Howz abouts another crazed entry? Sure, why not? I hear this first paragraph is very important.. you gotz to makez it keyword rich.. but is that how you wantz to start off your blog entry? With some keyword rich action? What is this, a newspaper; where we gotta give you an overview of whatever it is I’m going to post about in the first paragraph.. and then kinda go into it a little here, a little there.. circling around.. till I’m finally allowed to deep dive? Is that how we are to do it? How it’s supposed to work? Well I mean.. whatz ifz I’z wants to do something else.. I mean.. half the time I start a post and I don’t know what the hell it is I’m going to write about it.. till I getz to it. So who knows whatz the hellz this one’s going to be about? More social media bitching perhaps?
I don’t know.. I’m in a weird mood thinking about everything… See I’ve been sick in bed for a freaking week.. and it sucks.. cause I walk around wondering what the hell happened to my momentum.. plus my life is at this weird point where we kinda don’t know what’s up.. with various things.. and.. its like the cliff hanger sustains.. so we can’t quite acclimate to to whatever the actuality turns out to be.. and we got a lot of this kinda thing to start working out.
But then I fell into this odd way of thinking… that basically.. its kinda all in my mind anyway.. or I mean.. a certain amount of it is. Or.. see it’s like.. what’s there to be anxious about, really? I’m not saying there’s not a lot.. or that there’s not a lot on my plate, and life isn’t overwhelming in reality.. and that I’m still feeling like I’m failing to live up to it all.. I’m not debating that part of it.. more the big picture anxiety over living through this and getting to some better reality.. All the feeling of.. like that will never happen… and the wondering how much of my life’s efforts might be in vane, or any of that.
So here’s a little tip from you’re uncle Matt.. when you’re in that there valley of darkness.. this is not the time to assess such things! In the dark.. so much is in shadow.. and.. what you see in the shadow.. in all the question marks… tends to be just a projection of your mood.. and if your mood is dark.. well.. there you go. And with this comes the question of.. just what is momentum..
A couple latter:
Seems like I’m circling around a thought worthy of examination.. which is like.. about the baggage we cary with us through our life.. its effects on pathology, and the unfolding of our lives.. This feeling like.. if we could just break through it.. but somehow breaking through seems.. beyond what we are capable of.. and you wonder if you’re like some elephant that was taught he was caged.. by a giant chain around his leg.. and now it’s just a string.. but we still feel the cage.
I have found.. I absolutely can walk outside my own cage. I have.. in various ways.. and yet it is still there.. and yet, is it?
One of the things I was thinking about.. oh a month or back or so.. was the importance of interacting with lots of people.. for the sake of my sanity.. And in social media.. I discovered this by going to a bunch of tweet ups.. I have lots of social media friends.. friends I enjoy hanging out with.. having a beer with.. etc.. But now it’s looking like I might not be able to make so many tweet ups.. meet ups.. or whatever.
The thing about hanging out with lots of different groups of people.. having lots of different types of friends is.. the way we kind of define our selves socially.. that is how our identity in part comes from this social interaction.. and Well this might sound like crazy talk.. it’s part of a theory I developed under the influence of psychedelics.. that as a part of social cohesion.. there is a kind of center point that happens when you interact with one or more person.. that.. in a certain way.. could be thought of as a kind of modified version of Freud’s super ego.. whatever it is that brings us together.. or whatever it is that we have in the way of shared values.. because like our value system.. and the basis of social hierarchy.. sorta..
For men, of course, pecking order is very important.. and the vibe you have about your place in the universe.. and all this.. Now.. the deal about the value of lots of people.. means you have lots of little places where different things are valued.. different parts of your being.. So.. your view of your self.. if not super good.. could have something to do with the folks you are hanging out with.. the world you’re in…
This is not to cast aspersions to the folks I regularly hang with.. but that my regular experience is not… ideal in terms of my whole self.. that its unbalanced..
So in this sense.. the cage within.. and is it really a cage at all.. how much of this feeling is a part of a sense of identity.. based on the world I’m experiencing myself through? Is what I’m asking…
We are a complex web of interrelated wills.. a will echo system if you will.. that has some sorta interrelationship with our needs as human beings.. and how well or poorly these things are being met. To attack the problem in a kinda Maslow hierarchy sorta way.. it can be hard to reach higher stages of spiritual enlightenment when there’s some question of if you’ll even be able to eat tonight.. But I think there’s lots of hierarchy’s in us.. not just Maslow’s.. surrounding all sorts of things.. so that there are certain things we can’t achieve until this other set of things is taken care of.. and this is the sorta thing that can create creative blocks.. or just whatever.. and sometimes you just have to kinda put you’re ear to the unconscious to find your way to the next place you need to be at.
