How 'Selling Out' Has Changed for Adam Savage

Do professional makers look down on hobbyists? Does Adam Savage plan projects in steps or in one go? What's the most insightful information Adam received while working at ILM? Which age-inappropriate film did Adam see that shaped him? What's up with the hole-y chair that occasionally shows up in the background? In this live stream excerpt Adam answers these questions from Michael Schnell, Zercell, BK94, Martin Hooker and ThePoppedBubble. Which movies shaped you?

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[tested]

Which movies shaped you?
Join this channel to support Tested and get access to perks, like asking Adam questions:

[IansModRite]

I’m 28 and grew up watching cable and satellite TV and I often miss picking a channel that I liked, and just chilling out and watching whatever came on.
I get so tired of the doom scroll to find a new show or movie to watch across multiple streaming services.

[rcmike]

1:01 when I was younger I loved offloading and working on jeeps. I started working in a offroad shop. One time I went to an jeep event, and never unloaded my own vehicle because the whole time I was working on others vehicles. I decided then, that I didn't want this to be a job. If you find a way to make you Hobbie into a job, you will never work again, saying isn't always true. Sometimes it take the fun out of your hobbies.

[i.am.b.c]

This is cool because in the 90s, Adam and Jamie’s commercial special effect with the bubbles in the bottle is kind of iconic in my memory as a moment that shifted the notion of ‘selling out’ - within the creative arts scene. I was involved in the alternative performing arts scene in Sydney Australia at that time and it suddenly became okay (not uncool) to talk about a tv commercial from the perspective of the creativity and cool excellence. It was totally a ‘moment’ in time. Until I became a Tested follower I didn’t know that was Adam and Jamie. So cool. ❤ 👏🏼 🫧

[needamuffin]

I don't know about being *nostalgic* for it, but my experience with changing consumption of media involves using Bearshare and Limewire as a kid in the 90s and downloading a song never knowing if it is 1) labelled correctly, 2) the song you're even looking for, 3) not a troll, and 4) not a virus until it's finished downloading, which itself could take hours for a single song. I remember thinking that Wheel in the Sky was NOT Journey but some other person for years because the version I got from Limewire was mislabelled. I even remember thinking "man, this sounds a lot like Journey".

[jorymil]

My favorite take on job vs. hobby is that with any job, you're going to be exposed to the bad side of whatever you do. Commuting long distances. Having to pollute to get something finished on time. Waking up at odd hours for an emergency. Doing work that you know won't be used, but is assigned to you. Working with people who don't actually want to learn about the job. I turned a hobby into a 20-year career, and it's been meaningful for the majority of it. When it stops being meaningful, then it's probably time for a change, either of employer or of career.

[warkitty]

One thing that most people don’t understand is that artists during the Renaissance were considered skilled laborers. They created artwork to spec, on contract. Da Vinci didn’t just have patrons; he had customers, who expected to get a specified product, at a specified price, on a specified schedule. The art market was very different from today, where an artist can produce anything they want and then just sell it (although that also existed, but was not the norm).

[wtimmins]

The explanation of workflow really resonated with me as a cgi content creator, in particular 'I go back and forth; sometimes the only way you're going to know what the next step is is to build the previous step'

I'm a big believer that a lot of stuff in life is transitive, that one area of knowledge/skill has familiarity with totally 'different' fields.
This back and forth is SUPER familiar to, say, writing. One of the biggest challenges writers have is that you need to write a bunch of stuff you end up changing completely or even just don't end up using, even if its good. Because it doesn't work. But you NEED those attempts, or sketches, or test builds, or whatever it is in whatever you are doing to get the ideas you DO end up doing.

That ended up a little incoherent, but anyway, back and forth, absolutely.

