learning to walk
One year ago today the entire advertising industry piled into a car for a New Year's Eve celebration. We were all eager to drink away our anxieties. The economy fell apart in September and the repercussion were hitting home.
December 31st 2008 was a dark foggy night. Not paying enough attention to where we were heading, we found ourselves in unfamiliar terrain. It didn't help we were a little drunk. Now we were a little lost.
As we sped around the curves barely maintaing control of the wheel, we inadvertently crossed the center median. Just then, a semi was coming in the other direction and...BANG! Our car spun out of control, smashing into the side rail and careening down the side of a mountain. The sudden fear of bracing ourself for the impending impact is the last thing we remembered. The world went black.
We woke up in an emergency room surrounded by doctors and nurses. It didn't look good. We could hear the faint murmurings of the medical staff. We would survive but the damage was as of yet unknown.
The next thing we recalled was regaining consciousness in our hospital room. Peripherally we could see the nurse franticly paging the doctor. He rushed through the door. Hovering over us he waved a pen light across and into our eyes. We could see he was relieved.
"Welcome back". He took out a tongue depressor from his top pocket and ran it across the arch of our foot. "Can you feel this?"
"Nope"
"What about this?"
"Nothing."
"Ok. I'll be back". The doctor made some notes as he made his way toward the door.
"Are we paralyzed?
He turned toward us assuredly. "For the moment...but I think it's only temporary. Let's wait and see. You've got the best care around. There are a lot of very smart and motivated people here to help you."
This was how we spent the 1st quarter of 2009. We laid in the bed as an industry frozen with paralysis. There was no movement. We were told our parts were beginning to heal but no one knew how long it would take. Every day physical therapists moved our limbs to get some blood flowing to prevent complete atrophied although it was clear we had shed a lot of weight and lost a substantial amount of muscle.
Some time around the end of March, we awoke in the morning with a sensation in one of our toes. We started to wiggle them. The doctor was cautiously optimistic. It was a sign of recovery but it was a long road back.
"Doc, will we ever walk again?"
"WIth combination of your will and new technologies I believe you will. But, to be honest, it will never be as it was. Hopefully not bad. Just different."
We were okay with that. At least we were alive. There was movement. Like the paralysis itself, the long winter thawed into spring. Slowly, we started to regain feeling throughout our entire body. By the time summer rolled around we were feeding ourselves without help from a tube or nurses. There were even moments we started to emotionally feel like our old self but the surroundings were a constant reminder of the devastating crash.
By the fall we were back in our own home fending for ourselves. Progress continued. Little by little we were achieving our new normal. By the end of the year, we had recovered a great deal from our wounds. The scars remained and we continued to walk with a pronounced limp. We were far from being fully healed. At least we were moving forward under our own power.
This is the metaphor for 2009. The crash and it's aftermath. What about 2010?
Thanks to a four quarter flurry of clients needing to spend year end budgets and must see live events such as the Super Bowl, Winter Olympics and the Oscars we could lull ourselves into thinking things were recovering nicely. It is a far cry from the paralysis of Q1 2009 but we are hardly whole again. The means of distributing content, the viewing habits of consumer, the power of social media, and the commoditization of ideas have changed our industry forever.
The promise of the new decade presents huge marketing demands to reach a fractured audience, an audience that ironically is more accessible than ever but even harder to reach. As an industry concepting, communicating, and executing ideas is our expertise. We must translate that expertise into the language of the next generation along with the skills to consistently congregate and mobilize a captive audience for the new media landscape.
So the metaphor for 2010, as we lick our wounds from what for many of us was the hardest year of our business life, is to learn to walk again. So many possibilities lie ahead. Let's just know where we are going and keep our eyes on the road.
Hope everyone has a very Happy New Year!
we are stimulus
Holiday Guest Blogger #6 - Matt Fretz, the NY operation at Epoch Films, is my last guest blogger. Tomorrow it's back to writing for myself. A lot to discuss in 2010. Excited to get started. In the meantime read Matt's post. He has the unique distinction of being the first Epocher to actually volunteer his services. Thanks, Matt.