So in this way it’s all quite hard to tell what’s really up inwardly.. what’s creating the cage phenomenon of the mind sorta feeling..
A couple latter:
I think I mentioned somewhere.. this association I’m having between sickness and and neurosis.. neurosis being a substitution.. substituting illegitimate suffering for legitimate suffering.. not that being sick isn’t a legitimate thing.. but.. it’s at least neurosis like in that you aren’t doing anything about whatever the thing is.. that you should be doing something about.. and the like between excuse and reason can be fuzzy..
Speaking of which.. I’d finish this thought.. but I have things to attend to.
As I write this I’m.. super sick, in bed.. nice to have the laptop here with me, wish the internet connection was better… feeling slightly out of my mind.. as a result of it…
Any who… I’m thinking about social media engagement.. It’s sorta like a stupid obvious kind of thing… but.. that if I were to get super serious about it.. this could be a key piece in getting me where I need to go.
What is this “social media” you speak of?
I assume that most of my readers aren’t social media people.. so it might be worth explaining a little bit about this…
Basically.. social media, as we know it today.. is mostly about online communications.. perhaps focused around twitter, blogging, podcasting.. this sorta thing.. throw in your face books and your myspaces.. youtube’s, and linked in and.. seesmic and.. many other things.
All of these things are like communications channels.. ok, so why is communications important?
Err.. it occurs to me that I’ll never finish this post if I keep on this trajectory… But communications, as any good marriage counselor will tell you, is an important element in managing relationships.. put it that way. Business, as it turns out, is all about relationships.. relationship with you peers, relationships with your customers, employers, clients, coworkers.. etc.
So engagement in social media is all about these relationships.. and so obviously enough.. it’s powerful along multiple trajectories..
Basically.. for me.. at this moment.. the idea that I should engage more.. means commenting on people’s blogs, and spending time on twitter. It’s about engaging in the conversations people are having.. and hopefully adding to those conversations.
Tales of a miscellaneous niche
Now.. off in the land of social media.. and this might not be a totally fair statement.. I think people tend to get focused on there niche’s. You start a blog on subject X, and you engage with other bloggers who are into subject X. I mean this is the way its done.. But what I think is key for who I am, and where I come from.. is to engage along multiple vectors.
I am a “follow you’re passions fundamentalist.” I believe.. we all, to one extent or another, have various interests.. I believe in pursuing all these interests.. That the path to you’re true potential lys in the development of a “whole self,” that the goal ought to be to develop all these interests to a relatively mature and sophisticated form.. in proportion to your level of interest.
Also, I believe that innovation is a synthesis of formally disparate fields of knowledge.. another words.. the more your knowledge and skills are diversified.. the more capable you are of innovation…
This is not entirely an “anti specialization” idea.. The idea is that what is you’re area of specialization is something that you define by you’re passions.. That it is a synthesis of what would traditionally be considered disparate fields..
For me.. much of the blog o sphere.. and the world of podcasts.. its a way to explore my interests.. learn from people who are really smart in the various areas I’m interested in… So I think it makes sense for me to engage along the lines of those interests…
Matt’s Interests
Just for the record, what is Matt Interested in?
Philosophy
Psychology
Politics
Diplomacy
Business Management
Marketing
Public Relations
Technology
Music Composition
Music Performance
Music Production
Sound Synthesis
Music
Film
Film making
Animation
3D graphics
Special Effects
Directing
Performance Art
Painting
Graphic Design
Web Design
Web Strategy
Social Media Strategy
Photography
History
The Arts
Human Sexuality
Social Sciences
Poetry
Religion
Theology
Cultural Studies
Mythology
The Military
Computer Graphics
Human Potentiality
Entrepreneurship
Well you get the idea, right? I mean the list goes on from there..
Miscellaneous Niche Strategery
So, roughly speaking, I describe my self as a “Media Artist:” I work with different medias.. different mediums.. from sound to video to animation to painting to whatever, right? At the moment I seem most focused on the sound part of that.. lets go make an album… etc. But clearly I see myself in broa —
A couple days latter:
Still feeling super sick, feeling like i should just post, cause I don’t have the energy to finish up this train of thought.. lol, and I don’t know where that last sentence was going!
I think this is kind of an ongoing theme for this blog anyway.. so.. yeah.. ok, posting..
Since I got the new MacBook I’ve been obsessed with a new video blogging project. This seems to have come out of the blue.. not that I hadn’t been thinking about video a good deal prior.. but jumping into this like this.. The level of commitment I’m now feeling for it.. the excitement and passion I’m feeling for it.. The feeling of just being possessed by it… that is very surprising to me.
