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Category Archives: Miscellaneous
How America Can Reclaim First Place
Can you imagine traveling six days by horse in a blizzard to hang out with peers and talk politics? Can you imagine waking up to a trumpet, grabbing your gun and running outside to join other armed neighbors to defend your cul-de-sac? Can you imagine hiding in your basement with friends for fear of your life and plotting a bloody revolution? These activities were commonplace 250 years ago at the birth of our nation. Early Americans went to great lengths to come together, stand as one, and protect our freedoms. The value of togetherness networked local communities, rallied the majority against common enemies, and united the colonies.
Somewhere between the Cold War and postdevelopment, Americans lost site of that camaraderie. We lost site of togetherness. Back then, the freedom to assemble was a huge deal – so important that it topped the list of our constitutional amendments. Today, I see a lot of ambition and very little group collaboration. Few people stand collectively behind anything except brands and religion (and even those groups are fading).
We need to come together again. We need to debate again. We need to start a cultural revolution again. And like all great movements in history, the era of neo-togetherness starts small: spend more time with friends. Spend time discussing how you think the world should look. Spend time making suggestions and outlining solutions. And if you are brave enough, spend time tackling those solutions together.
Our great country evolved through community. Only a strong community can keep it alive.
Erase ‘Maybe’ From Your Vocabulary
Commit, commit with stipulations, or don’t commit at all. ‘Maybe’ leads people on and only procrastinates the real answer. ‘Maybe’ hardly answers the question and forces you into an awkward corner where you ultimately have to decide. ‘Maybe’ usually means ‘no’ anyway, so why not be honest?
You will disappoint people more by leading them on and saying ‘no’ later than if you just say ‘no’ now. And who knows? Say ‘no’ now and they might return with a better deal.
Decide. Stop wasting people’s time. Stop wasting your own time. Yes or no?
Film Friday: Bring Down the Silos
Hollywood is divided by motion picture form: feature films, television, interactive and new media. These “divisions” can be further split into narrative and non-narrative, scripted or reality, short and long-form, franchise or micro-budget, professional or prosumer, etc. Some companies even divide content departments by genre. All of these worlds are segregated into silos, and it is very difficult for filmmakers and executives alike to migrate between them.
I find the rigidity amusing; while aesthetic sensibilities may be slightly different, the gear and roleplaying needed to produce each are now essentially the same. Aside from budget, which varies widely from project to project (not necessarily from format to format), there is only one relevant fundamental difference between each of these production types: story structure.
Some stories play better in the short form; others over hundreds of hours. Some can be broken into episodic pieces and spread out; others should be consumed in one sitting. Some play better on the big screen with large audiences; others on small screens alone in your living room. Some should be passively consumed and others interactively. It all depends on the characters, the situation and the journey at hand. Unfortunately, most companies in the industry approach storytelling backasswards: choose the form first and try to build a narrative for it. Squeezing a square peg into a round hole. Unnatural. It should be the other way around – develop characters first and then pick a format that best tells their story.
Major studios have mobility between formats to a degree, but only make the effort with franchises. To make matters worse, studios regularly attempt to spread each franchise thinly across ALL formats and mediums simultaneously to milk the cow dry. Moreover, the golden goose sits in the theatrical box office – most production companies aspire to author 90-page scripts to entertain large audiences through feature-length events in multiplexes worldwide. I can appreciate the spiritual power of consuming content beside large audiences in the theater space; I do not think the industry or exhibitors need to be so myopic as to distribute features exclusively in this space.
I contend that there is a healthy market for episodic content in the theatrical space. I am one of the few people who think Harry Potter would have played better as an episodic television show (with each season framed by a school year). The films themselves omitted far too much to satisfy audiences thoroughly. By stretching the 2 hour format to 15 or 20 hours, there would have been much more room to explore the characters and lore of the world J.K. Rowling created on page. And with select or all episodes being streamed into theaters weekly for supplemental revenue, the box office could have collected as many as 100 movie tickets per audience member throughout the weekly run of the seven year show. A wild idea, but why not? Expensive? Yes. Risky? Maybe, but less so with a loyal, young and international fanbase. Profitable? Hell yes. Open your mind, Hollywood. There is a lot more money to be made with creative mobility.
