Tag Archive | "business"
Q4 of 2009 has seen a number of wonderful projects wrap up and get distributed.
Winnetka Story is a feature-length documentary about the history of Winnetka and the North Shore area, outside of Chicago. Once again I worked with the wonderful John Newcombe, with whom we authored the DVD for Rancho La Cañada: Then and Now a few years ago. Hearken Creative did all of the DVD authoring and DVD menu design, as well as managing the production for the packaging.
Servant Partners launched several new videos prior to the Urbana missions convention that Hearken Creative produced. Most of the interview footage was interviewed and shot by Loren A. Roberts, with video from around the world provided to us by Servant Partners in various formats. HCS brought it all together and turned it into several promotional videos, for use both online as well as looping on plasmas in the organization’s booth at the 20,000-person convention. In addition, HCS authored the DVD, designed DVD menus, and duplicated copies of the DVD for all staff members. Below is one of the four videos produced:
And finally, Dave Schultze of Schultzeworks created a video promoting a computer design that he calls the “Philco PC,” an homage to the Philco Predicta television set from the 1950’s. I was able to work with Dave, consulting on camera movement, editing, and pacing for the video (Dave occupies my old office space, and we have become good friends over the past few years). We were stunned at the response after releasing the video: Vimeo shows that it has close to 100k views of the video, the design has been featured on EnGadget and the NY Times, and Dave has received calls from news outlets and potential clients. This was a great collaboration for us, and HCS looks forward to consulting in the future for other friends and clients! See the video below:
http://www.vimeo.com/7951005
There are many changes coming to Hearken Creative in the new year, but the one thing that will not change is our passion and dedication to making our clients look awesome, bringing creative and powerful solutions to the world of advertising design and corporate video.
MediaPost’s Research Brief has an interesting collection of data from Nielsen Online. Note how much video is watched on Facebook versus Myspace:
| Top 5 Social Networking and Blog Sites Ranked (April 2009, U.S. Home and Work) |
| Site |
Total Video Streams
(000) |
Time Spent Viewing
(Minutes x 000) |
| Myspace.com |
120,793
|
384,030
|
| Facebook |
41,537
|
113,502
|
| Stickam |
19,617
|
54,522
|
| FunniestStuff.net |
10,206
|
34,456
|
| Funny or Die |
6,503
|
17,725
|
| Source: Nielsen VideoCensus, June 2009 |
So we all thought that Facebook was taking over the world. It turns out that more people are watching video on Myspace, and for a longer period of time (a ratio of 3 to 1!).
What does this mean for us? Not much. I won’t post personal video to either Facebook or MySpace, because I’m scared about the ownership issues involved. Promotional video (movie trailers, band promos) should go up on all of the sites to ensure maximum saturation. And I can’t help but cringe at the quality of video on both MySpace and Facebook; it is for that very reason that I have posted my company’s promotional work on Vimeo instead of any of the top social networking or video sites.
It does have relevance, though, to remind us that the “hot trends” that get reported on often only have a kernel of truth, and the true picture is much more nuanced or complex. While Facebook is having a banner year, MySpace is not losing as much ground as the mainstream media would have you believe; and MySpace actually is “stickier” (people stay on the site longer), something that advertisers are very aware of.
Well, I’ve done this over the years for friends, but I think I should stop underselling myself. This weekend I mixed sound at the Global Day of Prayer/Love Pasadena event on the steps of the Rose Bowl. 500 people, 5 bands, several hours, and lots of running around and soundchecking. And the event went off without a hitch. I’m really proud of Advantage Productions in Santa Clarita for finding me a sound system on short notice, and the pastors of the churches who helped put the event together.
Running live sound is a lot different than recording in the studio. In the studio, you can move mics around until you get it right, you can punch-in to fix a bad line, you can EQ and compress to your heart’s delight on your own time. But live sound needs to sound great — NOW. So I was really happy that, with no soundcheck for any of the bands, we were able to walk in and make everything sound awesome the first time. Having great equipment can make or break a show, and that’s why I’m s0 pleased with Brett and Ron from Advantage Productions, and how easy it was to work with them.