It’s as if God spoke to me and said “Matt, you must start video blogging, you must become a video blogger.” “Well God, that’s a little random, don’t you think?” Of course the trouble with God is.. there’s really no one to turn for for second opinions.. well I suppose there’s always Satan but…
It comes to me like a revelation.. like one day you wake up and you realize “this is what I’m supposed to do,” and though you had thought about it prior.. never did it command you.. . not like this.
What’s brought Matt to this new video blogging project?
Ok, brace you’re self.. this could get long.
Somehow I always wanted to be a film maker.. since I was little kid… So it should be no surprise that I took some video and film making classes in college.. though.. the equipment at Mass Art, the only state art school in the US, was not capable of.. well I couldn’t do what I wanted to do with it.. so I never really got too into video or film making while there… really only dreamed about it.. though I did take a few film criticism type classes to kinda.. prepare I guess…
But I can remember hanging out in the dorms.. getting high with some folks.. and telling them how in a few years anyone can own a video camera, the tools to edit it, and how we’d be distributing it via the internet.. imagining that world of possibilities.. and so.. I sorta went in that direction.. with my music, learning web design skills.. etc.
Somehow.. somewhere in there.. perhaps it was a result of my first “real job” as an interactive designer.. I was able to afford a video camera.. I also bought Premier and After Effects. I think I must have been on a G3 that could barely handle it.. it didn’t have a DVD burner, and the hard drive was tiny… so in practice I didn’t do much video.. just played around a bit.. shot video.
I started creating a kind of video library of.. just raw footage.. some of it dating back to the collage years.. with the idea that I’d eventually do something with it.
Sometime latter.. still on that old G4.. I started dating this girl whom.. I fondly refer to as Sue of Zen. Sue was hard of hearing.. needed subtitles to watch tv or films. When she was thinking about getting HBO I saw my opportunity.. ”No, you should get Net Flicks I said… I was thinking “if she needs subtitles to watch films.. she probably will be fine with foreign films.” So.. I conned her into letting me pick the films.. all the great film makers of film history.. for the year or so that we were involved.. I’d see up to 8 films a week.
The effect of Sue of Zen and I watching so many films was.. I became a horrible film snob.. I mean when you watch that many films.. that many of the greatest films ever made.. it’s hard to tolerate the crap! I haven’t watched films like that since.. and I’ve grown a little more forgiving of Hollywood..
Well there was one other effect.. I became a lot more sophisticated about film.
When it came time to buy my Mac Pro.. I was thinking Video Making when I bought it. 8 Cores, a better then standard graphics card, 1.7 or something or other terabytes of space.. go for the 2 24″ HD screens.. etc.. I was even budgeting in professional video cameras and lighting rigs.. .
But the thing was.. I wasn’t really jumping in head first into the video production stuff.. Hell, I wasn’t doing much of anything.. well, that might be over stating it.
A few latter:
Anyway.. so a long story, right? I can’t really get into everything about what I’m up to.. so lets go into what I’m up to at the moment..
Adventures in Apple’s Motion 3D
Motion is a motion graphics program.. that’s sorta 2.5D-ish, that’s a part of Final Cut Studio. Motion graphics is basically animation with tittle graphics for film and TV.. My approach is basically painting plus the dimension of time…
So I don’t know Apple’s Motion.. And Apple hasn’t done a real good job with thinking through the learning process… as the manuel is rather sucky. They have a few training videos, but they don’t really get you up to speed.. they just kinda give you a few things.. and from there you just kind of fumble around.
For the last couple days now.. I’ve been doing these little motion graphics projects.. which are perhaps more about learning the software then it is about making great work.. I’m aiming for great work, but who knows if I’ll actually get there.
Still.. I can see the potential…
A couple days latter (I think):
I’m slowly getting to the point that I kind of understand what’s going on in Motion.. It’s not really that hard to pick up.. though there’s a depth to it that still seems a little out of reach, maybe? Or maybe there’s just a lot of things I figure I ought to be able to do, that it should be able to do.. but I can’t figure out how to do it or even if you can do it.. but then I’m new to the case….I’ve rendered out a number of motion animations.. and.. I have mixed feelings on them.. of course there not exactly meant to stand on there own.. In any event, that I now feel like I’m getting a feel for the program.. my expectations for what I ought to be able to achieve.. is now to start really going up.My latest sets of projects have been to take stuff that I’ve designed in photoshop.. or created in photoshop. In Photoshop these images are constructed with lots of layers.. In motion I take the images of the different layers, and set them up in 3D space.. so the layers now have spatial relationships between them.. and I’ve got a few lights going.. and I’m goofing around with the cameras.. and everything is sorta moving around a little..This really does feel like painting plus the dimension of time… Painting in motion, if you will. Though using this kind of language to talk about it seems to overstate it a little.What I’m doing is very much in keeping with the kinds of stuff I was doing with After Effects those few years back. The After Effects CS4 upgrade is now on my “to get list”.. and I may likely get it rather shortly.. assuming that I continue my video commitment..