Motion picture formats are homogenizing, both on a technical and talent level. The movie industry should experiment with form, untangle from the guild restrictions, break down the silos and be a little more anarchistic about formats. Hollywood needs to be honest with itself and its audiences.
Let your characters tell you how long your story should be and then budget accordingly.
Small Plate Dining
I was raised to spend money on two things: travel and food. The latter I do everyday and with zeal. I love food more than almost anything else and treat it like a religious hobby.
But like everyone, I appreciate a good deal. Dining out does not always carry a high value proposition over cooking at home. I cannot rationalize spending $12 on an Italian pasta when I can make it with ease at home for $3. I can, however, rationalize spending money on a multi-course, ingredient diverse meal that is too grocery-list intensive, time consuming and costly to prepare on my own.
It is feasible on a normal night to prepare at most three dishes for a meal at home. I expect at least that many when going out to eat. The conventional American orders one entree when dining out. Unless it took 24 hours to prepare or imported some exotic ingredient from a land very far away, I often cannot justify spending double digits on a single entree. At the very least, I need to share entrees with other people. The more, the merrier!
Small Plate Dining.
José Andrés is often credited for bringing small plate dining to the states. More common in Europe, small plate dining embraces the “a little bit of everything” philosophy by offering many dishes too small to sustain an entire meal. The result? You order multiple dishes per sitting and make an entire meal out of appetizer-sized portions. Antipasti and tapas are common on menus and in wine bars where sampling and tasting is a virtue. If you order correctly, you end up with a broad culinary experience nearly impossible and far too expensive to replicate on your own. I will not hesitate to drop three figures on a meal if it presents a large dynamic range of flavors and diverse composition of ingredients.
Research your nearest tapas bar. Show your taste buds a party!
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Image by Ana Ulin, via Wikimedia Commons.
The Power of Spreadsheets and Accelerated Systems
Monotony and redundancy are not in my vocabulary. I refuse to be bored. Wasting time on repeat tasks is unacceptable. Sick of doing the same thing everyday? Optimize systems that perform repetitive tasks for you.
I worked for Lions Gate Films in 2008. Like most movie studios, they had interns manually entering box office data from Box Office Mojo to fill out research and market decks. It took between three and five hours to profile a small handful of films across international territories. Through Microsoft Excel, I crafted a formula to pull and format all of that data with a single copy and paste. Hours of work hacked down to mere seconds. To my knowledge, that spreadsheet template is still being used three years later.
No tool has earned me more reverence in the workplace than Excel. With over 340 functions and a limitless combination of formulas, Excel is one of the most robust problem-solving weapons in your software arsenal. If the problem is complicated enough and the data set large enough, I guarantee Excel has a solution.
Most people are afraid of it. Spreadsheet formulas are an abstraction of algebra, riddled with nested parenthesis, absolute and relative cell references, and a dictionary full of possible function combinations. I’ve had a cell formula 296 characters long that took me an afternoon to engineer and revise (a single extra parenthesis was breaking the whole thing!). Few people can rationalize the effort or focus that hard. But sometimes, it’s necessary. Engineer the right formula and you can save hours (or days even) on setting your computations straight. In addition to time saved, you can solve your problems with greater accuracy and ease.
Do not be afraid of Excel. Embrace the power. When you have a problem you want to solve, google Excel functions that can help you get where you need to go. I only know a dozen functions off the top of my head; I can search for the rest. Understand the fundamentals of Excel, and there will be no bounds.
People who understand spreadsheets are better situated to rule the world. Trust me: it’s worth learning. I even argue that high school math teachers should cover spreadsheet language as modern arithmetic, but that’s another post entirely.
The Secret Behind Genius
Want to be the best?
Hope to master a craft or trade?
Be the expert in a field?
Very few are born prodigies. It takes focus, time and persistence.
