If we were having coffee right now…

I’d tell you about John Pointer and the other folks at The Live Music Capital Foundation and the 2 1/2 years that we worked together creating a video production workflow.  We made some awesome videos out of unique live music shows, and did so on a low budget which is always a challenge.  And thanks to Stephen Kinney and The Front Porch staff for the faith they placed in me to help them develop the look for Unplugged on The Front Porch.  I’m also happy to know that…

…I have new relationships with great people in Austin that I’ll continue to work with when possible.  Congratulations to John on his project “Yesterday Was Weird”, a book about the day his dog Benny died.  His crowd funding campaign was fully funded in something like 12 hours.  As I plan my own crowd funding campaign, I’m figuring out how much work is involved in order to do it right.  Stephen and I have been working on laying down some good footage for his non-profit, The Front Porch.  I’m not sure what that project will turn into but I like being there because the subject is one that I’ve been trying to figure out since college and also because it’s cutting edge and challenging.  Also, thanks to Patricia Boyce for hooking me up with an experienced crowd funding consultant to help me plan my first campaign.

I’m doing some crowd building leading up to a crowd funding campaign.  Funding and distributing a film takes marketing.  I thought my Advertising degree would come in handy here but the environment has changed so much, I now realize that I need some advice so I can find out what sources of knowledge are out there.  I thought that my relationships with college professors were in good standing but one of them has not returned my email.  The other has moved on from UT and must have changed her name.  Google turned up nothing and the advertising school office was pretty rude when I asked about contact information.  You know, I am an alumni and this was my professor for two years, including an independent work study class where I started an advertising program at TSTV the student TV station, not to mention, she also invited me to be in her intensive sequence (the media sequence), without even having to test out for it.  If anyone has pull with UT people and can get contact info for Dr. Elizabeth Tucker, that would be very helpful as I move forward with my festival plan for the film.  There are so many advertising tools out there offered by the social media platforms but without the proper knowledge of how they work and how to convert my organizational goals into media goals using these new tools, I could end up throwing good money after bad.  This is a phenomenal opportunity for independent producers that did not exist in the early 2000’s.  In those days, you had to be working for an advertising agency and have professional media planning experience to execute a real media plan.

If we were having coffee right now…

I’d tell you that I want to produce a web series.  My idea is to cover events around town and document the Central Texas experience, then add other themes, see what viewers want and adjust from there.  It would investigate the question “What does weird mean to you”.

Each show would have a different guest and would bounce between coverage of the event and driving around town improvising the conversations.  It’s a low budget production and I have all the equipment but I can’t do it alone.  I’ll need at least one production specialist to help on production day and an editor to help cut the story (this is a real editing job, not just a button pusher).  I expect that the event shoots would be 2 hours max and the car shoots a couple hours with an hour or two of setup/breakdown.  I’d also like to bring in a Producer and a Writer to round out the idea team.  I’m interested in feedback from viewers to so that I can find out if this sounds interesting.  There’s lots of cool stuff going on in Austin to keep the show fresh and interesting.  I’ve already shot footage for a couple episodes and done lots of editing so have a pretty good handle on what’s needed including series elements and some running plot lines to weave in with the fresh content that is unique for each new episode. Comments???  Anyone want to help create a TV show?

That’s it,

Blake