I suppose this blog entry is just me trying to work out where I should go from here: Career and Business.  Don’t know if you’ll get much from it, but it surely is a part of my unfolding story.

I think, basically, where I want to go career wise is as follows:  In marketing you have this range where marketers often fall: on the one side you have graphic designers and on the other you have analytic marketing folks, though this might be overstating the matter, this is at least an understanding I have.

Given the disruptive force of social media, and the nature of the space, I see an evolution coming:  My skill sets are such that I can do design as well as media arts.. everything form interactive, music, video, animation, and whatever.  This plus being obsessed with social media, I would imagine, might position me well for our little disruption’s out come.  So everything I ought to do ought to be focused around this kind of direction.

As I see it, there are probably multiple paths through this wilderness:  One path is to work on my social media presence and actually make it good.  Adjacent to this effort is an effort to use this social media presence as a means of getting the word out / promoting my art and music.  I have that plan, its just a matter of executing.  

Another path through the wilderness is to help other people in the social media space with similar activities.  Can I help bloggers and podcaster’s think about there strategy?  Perhaps I could help them with a little design work, or little of this that or the other thing:  The advantage of this path is that it involves networking and developing good relationships with other people in this space.  Networking with people who have a social media presence, and helping them to be successful, is probably a bitch’n way to help me get where I need to go…  

Another things is, if you have a promotional campaign you’re working on.. having these kinds of relationships are going to help..  If an employer is looking for someone to fill the sort of job I’m targeting, a part of that job will be influencer outreach, which involves developing relationships with influencers in this space.. and having gone on the project of helping people in the space, I will both already have some of those relationships, and I’ll be better prepared for the influencer out reach.  The final advantage of such a course is it’s just good karma.

The next big question is, given my financial situation, how much time do I have before I NEED to have a job?  This isn’t entirely clear to me at this point.. but depending on how much or little I invest in my studio, I ought to have a good deal of time before disaster strikes…  And with any luck I ought to be able to get some work prior to such disaster..  so as to extend the runway a little bit.

So… what might I look to put in my studio moving forward? Where might I like to go?

My preference is to, in all things, develop strategies that work on the cheap.  It’s all about getting the most bang for your buck..  Plus I’m very interested in a guerrilla approach to all this.  And after all, this would be an approach most applicable to other people trying to use social media for there strategy.. which is to say independent artists / content creators of all stripes, and general social media folks.

All that said, I do want to be a step apart..  I’m all for embracing a Do It Your Self aesthetic, but I also want to be a pro in all these areas.  So it’s a question of specializing in how to get pro results on the cheap.

I’m still a little skittish about spending a lot of money, but lets look at a possible budget.  This will be a rough drafted version, a kind of brain storming effort where the results are a lot more then you’d like to spend, so I imagine I should pull back from this a bit but.

I’m thinking lighting rig for video, along with microphones, something for chroma key.. including some software.. and a camera thats good for that.  Maybe a DSLR to.

Latter that night:

I think the best thing to do is just play with these ideas and let them roll over in my head.  The budget stuff that is.  Other then the computer, and to get some sound stuff going on it, there’s not really that much that’s real pressing to get on top of at this point.

A Project Already In the Making: 

Several years ago I bought a Mini DV camcorder.  It was one of the first to cost less then $700.   I’m not totally sure when this was exactly, but at the time I had a computer to do a little video work on.  Trouble was that I never really had enough disk space to really work, and never the money for the drives, not to mention that hard drives were a lot more expensive in those days.

The plan was to take the camera around with me and shoot stuff.. shoot my life.  Shoot whatever…  and then eventually turn it into something.  I now have a library of video shot over several years.  The project is.. to turn that into something.

Beyond the new computer, what I need to do is invest in some drives.

Here’s the basic plan for the project:  Go through tapes and digitize stuff.  I even have tapes going all the way back to college.. raw footage shot for who knows what end or purpose.  The plan would be to go through this old tape and start editing stuff into stuff.  Mainly just little sequences.

These sequences get exported and scored.  Or.. brought into the DAW and played with.

What I want is a process that allows me to play with stuff over time.  A process where you’re basically mining the old footage.  Trying to create strong sequences.  But the work it’s self… it could be about sound, it could be about what’s going on in the video, it could be about anything. 

Next day sometime:

As I let my ideas roll around my head I start to think my way through to possible ways to get what I want for less.

One idea I have is called “the punk rock approach.”  By punk rock I mean you’re not really doing things “the right way.”  My gut instinct, on a certain level, is instead of buying an expensive lighting rig, expensive camera, chorma screen system.. is to just go ahead and get an uber cheap camera.  The trouble, of course, is you can’t do good keying on the uber cheap camera.  This having something to do with technical issues surround how camcorders work.  All this said, After Effects, which is probably going into my tool kit anyway, has animated masking tools that might allow me to compensate for not being able to do proper keys.  

How good is this compensation?  This is a question to be explored, but there’s no reason why I can’t take the time to explore prior to making a larger investment.

The trick to getting good results with bad cameras is generally “good lighting.”  Indeed, lighting is a huge part of how you go about getting good production values, and how you develop an aesthetic.  In the biz we call it “painting with light.”

There is arguably a hell of a lot that goes into a “cinematic conception:”  Where you put your camera, how you light the scene, all this sorta thing.  This is an area I should jump into, as far as I can, on as low a budget as is possible.

A feeling I have is.. you create a home studio / portable rig system.. In my case on the cheap..  Something that’s enough to get you starting to explore this stuff.  In the social media context you don’t really need a convention idea of production values in the same way you do for TV and Film.  As a general rule of thumb, one can get away with doing this stuff on the cheap.  Then, if you get a client, and that client has a budget, you can rent the more expensive gear for as long as it takes to do the shooting.  At this point you are in a better position to take advantage of what that sort of route has to offer, plus you’re saving money.

Ok, this is probable enough for now.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 20th, 2008 at 10:21 pm and is filed under Career, Media / Arts Business, Media Arts, film making, podcasting, social media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.