Daniel C. Dennett on What Should Replace Religions?

Making A Reel and other stuff

So I shoot some B Roll yesterday at a music video for my boys in Rosedale Express.

Check them out on Myspace http://www.myspace.com/rosedalemusic

Soon, our pitch will come together and I will be making TV shows. One can only hope of course.

I'm still making my reel! Taking forever to finish. I think I need to speed it up a little and start focusing. Ive done most of the opening titles, and now all I need to do is assemble it.
Maybe a few more cool graphics and I'm done.
I hope.
ha

It really is an on going, organic process that really tries my patience for some reason. i love editing, but editing my own stuff plus doing graphics etc for no pay is tiresome. I know, it will help land me jobs, but I need more motivation.
Ok, back to work. Cheers

Just Because I Love Duke Nukem

Pitching Today - FORTUNE FAVORS THE BOLD

Going to a production company to pitch a series of TV shows and films. Looking forward to it. I've already done the one SUPER pitch for discovery channel and was successful there. Now, This is the SHOTGUN pitch where I will be throwing out a bunch and seeing if any buckshot lands me a kill. (I won;'t say who I'm pitching to, but the hint is in the last sentence)
I'm excited.
I love the pitch process. Coming up with solid ideas, refining them, processing them, and creating a good, solid elevator pitch.
If any of these catch, I will be a very busy boy. My Go To producer, Reggie Morai will certainly be a happy lil' clam.
Well, wish me luck and, in a little over two hours I'll come back here and report on my success or failure!!

Fortune Favors the Bold!!!!!

My Review of UltraAVX

So I'm out to see a movie and the clerk asks if we want to try the new UltraAVX experience... for a premium. I asked her, "tell me about it". I'm not one to say no to a new movie going experience. I'll even try the Dbox eventually. I've done the various flavours of 3D, why not something new?
She said it was the ultimate in viewing experience. Reserved seating, better sound, bigger screen. An all around greater experience, at a cost of course.
So, I look over at my lovely companion, a beautiful smile crosses her face, (which in reality was a raised eyebrow haughty derision)
So, pretending I didn't actually see her disapproval of spending money needlessly I got the two tickets.
She reserved our seating, and away we went to get overpriced popcorn and drinks.
Got to our Seats...and then the disappointment started to mount up like a fat kid loading an ice-cream cone.

Cineplex garuntees several things.
1) Bigger screen (wall to wall) Check
2) Crystal Clear Digital Projection .. err It looks ok
3) immerse sound system ... very loud and boomy. Too much base and really, it just doesn't add much more than needed. I looked up the specs. They are impressive, too bad most of the audience has a hearing range that will lose some of the upper and lower frequencies.
4)Large Rocker seats. - They were actually uncomfortable after awhile. I never could find a comfy position as the seat kept moving on me but they were large.
5)Reserved Seating

and this is where I should have demanded my money back.
They double booked us.
That's right. They put us in seats they sold to someone else. The thing was, we got there first.
So we are enjoying our popcorn, all settled in. Coats are hanging, the seats are sorta in the place we want them then we are asked to move. Another couple comes shuffling up to us, and very rudely declares these to be their seats!
Ho ho I think not. I said no these are ours, we paid for them. I showed him the ticket and said if you have a problem go talk to the concierge but we are not moving.
If it comes down to it, first come first serve right?
Well a pimply teenage boy comes over, afraid of confrontation, nervous and shaking as I stare at him blankly. His voice cracks as he asks for us to leave the seats. I said no, handed him one of my tickets and told him to take it up with management. He did, there was a discussion I ignored, and when they came over and asked if I would be gracious enough to move I said no.
In life folks, if someone asks you to be gracious enough for something, think about it like this, they want something and you are in the way so they, with a passive aggressive tone ask for it. If there was any grace they would back down first. So, being the smart ass I am, I said "first come first serve then. Compensate them." I smiled and waved. There was tension as the other fellow was an aggressive Gino type in a jean jacket, fauxhawk and big sunglasses. I just smiled at him, shrugged and waved. Most Canadians will avoid a fight, or even an exchange of words, so, like I predicted they left, shooting me angry glances.
I know how I treated the situation was a bit tactless but really, I paid for the damn seats.
The rest of the movie wasn't anything spectacular.
Was the service worth the premium price? No.
Most things in the theatre are not.
Over priced food to the point of absurdity, crowds of teenagers (ok, the girls I don;t mind so much) and just a general rush rush feel are not always worth it.