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When asked to describe what we do by those not in the industry, I often say manufacturing. I realize it’s not a popular description from within, however, it’s the fastest way to convey the image of our impact. Our functions of talent development and storytelling mean very little to nothing for those outside of our bubble. However, when you explain we hire a lot of people and spend a lot of money to build our product, people get it.
Unfortunately, a quick review of most states’ film incentives reveals how painfully few recognize our value as an industry. We have a perception problem in most state houses.
New York doesn’t happen to be one of those states. Over the last couple of years, I’ve authored around a million in successful tax credits for Epoch, the bulk being in commercial credits. The state provides the credit, and as reported for our 2008 credit, we hired over 1,500 people and injected millions into the economy in one year alone.
We are economic stimulus, even in a down year.
To facilitate changing our station in the tax code, we need to help legislators and taxpayers see the value in what we do. There are a number of ways to do this, but the sheer visibility of our productions can serve as our greatest asset.
I volunteer as a manager at the Waterfront Film Festival every year. It’s held in West Michigan, which is not suffering as much as Detroit, but had unemployment in the mid-teens when I was there last June. Knowing a large part of our fundraising is from the local community, and that it had taken a hit, many of us realized we needed to demonstrate the ROI of the donations from our donors that went beyond the films, seminars, and occasional celebrity sightings.
Most of us from out of state made a decision to eat out; with our lanyards showing at every meal (benefit of being a manager is the lanyard). I have eaten at many of those restaurants for years, but always without the credentials showing. However, we felt it important to let people know we were there. Many of our volunteers did the same thing, leaving their name tags on when running around town. By the end of the weekend, one restaurant owner asked me (half joking) if we could do another festival the next weekend. People also seemed to have had their spirits lifted.
Use your creativity to figure out ways of setting us apart, especially if lanyards are not a palpable way to raise your profile. Find ways to distinguish a PA buying coffee from a regular office assistant (pay with gold dollars maybe). Or make sure the local restaurants know who you are with, by making reservations in the company’s name even if none are needed. Maybe hand out tee shirts. The goal is to remind people we’re very much a part of the economic landscape wherever we roam.
It’s easy for a legislator to dismiss comments from an AICP lobbyist. However, if their voting constituents have our back, we become harder to ignore. Maybe they’ll even see us for the valuable story manufacturing industry we are.
Matthew Fretz has been with Epoch for six years, having also interned for us in 1997. He currently serves as our Manager of Operations. His previous experience as a successful grant writer made him a natural fit to tackle tax credits for us. Matt is also author of Blog the Fifth, releases his own music, writes, golfs, and is an avid fan of documentaries.
paying for production results in argentina
Holiday Guest Blogger # 5 - David Preizler
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In Miami Vice the movie, Montoya tells Crockett, “When you work for us, you must do exactly what you say you will do. In this business with me, if you say you will do a thing, you must do exactly that thing. He says, “I don’t pay for a service, I pay for a result.” In a way, this sums up the responsibility of production service companies to their clients.
All production services companies in Argentina offer more or less the same services: production management, logistics, budget preparation, location scouting, etc. That is fine, but in the current economic climate, as illustrated on this blog, the stakes are much higher. Topics recently addressed have included preferred vendor lists, sequential liability, and shrinking budgets.
So how can US production companies get more out of the production service companies they work with here in Buenos Aires in order to achieve the results they need in this environment?
US producers should seek and Argentinean production service companies must provide up-to-date information about the market. While many US producers have been shooting here for years, they may not be aware of how the market has evolved in the last few years let alone the last twelve months. To get the most out of this production service destination, producers need to know what locations exist, the composition and depth of the talent pool, the sophistication of crews and equipment available and much more. Accurate information here can imply significant savings or even winning a project. In contrast, misconceptions or bad information can mean losing one.