Motion Graphics / Animation Goals
My plan of attack, technology wise, is to start with Motion.. of course. Eventually I’ll jump into After Effects… of course.. And then, assuming I can get Cinema 4D to run on this computer, well.. there’s that. The first objective, I guess, is to obtain some serious competency with Motion.. and then into After Effects. Cinema 4D I expect to be a giant learning project, and for that.. the goal is simply to get to a point where I’m able to start creating stuff to integrate into this sort of motion graphics / animation pipeline.. as a pose to going all out into 3D animation. What I mean is.. I get the ball rolling with this stuff.. and then just add pieces to it.. a process by which I hope to develop competency with the other stuff.. but real competency with that stuff.. only needs to be at a level determined by this stuff.. if that all makes sense.
Conclusions
I don’t know what will come of all this stuff, but it’s a fun adventure to go on.. and I have laid down the ground work in many ways.. to hopefully do something great.. We’ll see what happens………..
I wanted to give an update on the podcasting adventures.. just in case anyone’s interested.
I have 2 podcasts… which I update pretty infrequently these days..
The first one to note is the Asymmetric Biz Cult Podcast… For this one I team up with Mark Hanser, and Evan Pew.. where we talk about “the new asymmetric business of culture creation.” Umm.. this is a somewhat complex subject.. but basically it’s about how modern technology is changing business, and what this means for artists.. or at least that’s sorta what it aims to be. Beyond this I have my own personal take on convergence.. a kind of complex evolving philosophy.. which I regard as having some value.. I think in someways I have a very unique take on what’s going on in these departments.. and if I can ever get the podcast so that its “actually good,” it may just become a must listen.
I think the Asymmetric Biz Cult podcast has faded for a few reasons.. One of which is just the events in our lives.. my mom died, Evan had a baby, and Marks life has grown its own complications. The other reason, I think, is because I’ve been obsessed with this area for a few years now.. and Mark and Evan are sorta new to this stuff to such an extent that.. that I don’t know if they’ve even known quite how they could contribute..
The Matt Searles podcast is another matter. Again, loosing my mom has turned my life upside down in a lot of ways.. and I’m still just sorta struggling to maintain sanity in the wake of it…
My mom’s passing, and the sorta of shifting realities that go along with that.. have really put me in a position where, at least for a little while, I can focus on what I think I need to be focusing on.. in a way I haven’t been able to do for years.. This includes upgrading my studio.. and putting together a tool set that is appropriate for what it is I see myself as all about.
There’s been some real questions for me.. as to what the hell this blog, and the podcast, ought to be about. I think if you want to be successful, and of course it depends on your definition of success, you can’t think of your blog or podcast as being about you.. it’s about your readers / listeners / community. Of course I’m not at a stage where I have an active community.. so its hard to know what a community would want.. so if you have any wants.. do communicate them to me!
But the point is, I feel like I’m a little to focused on me. I suppose I’m an artist, and my art is what I tend to spend my time thinking about.. and I’m basically just blogging about whatever might be on my mind on any given day.. which, you know, is fine.. but…
Next day sometime:
Well I guess my point is that I want to create a blog / podcast / whatever.. that has value. It’s an odd sorta thing though.. and maybe I’m just speaking from the vantage point of my own anxieties.. It’s almost as if there were certain “strategic considerations” that I’m.. aquatinted with to one level or another.. that have to do with how you gain some success in social media.. but… you know, you gotta be you.. and who I am is in someways antithetical to the strategic stuff..
I suppose, in someways, this is the point I mean to get to, and even why I’m here.. in this space. It’s this feeling that we need to harmonize our own internal nature with the external demands of life.. That this is important for our mental health.. and social media might be a way of going about this.. and certainly from the point of view of the artist and the arts.. what a true artist does.. you don’t start from questions of commercial viability.
Here’s the way I would describe it.. and it is perhaps somewhat radical, at least in some ways: You can literally go in any direction you like.. and if you can bring that direction to a certain state of evolution.. of maturation.. you’ll eventually get some place of value.. some place of interest.
A mass media market place has different views on this problem.. and tends to dictate, to one degree or another, what directions could be considered commercially viable, and what directions might not. I tend to believe that if you have something that’s “good art,” wether it’s commercially viable or not has more to do with how we approach the markets then it does the art its self. This might not be 100% realistic, but it’s an idea with some merit. The merit is made more true by the shifting economic realities brought about by our current technological disruptions… This is a shift who’s implications are still only faintly understood today.