In the end, don't waste your money on UltraAVX. you will be UltraDisappointed.

Ricky Gervais is my Hero

Possibly the Greatest Movie Ever Made - Suckerpunch

Check out this Gem. We got girls with guns, robots, zombie nazis, hell it has everything, even dragons.
I will be first in line.

Business is Growing! Manage your time! It is Valuable

So I've been working very hard to not only finish my website, but to also start marketing my brand.
I've learned that one of the toughest hurdles in starting your own business, especially one that focuses around offering services. I am lucky though that my offerings have a tangible product, whether that product generates cash for them, is a whole other topic.

I've learned a few things lately in how to deal with clients. Primarily, they should always come second to your time.
Far too often, we, all of us, eager to start a business and get our names out there, spend a whole lotta time pleasing and bending over for our clients.
This is not a bad or good thing, as it can solidify a relationship pretty quickly. The problem arises when you devalue your self by first 1)not limiting or not managing your time and 2) making yourself constantly available.
The client has to understand the value of time. This value has a dollar amount. If they can not respect that, then they do not respect you.
If I make a product, to the clients whim and fancy and they want it changed, they have to pay. Your time is valuable and you are offering a service that they hired you for, and if they want changes, they should pay for them.
If there are mistakes made, then ya, you don't charge the client.
Also, about the value of time, you need to set rules on when and how they go about contacting you.
I have one client on my BBM with whom I am a close friend with, so chatting with her is fine, and she respects my time outright. Whereas I have another client who has called me at the wee early hours and also demanded me to leave meetings and bow to their command, while NOT paying for that time.
You are not here to make friends, you are here to run a business.
I was not pleased with them. I let them know, and they backed off.
A lot of clients will not though and you have to be willing to let those clients go.
It costs you more in anguish than you will ever make in money.

If you are faced with a tight deadline, imposed by client, make sure they pay. That a look at this

I posted this a few days ago.
Pretty much, if you want it quick, and cheap, you will get rubbish. Cheap and good, you will get it when it's done, and God and quick, you better pay.
This doesn't mean don't go out of your way to do a good job, just manage your time.
Time is the most valuable thing you have, and if you can't fit your time into the value of a project, don't do it or be honest with the client, they will get it late, or they will have to pay for you to be up all night busting ass.

Don't be afraid to tell them that!
They have no right to demand the Holy Triumvirate, the CHEAP FAST AND GOOD.
I've delivered that, and I can tell you this, it hurt me emotionally and in the end financially.
The only one you are helping is the receiver of your project.

Hope this helped.
Talk soon!

Retail Store Blog: Internet Home Business & Life

Retail Store Blog: Internet Home Business & Life

Narrowcasting - The Digital Frontier or just what we should expect?

In high school I had the privilege of working with Canada's first in-class narrowcasting system, with a now defunct Athena Group. (At least to the best of my knowledge)
The idea was pretty simple. You have a captive audience, why not exploit that?
There was a lot of backlash, especially from concerned parents that their children were being ill-exposed to the dangers of advertising, warping their poor minds. I won't go into the philosophies and moralities of this subject. That is a whole other topic about what advertising is and what does the message itself mean.

The project failed though, mostly due to that backlash and lack of government backing. Beyond the obvious political struggle faced when implementing this system in schools, the very nature of the execution is what killed it in the end.


There is a Right and Wrong way to do something.

I finished college and went to work on Canada's first real attempt on a large scale, in store application. It was good, but not great.