Argentina is an affordable production destination by design, thanks to a favorable exchange rate, lower labor and talent costs, and competitive buyouts. But these savings are passive. To be an effective cost controlling “tool” for their clients, production service companies should strive to realize even further savings. These can come by way of realistic, competitive budgets and competitive mark-ups. It doesn’t make sense to come to shoot overseas and save in some respects but not in others.
Another opportunity to achieve greater savings in Argentina is to take advantage of the high level of DP’s, Art Directors, and Stylists, and work with locals when appropriate. Many US producers have already done this to great effect. In the past it may not have been possible to execute post in Argentina, because of the amount of time one would have to spend in B.A. editing. Now though, technology has bridged this gap and post can be done remotely.
When you come to shoot in Argentina or anywhere else, who is attending to your project? An experienced local producer can make all the difference. Who are the go-to people when have you a request or concern? Are the owners involved in your project end-to-end or only at a client services level? The answers here have important implications for your project and should be carefully contemplated.
Production services companies are really production results companies in the end. Because, as the quote above explains, that’s what you’re paying us for.
David Preizler is co-founder and Executive Producer at Nube Pictures in Buenos Aires.
http://www.nubepictures.com/
what to do on xmas
I have two more guest bloggers scheduled this week but I had to interrupt the scheduled programming to address the age old question, what do Jews do on Christmas Day? We don't have trees to gather around or presents to open up or family coming over for a giant meal. So with nothing to celebrate or nowhere to go we did what all good Jews should do, we traveled to Monterey Park.
Monterey Park is a neighborhood East of downtown Los Angeles with a very large Chinese population. On Christmas morning it took us 18 minutes to get there from Venice. With normal LA traffic it's somewhere between one and two days.
We made the trek along with three other families to eat dim sum. My wife organized the outing. After doing much research she determined that the Elite Restaurant had the best dim sum in all of LA. I haven't tried all the dim sum in LA so I can't say with the utmost certainty if this is true but I have to imagine Elite is hard to beat. I know this because I don't even like dim sum and this was awesome.
The place was jammed pack with mostly Chinese and a few non-assimilated Jews. Unlike other dim sum places, they don't walk around with trays of food to pick from, you have to actually order. They provide a very detailed menu describing all the options and accompanied by pictures. We ate tons and tons of stuff. I'd love to tell you everything we had but it was all in Chinese.
It was a terrific experience and the start of a new Solomon Family Christmas Tradition. Now here's the best part. Four families. Fifteen People. An endless amount of servings and a few beers thrown in for good measure. Total bill sans tip, $178. If that isn't a great Jewish Christmas than what is?
our real currency
Holiday Guest Blogger #4
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I had a great business topic lined up for Jerry, but then I drank too many pumpkin lattes and found myself disinterested in talking shop. Let's face it: this week we're all clearing things off our desk, going to the company lunch/dinner/party, popping straggling holiday cards in the mail, either giving out or receiving (recession-reduced) holiday bonuses and grappling with getting our Quickbooks balanced for 2009. Not to mention fending off near-hourly calls from extended family that threaten to impede all of the above. Normally something of a bah-humbug type, this holiday season I find myself in a buoyant mood, despite the inevitable setbacks of doing business in a recession.
This year my 8-year-old son played Mel Fezziwig in three performances of Orson Beene's Christmas Carol, through Venice's Pacific Resident Theater. In the musical, Dicken's Scrooge is literally haunted by the specter of things that have happened and may happen due to his relentless pursuit of wealth. He's a spiritual pauper whose bank accounts runneth over but whose personal pot is filled with gruel. After revisiting those choices, he begs for -- and is granted -- a second chance at life. Overjoyed to change the course of his actions, Scrooge starts living in way that prioritizes humanity, and a little boy's life is saved.
So what does this have to do with production, advertising, the AICP, the recession -- any of ProducerPosts’ normal topics of conversation? It’s a good time to remember that we are all in a business in which people and their talents, plus ideas, are our real currency. Many of us were initially attracted to the field because it is lucrative in addition to being creative, but if money were our sole interest, we'd all have gone straight to Wall Street. Now that advertising budgets are threatened, it's time to return to what we loved about production in the first place: the collaboration, the craftsmanship, the chance to create – and share -- something exceptional. The satisfaction we’ve all felt, when sitting with family or friends who “get” one of our spots on TV.
