“What I’m good at, and what The Skin Deep is good at, is connecting to the hearts of our subjects and connecting that to the heart of our audience.”
Topaz believes that The Skin Deep is not really about putting his work out into the world. To him, it is about sharing an idea, an emotion or even a state of being.
Digital platforms not only made this easier for Adizes but it made it so it could be done in a faster and more engaging way. In exploring this realm, The Skin Deep’s viewers are not constricted like with the medium of television.
Topaz explained that though TV is great and it’s in everyone’s household, "You can’t affect the TV. You can’t change it. It’s a dead media, meaning it doesn’t change. Digital media, which is what we’re making and no one else is making yet, is so awesome because it changes. Meaning it’s personal and it’s alive. It’s like it’s organic.”
The interactive documentary series is a fairly new idea. According to Adizes, there is a community that’s been around for about 10 years that are creating interactive documentaries. So, The Skin Deep are not the only ones!
“I have no doubt that Netflix and Amazon and Hulu will start offering this to their audiences," Adizes states.
The series {The And} is an interactive experience and Topaz believes this is how the viewer can now become the protagonist of the story.
What does {The And} even mean? Topaz describes it as everything in between.
“A relationship isn’t you or me. It’s not him or her. It’s not Romeo or Juliet. It’s the "and". It’s that space in between the relationship."
The experience of {The And} puts the viewer in that space between all these relationships that they would not have access to otherwise. This experience aides viewers in their own relationships and helps them reflect on areas they can grow and improve.
“You are fifty percent of your relationships," Topaz says. "Go look at a person in their own relationships and they don’t have those same problems.”
Topaz also believes that in making this type of experience for the user they become “co-catalyzers” to The Skin Deep's projects. The experience does not start until the audience is added to it.
According to Topaz, {The And} answers the questions to what a family is, what sex and intimacy are and who we all truly are as humans.
“We really have the opportunity now to explore all these questions in a way that we never have before,” Topaz states excitedly. “I’m really humbled by {The And} because basically it’s an amazing format that taps into the narratives of our lives and the greatest technology of all is life itself.”
{The And} also prompts open conversation for its’ viewers to reflect on their own relationships.
“I think we’re less conditioned now to have honest conversation. It’s not that we don’t want to have honest conversations. It's that, [with phones], we’re now less trained at it,” Topaz explains. Despite this, Topaz does think that technology has helped human connection in the sense of "finding your tribe" or people who share common experiences in life.
“[Finding your tribe] is no longer dependent on physical proximity. It’s now dependent on your own self-identity and self-exploration. In the past, you used to have to find your tribe based off of physical proximity. Now, it’s about who you are.
And that’s why we have a lot more distinctions coming up. This is why now we have LGBTQ solidifying. If you lived in a small town and you felt a certain way and no one else felt that way, you felt ostracized. You had to cover up. Now you can go online. You can find your tribe and claim your expression."
The Skin Deep's new podcast “The Dig” features couples like Cat and Ketih, a transgender couple featured on {The And}. The Dig is a more intimate look into these couples world. In Cat and Keith’s case, it was filmed at Cat’s parents’ old Brooklyn home, according to Adizes.
“Cat and Keith had about three to four thousand views on Glamour," Adizes explains, "a mainstream hetero white publication, four months before Caitlyn Jenner was on the cover of Vanity Fair. And that’s what I loved about it. We don’t label them ‘Cat and Keith: A Transgender Couple’. We simply say Cat and Keith. We don’t realize that these different labels already block us from watching.”
Topaz believes that in doing this, even someone who is homophobic can sit down and watch episodes like Cat and Keith’s and resonate with their story.
“The human spectrum is so wide and we want to respect all those different types of relationships," Adizes says.
Other projects, like Senior Orientation, are going to begin to have more episodes this year, according to Adizes. This series features young people describing technology or social media to older generations that is widely used by millennials. This ranges from technology such as Siri or the online sugar daddy dating website, Seeking Arrangement.
Adizes says,“We’re excited to film more of those and to see how people like them.”
The experiences that Topaz shared with his team have gone beyond his own expectations. He hopes to do more projects in the future and continue to have fans involved.
“Every year we select fifteen people to join in our residency program. We’d like to do it twice a year but we just don’t have the money. So, if you’d like to be involved, subscribe to our newsletter or follow us on Instagram."
Adizes is excited for the future of The Skin Deep and states that once they add the collection of new videos they will receive from nine different countries, their catalog will be doubled.
Photos Courtesy of @the_skindeep on Instagram