Meditations on the Mediaverse.
1) It’s good to be humble. Rich Ross, the short-lived and now departing Walt Disney Chairman, was rumored to have a “touch of arrogance” and a flippancy about the ease of running a studio. Arrogance is a tough proposition when you’re great at your job, which he clearly was at Disney Channel, but when you’re in a new gig outside your area of expertise and facing a learning curve as steep as the climb at K2, a little humble pie can help [...]
What is it about deadlines that gets the job done? To understand why they can are so motivating, I took a peek at the etymology of the word, “deadline.” Etymology, by the way, in narrative terms, is the “origin story” of words and their changing (or evolving) meaning through time. For example, “the whole nine yards” has nothing to do with football. Its derivation is thought to come from WWII, wherein gunners would “give ‘em the full nine yards” by [...]
“Read Between The Lines” Hollywood has a vernacular all its own and it’s best to learn the lingo so that you can become an eloquent practitioner. It’s what identifies you as a native to the other members of our tribe, as someone who’s in the know. Among the Town’s most popular pieces of parlance is “I don’t disagree.” But is it an affirmation worth a damn or is it just another equivocation on the road to development hell? Rather than [...]
Appreciation. We all want it. We all need it. Feels nice to get it. It’s an acknowledgement of what we do and who we are. When we don’t feel appreciated, it can sap our motivation, our ability to perform, to do our best, to serve others. The paradox of appreciation is that in order to get it, you have to give it. If you want to feel more appreciated by others — your spouse, your clients, your kids, your colleagues, [...]
It’s the thought that counts. Isn’t that what they say? I wholeheartedly agree. And I tend to think the thought counting also saves a whole lot of trees. I like to carry with me an attitude of gratitude for all the wonderful things in my life. Often, when my heart is bursting with appreciation, I feel like penning thank you notes to everyone whom I credit with contributing to my blissful state of mind: my wife, my clients, an agent [...]
Not long ago, whenever my son would hear me draw my breath in quickly or make a sound approximating alarm, he’d look at me with the insouciant curiosity of a three year-old and ask, “What’s the panic?” Precisely, my son. What IS the panic? Can anyone tell me? Are movies dead? Have people stopped consuming entertainment? Has media gone down the tubes? Is this the death knell of our business? As my boy is ever quick to remind me, “Dad, [...]
“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than it is to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the grey twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.” ~ Teddy Roosevelt. This quote was inscribed on a plaque on a wall of my father’s office and now it’s inscribed in me. At the start of a new year it’s customary to take stock [...]
I slip my five year-old daughter a piece of chocolate and tell her, “Don’t tell Mom I gave this to you – it’s our secret.” She nods enthusiastically as the chocolate melts on her tongue. When my wife enters the room, my daughter––in an attempt to hold up her end of the bargain––announces, “I just ate a secret!” * * [...]
Kids. So diminutive, and yet, so powerful. Something all kids have at their disposal, something all parents recognize, is the power of WHINING. It’s a mind-splitting, soul-piercing, stop-you-dead-in-your-tracks, rock-you-to-your-core Superpower that kids exercise with reckless abandon. Like a giant who doesn’t know its own strength, kids often don’t even know they are doing it. It juuuust comes out that waaaaaaay. It’s incredibly effective at eliciting another cookie, making Mom hang up the phone, getting to watch your favorite TV show, [...]
Hollywood is like a big English muffin: often packed with empty calories, but almost universally palatable. Like an English muffin, though, Hollywood is full of nooks and crannies, and while that adds an interesting texture to your breakfast, if you don’t make it a policy to investigate every single nook and peer into every cranny of the business, you might be the one getting crunched. The business of entertainment — a business of information and communication — demands a tremendous [...]
I met the Art & Media Director involved in a Steampunk recreation and performance group, The League of Steam. The League of Steam generates what I call D.I.Y.I.P. or Do-It-Yourself Intellectual Property. D.I.Y.I.P is a way content creators with a common interest can home-grow their own IP with the potential to coagulate a niche group of fans or micro audience (to be explicated in a later post). That micro audience has tremendous value for D.I.Y.I.P. because what starts as a [...]
Here’s a screen shot of the open windows on my computer. Just a sample of the notes, images, files, projects, emails, video and other priorities currently on my mind…
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