Monthly Archives: March 2011

Film Friday: How to Enhance Jokes in the Editing Room

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It’s time I start a weekly blog series – lessons from my experiences in the film industry. We can call it “Film Fridays.”

I’ve been in and out of the cutting room for the last five weeks on our latest web series, Talent.  Every time I oversee editorial on a new project, I learn a lot.

Lately, we spent a big chunk of time tweaking scenes for comedy. Now, I have never been a funny man. I guess I missed the comedy gene my brother inherited. After weeks of shifting edits here and trimming shots there, I have a much better understanding of the temporal mechanics of comedy – at least in the motion picture form.

Want your joke to play better on screen?  Try letting it breathe.

Comedians pause after they deliver a funny line. They don’t pause to wait for the audience to stop laughing; they pause to illicit laughter in the first place.  Watch Australian comic Steve Hughes.

The same tactic works on screen. After a punchline, leave some air – make sure there’s a moment without dialogue, without busy sound effects, and without domineering score notes. Your viewers need time to process and react. If you cut to the next line of dialogue immediately, your audience might not have time enough to think the joke is funny. A loud sound effect or music cue following the punchline will compete with laughter, or worse, deny laughter altogether.

It is frustrating when an audience’s laughter drowns out the dialogue that follows. Information is lost and you feel like you missed something. But I can’t blame the audience for being loud; I usually blame the filmmaker for not understanding the moment he or she created.

Air is not a magical cure-all for comedy – the joke still needs to be funny. But air can help you preserve a joke. And if you’re lucky, enough air can create an awkward silence that twists a lame beat into a funny one. You have to try it to find out.

I suspect the air trick works in other forms of comedy as well.

Full-time or Freelance?

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The gamble of finding day-to-day employment or the gamble of being trapped in the cycle of a 40-hour workweek?  Too much free time or no free time at all?  Steady paycheck or unsteady paycheck?

What are you now? Freelance or full-time? Which would you prefer?

If you prefer the opposite of what you are doing now, welcome to a very crowded club. The grass is always greener on the other side. Full-timers want more time to do what they want. Freelancers want steady work and more security. Both lifestyles suck and rule for different reasons.

It boils down to personal aptitude. Some lack the agency to survive freelancing on their own. And some cannot sit still in one job to save their lives. You have to try both to appreciate both. Only then can liberate yourself from the cons of both.

Freelance or full-time? It’s a trick question for me. I want to find balance between the two. The grass may be greener on the other side, but I prefer the high ground – atop the hill separating both sides. Better tactical advantage.

Pays Versus Plays: The Future of Digital Residuals

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My MP3 play count for “I’m Not The One” by The Black Keys:  43

My MP3 play count for “Down for Whatever” by Ice Cube:  2

Who deserves more money, at least on my behalf? Well, obviously The Black Keys.

The way things are now, they each get the same. I purchased both MP3s for 99 cents and each artist collects a whopping 9 cents of that. Not fair, huh? The Black Keys should definitely get a bigger chunk of my money than Ice Cube (and a bigger chunk of that 99-cent MP3 sale, but that’s a different point). If an artist earns more plays, he or she should earn more dough. But it has never worked that way for consumer media ownership – pay for the album once and never have to pay for it again.

Artists theoretically collect more money per program their songs are used in. Current performance rights organizations (ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, and SoundExchange) use abstract systems of surveys and credits to track television, radio and public space plays to determine artist payments. Their systems are just as arbitrary and myopic as the Nielsen ratings. Needless to say, artists’ residuals are not accurate and cannot reflect the actual popularity of their music.

As digital space envelopes us, tracking is becoming easier and easier. By the end of the year, I predict that our entire music library can be synced to the cloud (Grooveshark has offered library uploading for a long time and Google Music sounds like it will be a formidable competitor in this space). Eventually, all music will be trafficked through the Internet. When this happens, play count data can be synced and shared. Artists and record companies can finally get accurate reporting on their play counts (and even more accurate insight into audience reception). Artists can get paid the portion they deserve, at least next to other artists. Plays will become more valuable than pays.

The trick is getting money into the system. I don’t think Google will have a problem with that, though.

How to be an Artist

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Simple: learn to quit.

Art is never finished. Therefore, the trick is learning to let go.

A doodler releases his or her work into the world when she or he is ready.

A true artist releases his or her work into the world when the art is ready.

The key to great art is not skill, but timing.

Pour Out the Glass Half-Empty

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Life is never perfect, so always give second chances. But if things continue cruising below par, stop wasting time. Pour out the glass half-empty or fill it up again, but don’t let it sit there. Accept defeat or reverse your situation. If you pour, try not to make a mess. If you want a refill, calculate the effort necessary and decide if a realistic outcome is worth it. Attempting to rekindle the fire can be a risky investment of your time.

Sure, enduring heavy baggage can make you stronger. But dumping weight can make you more agile, able to reach the next milestone quicker.

How to Keep Your Team Fresh

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Things get stale in the office. The same scenery, the same products, the same ideas, the same relationships. To keep your team in high spirits, mix it up.