A Hollywood fixture who got his start in the 1950s, Orson Beene often guested on The Tonight Show (with both Jack Paar and Johnny Carson.) A resident of the Venice, CA canals neighborhood, the 81-year-old actor currently holds a recurring role on Desperate Housewives, while juggling numerous stage performances. Last Friday, Desperate Housewives producers called Orson to come in for a taping. He refused, because of his Christmas Carol commitment (a production for which he not only unpaid, but which gobbles up a quantity of his own money every year.)
The packed-to-the-walls crowd in attendance on Friday night delivered Orson’s real payoff: much loud and raucous laughter, plus rapt appreciation for the gifted actor’s turn as Ebenezer -- Dicken’s renowned miserly bastard whose frozen heart is thawed. The simple joy of entertaining an audience or perhaps making a lasting impression on someone -- that is Orson’s payoff, and ours. At any budget…
Virginia Scripps is the founder & President of Press Kitchen PR, www.presskitchen.com, where she represents production companies and others in entertainment. A former copywriter, she has a masters in film from Columbia University. She is also a mom, an author, a skier and a Mad Men-aholic. She also the first repeat guest blogger in Producer Posts history.
digital or film, a cinematographers perspective - holiday blogger #3
Holiday Guest Blogger # 3
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How kind of Jerry to allow me to contribute to his blog. I only hope I am half the writer and communicator that Jerry is. As a Cinematographer my strength is with a camera in my hand, not a pen. Here goes:
My name is Ed Gutentag and as I was saying I am a Cinematographer. When I asked Jerry what I could write about he said, “The world is your oyster”. I am going to stick to my world and expound on Film Capture vs. Digital Capture.
I love film and digital will never look the same as film, but...what I tell producers, directors, agency, etc is that today in 2009/2010 there are so many amazing choices of cameras that you can actually pick the wrong camera if you’re not up on the latest technology. Today's Cinematographers have so many more choices of cameras and also post solutions at their fingertips (did I just say post and cinematographers in the same sentence?) What I tell people is the following:
Film is great, but digital is at the point (especially for TV commercials) that when viewed on a TV set (and yes more TV’s are HD) I defy any Cinematographer to tell me if it was shot on film or digital. (By the way, I participated in test which was screened at Panavision in Woodland Hills, Ca to try to guess which footage was shot on film and which footage was shot on the Panavision Genesis camera and I was right 50% of the time, and I also worked on the shoot with Alan Daviau.)
The other thing to keep in mind is what us your project? A perfect example of picking the correct camera is Danny Boyles “28 Days Later”; the entire movie except for one scene at the end was shot on a Canon XL-1S with Canon EC and EJ prime lenses and an Optex Adapter on DV Cam tape.
The choice of camera is an important one. It's like choosing the correct brush or paint; is it water base, acrylic, or oil? At the “end of the day” or maybe I should change the expression here and say at the “beginning of the day” your choice of camera, film or digital is a creative choice but also an economical choice, and on top of it all, no matter what camera you choose, you have to let go of the technology and help the director, agency, producer to tell their story, on time and on or below budget.
Ed Gutentag started shooting Regular 8 mm ( predates Super 8 mm) film with his dads camera at the age of 7. He worked his way up to Cinematographer from photography by sweeping floors for an advertising photographer in NYC. He transitioned to motion picture and started back in the dark room loading film. He has worked with and learned from some of the most talented filmmakers in the world. The list includes Steven Speilberg,James Cameron,Robert Zemeckis,Norman Jewison, Michael Mann, Barry Levinson and Steven Soderbergh.
He currently shoots features, commercials, documentaries and the occasional large scale stunt on an action film.
http://edgutentag.com/reelpg.html
http://digitalcinemafordummies.blogspot.com/
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0349177/
Jerry Solomon is the managing partner of Epoch Media. He lives in Venice with his wife, two daughters and his dog. More→
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