Any installation I saw was either shoddy, uninteresting, poorly designed or otherwise executed with a technological or even budgetary consideration.
The message itself was being lost.
This is where the first iteration failed (in school). It was treated like regular TV, force fed, long run advertising and long format content, mandated to classes that children needs to watch.
Even the first tests I was part of with that large retailer, the content was inconsistent, ran too long and had no messaging.

There needed to be a whole rethinking of the philosophy and strategy of in-store advertising.

There needed to be a right way. Most of you have seen the screens placed everywhere, from the corner store, to the Lotto counter, to driving down the Gardiner at rush hour.
What are the ones that stood out for you?
I'm guessing most of the content you came across was unmemorable and conveyed nothing interesting, dynamic or engaging?
I'm sure most people would have no recollection of the content, save a small percentage of customers.
Is this bad? I'll cover that in a second.
First off, the messaging. The single most important piece of the puzzle. Sure, a nice big flat screen with cool graphics might get a nod from someone interested in the hardware, but most people will pass it by and disregard anything on the screens.
This is where Content becomes more important than anything else.
A moving image will only capture a viewers attention for, oh, half a second, (there is research that corroborates this)
The viewer then will decide in the next second or two whether to keep looking or glance away.
In that time frame, you, the viewer must then become a participant in the message.
So many things happening at the same time! How will you ever get the message across?
Gone are the days when a technologies company can put up a screen with a powerpoint and hope someone JUST MIGHT look at it.

You must deliver a timely message, effectively and concisely in and to a frenetic world. (The words of my sage mentor, Steven Graham)

So, going back, why don't you remember? Well you kinda do, and I will get into that next but it also addresses part of the problem of super saturation and zero content or messaging.
It is important to deliver a quick, happy little message that will get people to bite VS regurgitating a mass of dialogue and information onto a busy world.
Along with that, worrying about the aesthetics over the function further devalues your image. I can remember dozens of ads that looked cool, but what were they selling me?


How Small Percentages don't always mean something bad, but lets keep going up anyway


With screens everywhere, how can one man or woman remember or even be influenced by all that noise?

Some of the research I was part of showed a recollection of less than 10%. I do not remember the actual figures but it was pretty tiny. (If I'm wrong, please correct me)

Is that Bad? Look at the trends in the data and ya, that's pretty amazing.
7 million viewers per week (in foot traffic), and maybe less than 10% recollection (howabout we say 5%) and a further less incentive (5% of that) to "grow the basket" (A term I'm trying to push as a way to explain per customer purchase growth)

Lets do the Math.
5% of 7 million is 350 000 (maybe saw or paid attention to the screens) and probably %5 (probably even lower) actually bought something more because of the screens, so we're at 17, 500 people "grew their Basket"
at an average of 5 dollars (from what I remember of the statistics)
That equates to
$87, 500 extra per week X 52 weeks in the year equals an additional 4 million dollars!!!
That's impressive.

So, capturing the attention of everyone isn't really that important, but dammit, let's get that number higher! So how do we do that? We do it through strategy. We need to separate your brand and in-store image apart form everyone else.

I will expand more on strategy later.
Narrowcasting, or in-store advertising is an exciting new medium that was daunting and difficult at first. (I was there in the trenches watching people sink their lives into it)
but it will grow to replace TV for ad money spent, mark my words, the potential for direct, to POP communications is far more powerful than any TV commercial. You'll see a huge spike in spending in web and in-store.
The only thing really narrowcasting is missing is the credulity and awareness that TV brings.
Once that hurdle is over come Narrowcasting will become the next big thing. Hell, look at the internet and how online marketing and advertising has so dramatically shifted from the wild west to the staple of international communications!

Please comment folks! We shall talk about this more later.

Website is up!!! Reflection on Trends in the Industry

Well, my website, is up and running. I am still putting my reel together and will hopefully have it done today.

This whole, doing it on your own, thing is a tiring process for sure.
My client list grows and I'll be doing some pretty exciting work over the next few months.

I've decided to follow my advice and finally get incorporated. It takes some time, and a little cash, but in the end your ass is covered.