This blog, I suppose, is like a journal of an artist trying to explore these new realities.. or at least these ideas of new realities.. as is the podcast. It’s the chronicles of his experience.. often in a very introspective sorta way. That onto its self is interesting, it seems to me… and gives this blog, and the podcast, some value.
Further, I think the challenges I face are not challenges unique to myself. I suppose if I’m looking to nurture a community around this blog.. around these efforts.. what would likely bring us together is the commonality of the challenges we face.
At one in the same time we have both the common and the individual: I’m at this exciting, and somewhat scary, moment.. where I have all this new technology to try and learn.. DP, Kore, Komplete, Adobe CS3, Final Cut Studio, Cinema 4D, and the list goes on… and on and on. My guess is.. when I talk about these technologies.. I’m not sure to what degree we hold these in common..
Well I mean I want to write in such a way that a general reader can follow me, even into the most technically challenging of subject matters.. I mean if you want to follow me in there. Sure, it’ll probably be challenging in that you’ll have to learn a good deal in order to follow me so far in there..
See, I read the collected works of Freud and Jung when I was in high school.. And it was wonderful as, in a certain way, I felt like I got to hang out with those guys.. and wrestle with there challenges. I loved that experience.. and I’d love to give you that experience.. to sorta bring you to the challenges I’m facing.. wether or not you’re an artist or not.. or wherever you might be coming from.. I mean if this is something you might find interesting.
The last bit I want to talk about is the technical challenges.. I have a Zoom H4 that I usually use for podcasting.. its a portable recorder.. with which you can record right onto these SD cards.. trouble is, and I don’t know why, I’m not able to get the files of the Zoom and into my Computer.. so I’ve recorded stuff for the podcast that way, and it hasn’t wanted to work.
Secondly.. I seem to be having some trouble with Digital Performer.. which doesn’t want to export my audio… I finished another podcast episode last night.. but DP doesn’t seem to want to let it out..
I’m not doing real good on my effort to write short blog entries today.. I’ve written parts of two really long ones.. for some reason these never seem to want to get published.. oh the pain and suffering of it all!
As we speak, I’m preparing food.. just chicken, I’m starving..
Today I watched some internet TV which has me thinking a little differently about what I’m doing. I’m thinking I might want to think more seriously about Qik. Qik is a website that allows you to stream video live, via a cell phone, out to the internet, where anyone could watch. Of course you need a special sort of Nokia smart phone sort of cell phone, and a special sorta internet connection.. to make it happen… but the more I think about it, the more I find myself thinking “wow, this could be cool.”
The question, of course, is how much it costs. You need a phone.. they seem to be more then $500… you need an unlimited data plan.. I have no idea how much these are going for.. Apple’s is what, $60 a month for the basic plan? So basically, I have to look at my budget and fiscal situation, and try and figure out just what my priorities ought be..
So here’s sorta what I’m thinking: Pseudo Life Casting. What I mean is that it’s a means by which you can bring an audience into your world…….
I haven’t quite figured this all out yet.. But the way I see it is.. I’m creating a story.. between the blogs and podcasts and media work. There’s what we might consider “a total story” and then there’s “particular narrative threads.” This is perhaps terrible terminology, but bare with me.. Any particular consumer of my story may only be interested in particular threads.. For instance.. perhaps you’re interested in music production.. so only the blog entries in the music production subject of this blog are of interest to you.. you really don’t care what my cat had for lunch! But then there are other people.. perhaps friends, who might actually be interested in what my cat had for lunch… or at least they are interested in pretending to be interested…
So.. can you create a granularity… where someone can tune into a grain.. and only get that grain’s content.. and not have to suffer the rest of it? I doubt it.. or.. I’m sure there’s ways of achieving this.. but I don’t think the technological ecosystem of the moment is capable of doing this out of the box, put it that way.
It might make sense to not go a qik route.. as I think of it. What is the meaning of Live? How important is live content? As I ask this question multiple thoughts come to me. For one thing… Live can mean user interactivity.. where you can comment on the live feed, and the person in the video can in someway react to what your saying..
Also.. imagine Live as one part of a larger whole. Lets say you’re life is the narrative. You have twitter, which is pretty close to real time.. lets call them grains of thought. You have a blog which is.. well ideally I’d like to think of it as a daily thing.. A podcast, which ideally is probably a weekly thing.. In someways, doesn’t it sorta seem like.. the closer to real time you go, the closer to the person you go?