So, I’m hanging my shingle out for running live sound for events. And next time I’ll wear sunscreen.
You probably don’t see it every day, but, if you are running a blog or forum, or any web application running on a database, you might have implemented MySQL on your server. I had heard about Sun and Oracle, but I hadn’t heard about what it could mean for MySQL:
Even before the Oracle buyout, there were signs of strain within the MySQL community. Not long after Sun acquired MySQL in 2008, key MySQL employees began exiting the company, including CEO Mårten Mickos and cofounder Monty Widenius. Widenius, in particular, was vocally critical of the MySQL development process under Sun’s stewardship, citing rushed release cycles and poor quality control. Another MySQL cofounder, David Axmark, left out of frustration with the bureaucracy and tedium of Sun’s buttoned-down corporate culture.
Funny: I was just thinking a few days ago on how dependent my work has become on other’s software: I use Adobe products exclusively for graphic design (InDesign and Illustrator and Photoshop), Apple products for film and video (Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio Pro), Digidesign’s ProTools for audio, and now Wordpress/MySQL for websites. What happens when one of these major tools stumbles? Let’s look at a case study: Quark XPress.
From 1990 until 2004, I was producing all of my print design using a wonderfully powerful program called Quark XPress. The toll was lean, fast, and tool advantage of Apple and Adobe’s strong support of PostScript — the language that ran every laser printer in the world. And then, the company got cocky. Knowing that they had no competition, Quark took five years to release an update to the program. Their technical support was horrible. It got to the point where I would rather have left graphic design than continue working with their software. So, with a bit of research and some soul-searching, I dropped Quark XPress for Adobe’s InDesign. Within a few months, I was producing all print projects on InDesign, and loving it. The migration costs were mostly calculated in time spent learning new software, and my clients saw a seamless workflow transition from my office.
All that to say: technology moves quickly. If MySQL transforms into something else, or morphs into something that needs more support, we will be ready. It’s easy to forget some software program that’s in the background, but all of these programs are the lifeblood of what we do at Hearken Creative. So we will keep on top of all developments, and make the necessary transitions to whatever is the most recent, workable software solution.
Malcolm Gladwell, of Tipping Point and Blink fame (and, most recently, Outliers), wrote a piece recently for the New Yorker last week about how the little guy can beat out the monolithic big competitor. Put simply, “effort can trump ability” — not every time, but realiably:
David’s victory over Goliath, in the Biblical account, is held to be an anomaly. It was not. Davids win all the time. The political scientist Ivan Arreguín-Toft recently looked at every war fought in the past two hundred years between strong and weak combatants. The Goliaths, he found, won in 71.5 per cent of the cases. That is a remarkable fact. Arreguín-Toft was analyzing conflicts in which one side was at least ten times as powerful—in terms of armed might and population—as its opponent, and even in those lopsided contests the underdog won almost a third of the time.
What does this have to do with Hearken Creative? Well, I’m at least 1/10 the size of many of my competitors. So the things that I take away from it are
- Choose an unconventional strategy,
- Work harder than anyone else, and
- Surprise with thinking outside of the box. Gladwell says, ”insurgents work harder than Goliath. But their other advantage is that they will do what is ‘socially horrifying’—they will challenge the conventions about how battles are supposed to be fought.”
Good advice. Now I’m going to back to working harder than anyone else…
According to the Pasadena Star News this morning, the Gold Line extension project from Pasadena to Montclair has lost its bid to receive federal stimulus funding. Apparently the people at Metro don’t think it’s high on their priority list.