[johnderoy]

I was 10 when I first saw the billboards advertising "Alien". I loved sci-fi and I got really excited about the movie. Of course, I didn't know anything about it other than it was sci-fi. When I went to my older brother (he is 8 years older than me) to get him to take me into the movie he wouldn't do it. He told me I was too young and that movie wasn't for me. Later, as a teenager, when I did see the movie I learned that, as much as it frustrated me at the time, my brother was right to not take me to that movie when I was that young 🙂

[johnkennedy]

Hi there Adam, I am a person who loves to make things out of something and have a Brother and Father that were Machinists for a living, I have a little bit very little bit of experience with a lathe, but recently I’ve been able to get a lathe running and have found that I really enjoy using it even though I have never been trained properly but have been watching a lot of videos on you tube and really been enjoying the process of making things on the lathe

[mightyjjk]

All in one go…. Impossible. I’ve been working on one project for 10 years and finally finishing it up now. Many twists and turns along the way. Love your channel!

[patchvonbraun]

I've been what we now call a "maker" since I was 8 years old. I'm 61 now. I semi-retired in 2017. The "making" aspect of my life has almost never been a significant source of income for me. I have *NEVER* met a maker who "looks down" on people who also work for a living doing something else entirely. I myself was full-time employed in the computer and network tech development industry from 1979 to 2017 (and I still do it part-time). I was *always* "making" in the background. Whether it was electronics or mechanical things. The last 3 years, I've spent a huge number of volunteer hours restoring a large (12.8m) former-NATO satellite ground terminal for use in undergraduate astrophysics education. Turning ones maker skills to something like that is decidedly rewarding, if not particularly remunerative :)

[steveamsp]

Battleship New Jersey has an episode on the Emeco Navy Chairs. There's a lot of them that were bought for WWII that are still in use in the navy. A major case of "You get what you pay for"... those chairs are many hundreds of dollars new.

[Chris-orig]

Adam on the topic of the Emeco chair and A pilot system for drilling holes, that’s what I have used my 3D printer for a few times in car projects. You can draw it and print it on paper to see what the pattern looks like then 3D print it with thickness as a disposable pilot template for drilling holes.

[revengefrommars]

It really helps that I watched Repo Man just last week. I like where you say it's about repossessing cars. That's like "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" being about fixing motorcycles. Well, kinda, but...

[DoaTheJackalope]

A Repo Man liker, nice. It made a huge impact on me as a kid. The music, the vibes, the attitude, the mystery. I love it. Pi had a similar impact on me too, huge recommends.

[BlueSparrow]

@4:36 I had a co-worker like that who we lost in 2023. I only knew her for 2 months, but one of the kindest and brightest souls I've met. Safe rider, always had full leathers, taken out by an Elantra. She'd just turned 24. Miss ya, Melanie. We finally got to meet your fianceé, but it would have been better with you. She's joined our D&D Party, but wish we still had our Artificer <3

[Zeldur]

10:34 As one of these people, teetering between millennial and zoomer, I’m nostalgic on how slow young children’s cartoons used to be, from the 80s, 90s, early 2000s compared to today. I still remember an episode of Blues Clues where it was about sitting in a room and listening to the rain. Now, the few bits I see of kids shows, they’re sooo fast, like entertaining them with jangling keys.

[jonahmartin]

I think one of the most nostalgic things that the millennials like myself have is the feeling of first booting up certain video games from any physical medium. Now everything is digital property without the physical media that we used to have like CD’s, installing a game using multiple disks was a wild experience.

[Skorpychan]

You work very differently to me. I plan first, figure out what I'm doing, then work according to that plan with some adjustments as I go. That's the way I was taught and figured out through school, complete with technical drawings.
I never really figured out autoCAD, because that was taking SO LONG due to my terrible penmanship and inability to keep a sheet of paper clean enough to scan. I just gave up, drew it all out by hand, and worked from that.
This came up recently at work; I was asked to produce a thing for holding bottles for another department, and tried it. Failed. Then I gave in to my training, scribbled a plan down on some scrap paper, scanned that into the computer, and started making something PRECISELY. Measure, mark, cut. And at the end I had something my grandfather (who used to make things out of cardboard and tape when someone in the family wanted something to fix an issue) would have been proud of. Or, at least, would have approved of; I didn't spend years honing my skills by repairing Merlin engines like he did.