I’m almost thinking.. forget about the audience.. in terms of thinking what might be interesting. I mean who knows, right? Lets just do our thing and see if anyone tunes into it.. Imagine you’re just constantly creating content.. almost like breathing. Would the constant flow of content, almost on it’s own, generate an audience? Sorta like.. I could type out anything here… and Google, and other search engines.. will see this text, and it’ll show up in searches.. so that it probably doesn’t even matter what I say.. if I just keep talking, an audience will develop.
Well no, not really.. who wants to read crap, right? Sure, you’ll see it, you’ll read a couple lines.. and then you’ll go “wow, this is stupid” and run away… so sure.. I can get zillions of people to take that first look, maybe.. just as an effect of creating lots of content.. but that’s not really what we want to do.. what we really want to do is to have folks who actively follow us.
I suppose we could look at these followers in terms of various segments.. There are people who might know who you are and casually follow you.. say if you connect with someone in a particular context.. they might be curious enough to sorta visit your stream… That person is a consumer.. but you know.. not a big consumer.. Then you have someone who’s.. lets say a fan.. or better yet, we are talking about a hard core fan! The hard core fan, depending on how hard the core is.. that person is likely to consume a lot more content then the person who’s only occasionally bumping into things.
Ok.. so look at that.. Isn’t that interesting! What I mean is… the hard core and the casual consumer want different things. The way I would look at it is like this.. the casual consumer hears your music on the radio, the hard core consumer buys your CD. When you only know a band by there TV and Radio appearances.. that you happen into by chance.. versus someone who actively seeks this band out.. you have qualitatively different experiences.. When communicating with the casual consumer… you speak in sound bites, when speaking to the hard core fellow, you speak in paragraphs.
I guess my point is.. you can see why a social media strategy would want both.. and perhaps the full spectrum in between.
In marketing, the subject of “conversion” is not insignificant.. of how to convert someone from a casual consumer, lets say, and a hard core consumer.. or even from a non consumer to a hard core consumer.
I’ve been thinking a bit about this blog, this site, projects, strategy, and blah blah blah… about where thing’s be at, and where I should like to take them… Seems worthy of a little blogging, don’t cha think?
You know, social media.. a big part of it is “you should be your self:” Success in personal branding has something to do with authenticity. Mitch Joel talks about “the snow flake theory” in relationship to personal branding.. that we are all snow flakes, each individual, and thus we differentiate our selves via nature, as a pose to via consciouses will.. Ok, maybe Mitch doesn’t use anything like those words, but if he had my background he’d say it like that!
Yeah… so like.. I’ve been thinking about this sorta thing and thinking.. hmm.. sometimes I go into this super duper intellectual mode.. which is something I dig, to be sure.. but folks who have a different sort of insanity from my own… I think that kinda talk can produce certain digestive challenges. And it occurs to me, I have a whole lot of what we call in the biz “personality.” And that personality ain’t coming through so much… Or maybe it’s not that… maybe it’s just like.. I want to speak more freely.. or I want to do something.. I’m not even sure what it is.. It’s just that I feel it in my bones, do you know what I mean?
Anyway, I figure I need to blog more.. I’m thinking I’d like to have more blog entries.. probably shorter.. just like snippets of thoughts… Just little things. I also think there are certain “blog strategery” reasons for doing this..
I suppose a lot of what I’ve been doing with this blog is.. just getting my feet wet a bit. I mean I haven’t even been keeping this blog for that long.. since sometime around Boston Podcamp 2… so in so many ways I still feel the need to find my voice…
I mean.. how much of this should just be my personal voice? “And this is what I had for lunch today.” Can what a person had for lunch today be interesting? I tend to believe anything “could” be interesting.. depending where the beholder is coming from.. and I’m fascinated by consciousness.. as well as streams there of.. and I don’t mean to go so far as to talk about life casting.. but… there’s something in there of value to me.
A few latter:
So would you like to hear some thoughts about new things on the drawing boards? I’m thinking about creating some new podcasts… The master podcast feed, for these, which would include them all, you can subscribe through iTunes by clicking here. Right now that’s a somewhat faded podcast.. But one idea I had was to have several things you subscribe to.. that would all be sorta “they come out when they come out,” which is to say producing regular content wouldn’t be on the agenda but… One idea is to show works in progress.. as we speak I’m working on some new Reason content, and I’d love to be able to take you into the studio with me.. lets check this out.. Where I’d share these projects I’m working on.. and sorta talk about what they are all about..
A whole lot latter:
In keeping with the notion of posting more often, and making them short, how about I post this now?
I’ve expressed some uncertainty about this blog, and then last night I read some of the entries, found it to be much better then I thought it to be: it would seem my powers of self criticism are limited.