I only have a few things to say about this. First, I know funds are tight, and there are a lot of mass transit projects that need funding in Southern California. Second, it has taken years for the current Gold Line to reach the capacity that they were expecting/needing to generate expected revenue. But third, when the 210 Freeway extension was completed from San Dimas to Rancho Cucamonga, the entire 210 Freeway took a hit, and now I can’t stand to drive it. There is no longer a “rush hour” — it’s just a 24-hour traffic jam on the 210. So I would take the Gold Line Extension to the Inland Empire in a heartbeat if it was there. I’m just saying.
Come on, guys. Let’s save the planet. And soon.
I always thought that the product tie-ins for Chuck and Heroes were kinda funny (I don’t even remember what companies they were!), but I didn’t know that the whole concept of product placement as a viable advertising vehicle was going to go away. And then this morning, Jeep decided to cut its losses in the wake of Chrysler’s financial situation, and not promote the phenomenal tie-in of the Jeep in the new Terminator movie.
It’s funny. They are in deep financial distress, and really need to keep selling cars in order for a Chapter 11 to work (or else they have no reason to do a reorg). But it’s hard to continue to advertise when there’s no money to spend. How to solve it?
I find some of my clients in a similar position: unable to make more money, but unable to advertise to bring new clients in. It’s a tough economic climate we’re in, and some of the things that we have done to help clients are:
- cut costs of design and production,
- cut costs of printing and other buyouts,
- advise on ways to maximize the return on investment for advertising, and
- create flexible payment plans for our clients.
We hope this helps keep some of our customers coming back for more projects with Hearken Creative, and we hope that your company is weathering this storm well.
This Honda Insight commercial takes both in-camera and post/FX effects, and creates a very organic, dynamic spot that mirrors the ethos of the car.
Eric Treml, a cinematographer from Austria, accomplished this wonderful mini-film. In Studio Daily, Treml talks about film, lenses, and 20+ takes to accomplish what he wanted:
“The big challenge was how detailed each shot needed to be,” he continues. “Lining everything up was painstaking and time-consuming. We were chasing the light and there was only so much we could do considering that we often needed 30 takes. But the finished spot unfolds in a witty and delightful way.”
In a 30-second spot, every shot counts. And this little piece did a nice job of communicating the dynamic, communal, and fun aspects of this car. Nicely done!
I wish I could just copy this whole article, because I think it is so wise to learn and listen to others who have tried and failed. I once read that the definition of an entrepreneur is someone who tries and fails and keeps trying until something works. But here’s a gem of an excerpt:
9. The key to negotiating is having options. The single most useful piece of advice I got was from Bill Trenchard, founder of LiveOps: “Always have options.”
Almost everything you do as a founder/CEO involves negotiation: closing investors, hiring employees, signing partners, paying vendors, even advocating features internally. The best way to persuade your counter-parties is signaling — implicitly or explicitly — that you have viable options (also called BATNAs). Just two can be enough. Being at the mercy of a lone option is a recipe for getting screwed.
I’m going to have to read this whole list several times, and let it sink in for all of the ventures that I am working on, including film/corporate video, graphic design, web design, and audio for music/film/post-production.
Options. I need to be looking for options…always.
SEO by the Sea has a nifty little post about a patent approval Google just received for a data-center that could be located offshore, and maybe even powered by waves, or wind, or solar. Pretty cool, no?
Now bandwidth issues are sure to be the immediate issue that comes up: how to get data to and from an offshore center? But knowing Google they are already working on that. And it’s nice to see that they are thinking way ahead of most companies.
I heard an NPR story this morning on power companies nationwide, and the struggle internally between “simply keeping the lights on” and innovation. They are charged with keeping everything running, but must try and look forward to when their grids will be more distributed and, possibly, less dependent on coal and oil.
Similarly, Google runs a good portion of the internet. What would life be without Google, YouTube, etc., even for one day? So they have to keep the lights on. But if they don’t innovate — on many fronts simultaneously — their prominence in the marketplace will be quickly dwarfed by those who can seize the opportunity.
I wonder what lessons my company can take from these musings on innovation?
Flickr Photos
