Everyone has fear, but no one needs to be afraid. Fear is a powerful tool if used wisely, one that can guide you to great discovery. We fear obstacles, the bumps in the road on the way to accomplishing our goals. But don’t be afraid. Use that fear to measure and appreciate the value of your potential success. The greater the fear, the greater the obstacles, the greater the feat, the greater the reward. Avoid the path of least resistance – it is deceptive and will get you nowhere. Choose the path of greatest resistance – it will guide you to your dreams.
Film Friday: Production Value Can Go To Hell
I talk to a lot of filmmakers, artists and business people who dissuade themselves from a venture or project simply because they lack the resources necessary to create a product with “high production value.” I cannot tell you how many films have not been made because producers and directors could not secure the equipment or style they wanted. “It wouldn’t be professional enough!” “It wouldn’t look like a real movie!”
Well, let me tell you something – who gives a damn? Do you think YouTube has become the entertainment monstrosity it has because of high Hollywood-class production value? Hell no. YouTube has exploded because it highlights genuine, human entertainment. Raw, real, honest. Not polished, impersonal shlock.
Pick up a camera (any camera, your cell phone counts) and go tell a personal human story. If you can’t do that, it doesn’t matter how much money or production value you have because NO ONE WILL CARE. Production value is just a cover-up for fear or undeserved elitism. Sure, quality can be important. But story is more important. Get off your ass and go tell your story.
Do not let production value get in the way of your creative expression.
Home
On a flight to Denver this morning to see family and friends for a long weekend. Home.
How do you define “home?” A residence? Memories? Family? Friends? Your job?
Home is where the heart is. Love and cherish it.
The family you choose, the passions you follow, the place you always long to return to. But if the place you reside does not allow your dearest relationships to be near, enable the pursuit of your dreams, or warm your heart upon return, then can you truly call it home? Why are you living there? Go home. Or find another.
To complicate matters, you can never truly appreciate home until you leave it.
A Vendetta Against Neckties
![Amedeo Modigliani [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](https://i0.wp.com/img153.imageshack.us/img153/4561/amadeomodigliani045.jpg)
I have never liked neckties. They are uncomfortable, untimely to dress and useless accessories to otherwise utilitarian garb. I can appreciate style, but the necktie is impractical. Seriously, what’s the point? Scarves make sense to me. And while not fashionable, so do bibs. But not neckties. Not anymore.
The necktie, originally called a “cravat,” was first popularized by Croatian mercenaries in the 1630s (part of my ancestry). Unpopular lore suggests these garments were used by the warriors to wipe clean their bloodied swords and flaunted as trophies of valor. The bloodier the cravat, the greater the man. While other European militias struck uniform accessories from their budgets, the Croatians struck enemies with their killer fashion sense. Bloody or not, the Croatian warriors built a reputation throughout the Western world and their linen trademark caught the attention of aristocracy. Before long, King Louis XIV embraced the necktie and the rest is history.
The modern necktie is nothing more than a corporate leash and a masturbatory symbol for power and wealth. If the world’s men spent less time tying knots at their gullets and more time changing the world, we could have flying cars by now.
Loosen your tie and share this with your boss.
Organizing Your Music Library
In the digital age, we are saturated with music. It’s amazing to me that people aren’t more overwhelmed by it. I have 12,297 songs (nearly 700 hours of music, 56.2 GB) in my library, 82% of which I haven’t listened to yet. That does not include some 1,200 tracks that haven’t been added to my library yet. Almost all of my music comes from recommendations and shares by friends. Without some sense of order, I may never be able to listen to it all. But I’m going to try.
To keep things straight, I use the 5-star rating system integrated into the major audio players (I use both Windows Media Player and iTunes to manage my library). Inspired in part by the way friend Greg Stanwood rates movies, I assign each star a qualitative value. To get a 5-star rating, a track must:
Star 1: Demonstrate strong musical talent
Star 2: Be recorded and mixed well
Star 3: Have a captivating arc and appropriate duration
Star 4: Survive repeat listening
Star 5: Evoke a notable emotional reaction
Conveniently enough, the result of awarding these stars to tracks informs me how to handle them in the future (I delete tracks that get zero stars):
1 Star: Never again!
2 Stars: Not terrible, but no thanks.
3 Stars: Average, sweet enough to keep at hand.
4 Stars: Listen again!
5 Stars: Love and keep forever.
Only tracks that get four or five stars (636 and 265 tracks respectively so far) make it to my iPod or car stereo. With this level of organization, you can bet I have a pretty awesome party mix.