A little while ago I read a blog entry, as a result of a tweet link from Chip Griffin, on the subject of writing and public relations. The gist of it was on the importance of writing simply, the complexity of the task, and how to do it.
I feel as though I’m lucky if I can write at all. Lots of people tell me, wether its a blog or podcast of mine, that I’m talking over there heads. This would seem to be a bad sign. This is particularly true if I’m viewing blogging and podcasting as communications tools.
On the other hand, when we are talking about blogging and podcasting, there is the importance of speaking in your own voice. (This would be a slightly different challenge then if we are writing a press releases.) My voice is, I think we can all agree, a rather intellectual voice. Still, I don’t want to be unaccessible.
All this is made a little more challenging if we are talking about a kind of developmental stage, where in experimentation is key. Experimentation is something you don’t usually manage from a user centric perspective. The experimentation, in my case, is at least partly about finding my voice. There’s also self exploration: How do you build a personal brand when your notion of who you are is in flux?
In many ways what I think I’m trying to do is to create something, and then see what it is. For the thing I’m creating, I have no idea who the audience is. The process is more one where you listen to your inner voice, and see where that takes you. The voice is leading you in the direction of becoming, the process is one of exploring an inward mystery. So, this would all seem to bring certain challenges to the communications process.
Then a few days back, I was listening to some of my older podcast episodes, and tweeted on them. I don’t remember what episode it was, but essential the sound was awesome and my talking was terrible. My friend Greg PC, who also happens to be in public relations, commented on my tweet. His comment was something to the effect of “scripts can be a good thing, though sometimes unnatural.” I only picked up on his comment, do to Google Alerts, today. I suppose here’s my response:
Listening to some of my podcasts, there’s clearly problems, and something needs to be done if I’m to take my podcast projects seriously. I’ll give you my basic thinking, and process, and then go from there:
Process
What I’m trying to do is “capture the magic.” If there’s no magic to be captured, as is frankly the case in some of my episodes, this process wont work so well. The idea is, I have a portable recorder that I take with me most everywhere, and if I have a thought, I record it. The recordings then reside on a hard drive. When it comes time to put together an episode, I go through the recordings, and do a kind of production where in those recordings are regarded as elements of the episode. The elements are bought in, along with music, and whatever else.. and a certain amount of creative mixing, editing, and general production, happens.
This kind of a production is a lot more labor intensive then that of most podcasts. In many ways, I would regard it as a kind of exploratory process: Interesting things can happen in various places: #1 The actual recording, #2 The editorial process of selecting clips from the recordings, #3 The other sonic elements that are selected to be a part of the episode, #4 musical elements that are custom composed / produced for that episode, and #5: the way all of these elements are mixed together.
Theoretically, you could have a recording that was kind of bad, lets say in terms of content, and via the rest of the process, it could be turned into something good. So, the exploration comes in how all of these parts of the process interplay: It’s really about both the parts and the ecology.
Aesthetics
Now there’s the matter of my aesthetic thinking. For better or worse, I have some strange ideas. I’m interested in a recording aesthetic that basically makes the microphone a kind of stand in for Freud, with the idea that we can pear into the soul of whomever is talking. (This is a complex matter I deal with else where)
Another part of this aesthetic thinking, borrowed from Andre Bazin (an important film critic in post WWII france), is to preserve the “spacial temporal integrity of the event.” In terms of sound, the idea is that sound production is largely a manipulation of reality, which has large effects on how we interpret what we are hearing. If you listen to a 1940’s Jazz recording, you know those guys are really playing, but in modern music you may be listening to “a good take,” or perhaps what you were listening to has the performances digitally “fixed,” so everyone is playing perfectly on the beat. There is also the fact that the sound you are hearing is not one you’d ever hear in reality, everything has been miced in such a way so as to produce an “ideal sound.”
Deeper in my philosophical thinking, there’s no such thing as an ideal.. or all things are ideals. Ideals have to do with underlying questions, they are ideal resolutions to questions or conflicts, so that an ideal is a part of a relationship, and not an independent thing or idea. So it’s somewhat of a Buddhist idea to go explore what a thing is, and find its inherent perfection.
Without going into it here, this ties into bigger cultural criticism. To get to the point, how music is produced effects how we appreciate the music. This having to do with age old philosophical questions like “how do we know what we know.”
This then becomes a central subject of my art. Wether we are talking Andre Bazin, or microphone as stand in for Freud, we are really talking about a kind of ultra realism. In my work we have, on the one hand, ultra realism, and on the other extreme manipulations.. and so my work explores these interrelationships.