Einstein said it best: “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”
Stick with it, devote your time and give it your all. You can rule the world.
Taking Things Slow
When I was growing up, the courtship expression “taking things slow” was entirely sexual. As the world matured and knocking boots became a recreational pastime, that expression became far less definitive. You want to take things slow? Okay, fine. But we’ve already consummated our acquaintance, so what exactly are we taking slow? Exclusivity? Time investment? Attendance at family gatherings? Dark secrets? Shared finances? Contracts? Procreation?
If you want to take things slow, you need to define a pacing metric for the other party involved. It is unreasonable and unnatural to expect the other person to take it easy on all fronts. After all, you would hope he or she is invested in you and wants to share more. While love will always be abstract, communication is imperative and there are a whole host of metrics you can outline. If we’re talking sexual, the bases can be a metric. Dates, deadlines and introductions can be metrics. Be clear about what the milestones are and do your best to sincerely justify your rationale.
No, this is not a relationship advice column. “Taking things slow” applies to business, projects, negotiations, physical therapy, meal consumption, tricycle training, and world domination. Metrics, objectives and scheduling are essential for measuring progress and success.
Mom
Happy day to all the mothers out there!
Mom, I can’t thank you enough. You rule.
For everyone else, enjoy this guy:
5 Reasons to Leave Your Industry Hub and Move Elsewhere
Every industry has a central hub. New York for finance and marketing, Silicon Valley for tech, Hollywood for entertainment, etc. These “capitals” boast concentrated resources invaluable to companies on every level. While centralized talent and cash may be great for growing companies, it is not always beneficial for employees or startups. Competition can be fierce, even deadly. And you may be compromising your ideal quality of life by living there.
Friends know I am not a big proponent of the Hollywood community or life in Los Angeles. In fact, I would be happy to see Los Angeles crash and burn (but that’s a post for another day). Nevertheless, I appreciate the things I’ve learned, connections I’ve made and resources I have access to here. But while I support studying in the belly of the beast (I did so through USC Film School and continued employment in Hollywood), I think it may be to your advantage to take that knowledge elsewhere.
Below are five reasons why you should consider moving away and doing your own thing in another city:
- Less Competition. Fewer companies competing for business. Fewer qualifiers poaching jobs. Depending on the scope of your business or skill set, it will be far less difficult and expensive to stake a claim with your great idea or robust resume. There may be a smaller talent pool to recruit from and fewer jobs to step into, but you have a greater chance of standing out.
- Easier Press Attention. In fresh locales with less competition, you are the cool kid on the block. Almost everything you do can be newsworthy. It is exponentially easier to promote yourself and rise above the noise outside your industry hub. Do you think the Los Angeles Times gives a damn about film shoots anymore?
- Quality of Living. If you are liberated to live anywhere, live where you want to. The cost of living could be cheaper, the pursuit of recreation easier, the commute shorter, the schools better, the communities safer and the environment cleaner. Way waste your life accepting surroundings or a lifestyle that fails to enrich your soul?
- The Local Hook. You can sell your support for the community as well or better than you can sell your products or skills themselves. Every city is packed with patriots who will gladly help you out if you promote the local angle of your ambition. You may even be able to secure local investment from financiers who simply adore their home town, even if you are situated in a sector outside their expertise. And to differentiate yourself in the national and international market, you can embrace local themes and regional advantages through your marketing, sales and products (Denver is healthy, Detroit is rebooting, Hawaii is beautiful, etc.).
- Room for Growth. Industry hubs are wrought with history, tradition, bureaucracy and rules. Moving elsewhere makes it possible to start anew, break rules and bend the future as you see fit. Becoming a local industry expert or thought leader is much easier with less competition and accessible press. By earning that respect, you are better situated to shape the direction of the community at large and make a name for yourself. There is less ladder climbing and more real work being done.
Mark Suster wrote an insightful post this week about building tech communities outside Silicon Valley. For anyone interested in skipping town, I encourage you to read it (even if you are not in the tech industry).
Craig Ormiston 