Vacation is not frequent enough. Ask employees to find a public venue to work one morning every week – coffee shops, co-working spaces, diners, etc. Encourage them to interact with other patrons and make new friends. Satellite conversations will spark new ideas that spread internally and inspire evolution. And as your employees build relationships in new environments, the team vicariously expands its network and potential resources. Win-win for everybody.

Do You Shampoo Your Beard?

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Justin Hamilton asked me if I shampoo my beard. It struck me as a peculiar question. Not because it was inappropriate or unnerving, but because it had never come up in conversation before.

Should you shampoo your beard? Facial hair is still hair and warrants the same care as your scalp, right? No one ever taught me one way or the other.

There are many lessons about adulthood we are not taught growing up. Sex education comes early, but we are hardly taught extracurricular adulthood mechanics thereafter – until we suffer hard truths. Categories of insurance. The civil court system. Property ownership. Credit. Taxes! Taxes are a basic American responsibility and we are all accountable. Why do so few people understand them?

Tax education should be mandatory prior to graduating high school. As should many of these other things I mentioned, whether taught in school or the home. Many adulthood chores do not get discussed until it is too late and we are not prepared. Unruly beard hair is not as dramatic as providing proof of death for a life insurance claim, but they both fall into the same batch of conversation topics failing to surface until we have to waste time and energy decoding them on our own.

To answer the question, I shampoo my beard roughly twice a week.

[EDIT for the Ladies:  I soap my beard/face everyday. I don’t shampoo everyday, it seems like overkill.]

After Hours

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What do you do when you come home from work or school? Keep working? Relax? Watch television? Read a book? Write? Work out? Spend time with family? Go to bed?

It is important to keep your body healthy and mind sharp. Family is very important, not to be neglected. Balance is the key to successful living. But consider: your after hours are unencumbered by the expectations of a paycheck or supervisor. You have the freedom to live, the freedom to grow, and the freedom to innovate.

Many of today’s most impactful creations did not manifest at the hands of large corporate teams, wealthy R&D divisions, or policymakers – they were conceived by individuals as hobbies after hours. Henry Ford experimented with his first gasoline engine at home while working for the Edison Illuminating Company. John Pemberton, a late nineteenth century pharmacist, bottled Coca-Cola as a side project. The Wright Brothers assembled gliders in the back of their bicycle shop. Google and Facebook were both parented by active college students. The list goes on.

Live your life doing what you want to do. Embrace your hobbies. Embrace your time. What you do after hours can liberate you.

Do Not Criticize

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Do not criticize people’s choices. They will be less likely to trust your judgement because you just challenged their judgement.

Find another way to communicate your message. Or risk losing respect.

Fansource Five: How Your Fans Can Help Offset Risk

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New trend: crowdsourcing. Inspiring the masses to perform a service for your company and engage them in your brand. Core systems, brand identity, customer service, logo design, commercial production, word of mouth, product development, recipes and more. Cheaper, doubles as a marketing effort, and empowers your strongest audience.

It’s not always a good idea to call out to the whole world. Gap’s logo redesign failed in part because a large number of submission artists were not regular Gap customers; they were not familiar with the brand. Certainly not as familiar as the customers who lashed back and reset the logo.

Enter: fansourcing. Fan–sourcing is more focused than crowd–sourcing because it challenges your fanbase directly – the people who know and care about you the most. A new record label in the UK invites fans to invest (for a share of the profits) in an album before the music is even recorded. This model threatens rule #4 of my true fans definition by blurring the line between fan support and ROI profiteering. Nevertheless, sharing profits with your strongest fans is an unrivaled channel for gratitude. It could empower your supporters and win you more true fans.

Fansource financing can offset considerable risk in your venture for the following five reasons:

Reason 1:  Upfront Recoupment
Traditionally, you raised money to produce and then recouped costs when customers paid for your product. With fansource financing, raising money and recouping costs happens simultaneously. Pay before or pay after? As long as you can deliver on your promise to produce, what’s the difference? Less risk when you’ve already satisfied expenses before the product is made.

Reason 2:  Less Emphasis on Profit
Investors expect a financial return. Fans expect an experiential return. When your investors are your fans, the product takes first chair to profit. Investors are very important and should not be undermined. But I promise you: fans will give you less hassle about the dollar – if you do good work, of course. Less pressure, less stress, less risk.

Reason 3:  Fans Have Skills
By building a community around your project, you have thousands of supports who have talents and connections that could help you. Be resourceful (or perhaps fansourceful?). Know your fans. Do not be afraid to ask. They might love you enough to lend a hand.

Reason 4:  The Quality Committee
Investors want your product to turn a profit. Fans want your product to be great. By bringing in fan investors, you are building a community populated by your toughest critics and most loyal supporters. Build a relationship with them, collect their expectations and improve your product. Better quality, less risk.

Reason 5:  Fans Have Friends
With their hard-earned money in the pot, fan investors have more at stake in and therefore more attachment to your project. They want their friends to support the project and fuel their return. Fans will help you do the marketing legwork and reach more people.

While fansourcing reduces financial risk on your part, it increases fan retention risk. A fan invests thousands of dollars into your project and your project fails, no return on investment. Uh oh. You will lose the fan. They may even tarnish your reputation, hurting your ability to adopt new fans. That is why it is imperative to earn true fans who do not expect a return. Churches are really good at this. Kickstarter is kickin’ ass.