In hopes of discovering new music, I am methodically working my way down the entire library song list to listen to everything I own. Over time, I will share some of my data and ratings with you. Pulling the metadata into excel, I have already discovered my favorite music year so far was apparently 2003!
The Easiest Thing You Can Do to Spread Joy
President Lincoln said, “Folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” Now, I know everyone isn’t an optimist. We all have bad days. But there is one thing you can do to make a difference, to change it up, and warm the day…
Smile 🙂
You’ve got a face. Use it! A smile can brighten a person’s day. Everyone wants to be happy, so help them out. They will probably return the favor.
Find it within to muster a real, heartwarming smile. If you can’t find a reason to smile, force yourself to smile anyway. The other person may be able to return the favor with a genuine one instead. Like a yawn, a real smile is contagious. One smile becomes two, two becomes more. Happiness abounds!
Spread the joy. Start with a smile.
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Change
Simple. I accepted that change is inherent and inevitable.
Things will always evolve around us, without our control. You can either go with the flow or fight it. If you want things to stay the same, you will have to adapt – change your tactics to put up a better fight. Go with the flow or adapt. Either way, you change.
Accept change and you may even learn to embrace it. Stop worrying and love change.
The Key to Success
Degrees? Funds? Ideas? Street smart? Experience? Politics? Connections?
No. Not even close.
Your heart is the key to success. Passion is the fuel that sustains hard work, manifests talent and ties relationships. If you love what you do and love the people around you, you will succeed. If you don’t, you probably won’t – at least not in the manner you personally define success.
Film Friday: The Mercenary Model
Like recruiting a band of freedom fighters, a company can commission a handful of different filmmakers to generate original content for a single narrative or non-narrative campaign unified by theme, message, dialogue or genre. By recruiting several auteurs to produce independent work, the company reduces brand risk by investing in multiple creative visions to satisfy one campaign. Odds are much higher that at least one of the dissimilar campaign videos will be successful online. As an added bonus, mercenary campaigns serve as strong breeding pools for discovering fresh directorial talent.
When pitting filmmakers against each other, it is much easier to negotiate competitive production budgets. Depending on the complexity of the campaign and nature of material, a brand could easily generate five pieces of content for the going price of one 30-second industry commercial. If your filmmakers are chosen through film school or a public competition online, you can offer as little as $1,000 budgets to each. Run productions concurrently and you can collect all of that content very quickly.
Coca-Cola has been doing this for 13 years through their Refreshing Filmmaker Awards. As another legitimate example, Philips commissioned RSA (Ridley Scott Associates filmmaker group) to shoot five short films using the same dialogue to promote their Ambilight Cinema Television. Five different directors produced radically different content and drove strong traffic to the brand. Carl Erik Rinsch’s film, “The Gift,” even sparked a studio bidding war.
As with crowdsourcing, trusting outsiders to produce video content could potentially compromise your company image. Thankfully, you are in control of your own brand – do not release the videos if they fail to satisfy your needs. Either way, it’s worth the experiment. Young, ambitious filmmakers like 5 Second Films could bring a lot to your campaign if you award them the freedom to do so.
Cross a Busy Street
Risk is a lot like crossing a busy street. You can go out of your way to find an intersection OR you can wait patiently for traffic to free up and seize your opportunity. In life, you can accomplish your goal by the book the slow way OR you can study your surroundings before making a direct move. In either case, there is a level of patience involved – leaping into risks unstudied can be suicide. The crosswalk or textbook may be safer, but they add time to your journey and do not force you to genuinely appreciate the physics around you. Crossing the street or accepting a challenge may end in failure, but you could save a lot of time and have much more to learn by doing.
Sometimes, the crosswalk may be the most direct route – embrace it. Other times, you may need to cross a six lane highway while racing the clock or a competitor. Only you can decide whether the time saved and lessons learned are worth it.
I am not advocating for jaywalking or breaking laws. But I do encourage you to seriously consider a more direct path. Put down the book and get dirty.
Craig Ormiston 