Just wanted to share the latest video I produced for ieee spectrum ., about robotic balls controlled by your iphone. Orbotix. Cool….

Today I had the pleasure to interview the amazing Marcus Samuelsson at his new restaurant Red Rooster. He is being honored by the New York Urban League with the Fredrick Douglass Award for his contributions. He was eloquent, dashing and his restaurant is amazing. Some photos to follow, and later the video, after it premieres at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel on May 12. My goal in these videos was to not dwell on the accomplishments of the person, but rather try and get to the heart of them, what makes them tick, what made them do all the things that got them to where they are now. Here’s some pics, including my crab soup (yum!):

Here’s a sad post that I never thought I would share. I want to blog more, but I get too busy and with the new gig need to spend time getting up to speed with the new team. Looking for the spine, the will to blog more, tweet more, engage more. Designate a weekly time, it’s not a bad idea. My half-year resolution. Blog more.

I just accepted a new position. I’m pretty psyched about it. The reason is not just $, but that’s always nice. But they are taking an interesting turn, creating a large project management department that has full support of the agency brass. This is great. In theory, a lot of agencies are talking a digital, project management game, but few are putting their resources where their mouth is. Meaning: Sure, they hire producers/project managers, but they still have the account, creative depts rule the roost and PM/Producers just do their bidding. Here the opposite bodes to be true. We’ll see how it all works out, but for the moment I appreciate the fresh approach, and I appreciate them thinking I would be a good fit.

One of my first blog posts here was the shoot that I did for NBC New York last year. Turns out, that promo, “Day and Night” was just nominated for a New York Emmy Award. Whoa. I’m an Emmy nominated producer! Thanks so much to Matt Boline for the opportunity and you can see the Emmy nominated NBC spot here.

I’ve been working on some new proposals for film projects, one was with another producer I work with. It’s a bigger project, so she asked me to build out a timeline. Which just struck me as funny, just because I’ve been in the weeds doing a bunch of them on the agency work that I do. I say this a lot on this blog, but it’s worth repeating, whether you are doing art or business or both (I always strive for a little of both), it pays and helps to be organized. I’ve included this art timeline because I like it, but to bring the point home (Art+Timeline= you doing your best work)

If you are like me, you absolutely hate printing out digital jobs. It’s just so stupid, but in the agency environment, that’s what you end up doing. I like these new tools, like A.nnotate, which is probably the best going right now, but it’s also a question of priorities. When you move from spaces to pixels, people have to learn to accept it. That’s the hard part, isn’t it. If anyone else has another online review program for websites, digital projects, anything, I’m all ears….

I’m not a flash developer, nor HTML. I not a DP either, or an actor (not anymore, anyway…) I don’t know Maya or Unity (3D animation), and I don’t do layouts or write scripts (well, occasionally). I do edit video/film but gosh darn it, I’m sloooow.

Though I don’t know any of these skills enough to get paid to do them, I do know enough to be dangerous. I know when something’s not working, when an animation is too fast, when a font is illegible onscreen, when the text doesn’t line up or when the shot is not working. Call it intuition, sure. But I also know that there are plenty of situations that I need an outside eye to help me determine the proper diagnosis for the problem, or recognize when the job being done is not up to expectations. I call it in often.

“RENDERING” is the big joke between digital people and the non-digital people who pay them. Why is the job not ready yet? It’s “rendering”. “How long will it render?” “As much as it needs.” Why does it look that way? Bad render. Must re-render. (People love to hear that….) A producer steps in and gives context- see my earlier post on being the hub.

This is especially true of any project for a large organization, such as corporate client. But it works in film too, dealing with extras and PAs for the day.  As the producer, you introduce yourself (either in person, or often in the first case over email), and talk about the project you are working on, and how that person could help you get it done. Sometimes it is just direction on who to talk to, other times it’s a series of steps that they will need to execute to help you. I’ll go into the PA/extra part in a bit. For the moment I’ll talk about the first situation.

I was working on a online contest for a client once. We had to work with their IT department, their promotions department, not only get everyone on the same page but also make sure they were testing the content we were developing, creating the necessary lists, because we could not handle that part of it. I sent them timelines, yes, but I didn’t expect anyone to read it thoroughly. I just set reminders for myself that had me contacting them 1 week out from their deliverable, 3 days out, 1 day out, etc. By the first round of these, they got the picture: I was expecting them to deliver what was promised. I also shared some of the creative and got them to invest a little in it, even though they have a lot more than just my project on their plates. By the end of it, I didn’t even have to send the reminders, I was getting emails first, saying “hey, when are we getting the 3rd installment….we’re ready for it”.

When working on a film or a shoot, I think it’s important to meet all day players, be they just an extra filling out a scene or a PA for the day. Spending just a few moments with them talking about the project, their role in it, and sharing some of the excitement is key to nailing a shot in 5 takes as opposed to 20.