Some Reflections
I emailed an old colleague from my corporate video days, and he tells me everyones a producer now.
This got me thinking back to the early 2000's when I first started out.
I've just left school, everyone wants to be a producer, everyone wants to be some great director, all I wanted was a job. I leveraged my post production skills and created a very unrecognizable niche for myself, narrowcasting. (in-store marketing and branding)
Which was fine and dandy, but when the work dried up, as I guess the retail environment wasn't quite ready for this technology, I did corporate video at a boutique shop called Key West Video. They are no longer in business, but the two years I worked there I learned quite a bit.
Much of my shooting and editing skills came from there. Editing content quickly and efficiently, while keeping the client happy, was my number one job, and boy did I make a few mistakes.
What I do remember the most where the talks my colleague and I had.
Some were pretty silly, others serious. He would routinely play the devils advocate and be very staunch about it, so I improved in my argument style for sure.
One thing we did talk about most was the nature of our industry, and why it's so tough for people.

Everyone's a "Insert title here"


This one we see everywhere. Some rich kid gets daddy to buy him some equipment and poof, he's now a producer and director and editor etc etc. No formal training or experience, he just shoots and thinks he can impress girls and his other trust fund baby friends.
Well, this has been around since the dawn of time and really, never threatened the jobs of real artists working in this field.
Then, with the advent of cheap computers, and cheap software, suddenly, everyone could access the tools formally held by professionals. Equipment, like a da Vinci, a million dollar system, could be replaced with a fast PC and some hard drives.
Amazing isn't it? So why did this worry the professional? It wasn't that they had the talent, it was because they had the tools and could charge way less, or companies could move these services in-house or hire a family member. I routinely remember clients saying, oh I can get Steve's nephew to do it. He just got a Mac.
This diluted the industry with a million designers, animators and editors. Not to mention the costs of cameras have dropped, so everyone can now shoot.

Boutiques that charged a premium for first rate service were going out of business, losing clients to in-house departments that hired kids to be Jack of All Trades and paid them near poverty level wages to manage everything.
This bubble did eventually pop around 2005ish when companies realized they were not getting the services needed. They wanted professionals, and thus began the Producers Bubble

Producers Bubble
The bubble grew fast. With the advent of faster, better technologies, SSD, fibre, etc etc, again, people were becoming not just designers, why do the hard work? They were becoming producers. The stuff looked slick, and pretty. The quality was only present because the technology did everything for you. Everything was a preset. I interviewed someone once and their reel was nothing but after effects and motion presets timed to his music. I guess I could give him a technical merit for cutting, but really, later on I found another plugin that will do that for you as well.

What was lacking in all of this, was thought, and creative input. I see so much stuff on youtube and it is all technically amazing! Don't get me wrong, some of it is gorgeous, BUT it is not creative.
There is a huge difference between the two.
Creative content isn't so much original, it communicates.
Without communication of an idea, it is an execution and belongs on a design reel as a technical ability, and not a creative asset.
Create something that tells me, that sells me, that shares an idea.
That is creativity. My former boss, Steven Graham taught me this.

To make something for the sake of aesthetics can be creative, but only for that sake and that sake alone. For any other application, it's a waste of time.
tell me a story I yell!!!

So there is a glut of producers, all capable in using their cheap machines, but, out of all you see, do any of them tell you a real story?
Communicate an Idea?

This bubble will pop soon, as more and more content is created, the chaff will be separated from the wheat.
it just takes time, then another bubble will form, maybe this time it will be instant reality-esque voyeurism. I don't know yet.

The future is funny, as it tends to repeat the past, except, none of this technology existed 10 years ago...

You're thoughts would be appreciated!!!
Thanks


Gotta run, cheers.

The Triangle of Awesome

I came across this Venn Diagram the other day and I think it sums up exactly the kind of industry I work in. In fact, I'll probably start sending it to clients with a disclaimer I require 50% up front and I might consider squeezing in another one of the "circles".
I'll be writing a post on this shortly.

I just had sex - The Lonely Island

Ahh the Lonely Island, when will you not amuse?

I just Had Sex - Lonely Planet