Production Values Problems
The trouble, from the point of view of sound production, is the further something gets away from the microphone “the worse it sounds.” Some of this has to do with distinctions between the way we listen to natural events, versus what the recording and production process does to sound, and how we hear this. This all being a part of psychoacoustics. The result then, of a naturalistic approach to the problem, of having sound sources far away from a microphone so as to preserve a spacial integrity of an event, is that you’re sound quality suffers.
Yet another issue is that I’m interested in capturing both the sound of the people speaking, and the sound of the space the people are speaking in. The latter part greatly complicates how you can manipulate the sounds.
Strategic Considerations
We have a lot of ideas on the table here, and while these ideas are all well and good, we also have the demands of “the market place.” Even if content is free, we are still talking about “economies of attention,” and how media aesthetics plays into people’s consumption patterns. How do we balance the deeper ideas of the work with our strategic considerations?
It seems to me that these are the questions I must explore moving forward. Allow me to give you some examples:
Dynamic compression compresses the dynamic range (variations from loud to soft) of sounds into a smaller range then we were originally at. You can then turn up the volume of your compressed audio in the mix, and it will sound louder then the original. To our mind and ears, louder equals better, a result being that modern music if often over compressed.
You will no doubt notice that dynamic compression manipulates the dynamic range of the original recording, and thus removes us one step from the original event. If reality is what you’re after, then dynamic compression might carry some problems with it.
On the other hand, if a podcast listeners is listening to your podcast while riding a bike through traffic, any sound that is lower then the sound of the traffic will not be heard. So, if you look at your episode, you can ask the following question: “structurally, what must be heard in order for this episode to work?” You could then compress, and pump up those parts, while allowing the other elements to exist in a fuller dynamic range.
Scripts
I have an inner anarchist that’s not much in favor of scripts, and then there’s the problems scripts present to my aesthetic ideas. That said, just as there are many ways to skin your cat, there are many types of scripts:
One type of script is one where you write out, word for word, everything you are going to say. Particularly if you’re a podcaster, the trick here is to write as you speak, so it might all sound natural. The next trick is in how you read and perform that script. The challenge is to both be in the moment, and really feel everything you are saying. (It probably wouldn’t hurt if you committed it to memory to.)
Another type of script involves bullet points: These are the topics we are going to talk about, and we’ll just improvise on each topic. An advantage this has over fully scripting every word is that it’s much easier to be in the moment.
The next type of script, I’d like to tell you about, I call “the avant guard script.” Generally, these scripts are more like “strategies for interesting results,” then they are traditional scripts. I take this idea from people like John Cage, whom composed with chance and indeterminacy.
How about a short 2 part thing on Cage, to help give you a sense of where I’m coming from?
There are two things I should like this video to drive home here: #1 Cage is, one way or another, dealing with many of the same questions, problems, and issues I’m dealing with, and #2: Cage is a very different artist then I am. A third thing you might note, is his untraditional looking scores. A score is, after all, a script.
Besides all of the above types of script, there is also the subject of improvisation. Sure, improvisation is making things up as you go along, but it is also true that improvisation can happen inside a limited set of parameters, which could then allow for certain types of structural ideas to be work out on a compositional or “script” level.
For instance, one approach to acting involves a strict adherence to a script, but free improvisation as to how you deliver that script. This can both be a means to explore the possibilities in that script, and of delivering a performance.
Beyond Scripts
Ok, enough about scripts. Do you remember how I was talking about “trying to capture the magic?” This is a documentary process, which is to say, one where we are documenting the unfolding of life / reality / something or other. My inner anarchist, the same one who doesn’t like scripts, is again making rules against scripts, even if that would seem to be incompatible with a documentary process.
Still, I can tell you how I think some of my most successful episodes were created: Before the episode was made I would mediate on it’s subject. When I went to record the episode, the subject would be fully thoughts out, and I would just take you through my thinking. The episodes were often powerful, simply because my thoughts would take you to a whole new way of thinking about the subject.
I guess where all this leaves me is with one question “where should I go from here?” Hmm.. well before we address this, how about we get to broader subject of communications:
Communications
I don’t have a communications background. I don’t really regard myself as too great a writer, though with the help of a really good editor, there could be some hope for me. If I put my mind to it, I’m sure I could write a decent press release.
This blog is about complex ideas. This is it’s virtue. The virtue is in trying to illuminate subjects in new ways: I provide a take on this that is unique.. It’s a take that is hopefully thought provoking. Even in this entry, where I discuss the various issues of my social media aesthetics, and what not, as backwards as my positions may or may not be, they are hopefully at least interesting to think about.
There is, of course, the question of intended audiences. I don’t think my intention is really to communicate to an 8th grade level, as is the case with so much modern communications. I mean, anyone who’s interested in what I have to say, you’re probably pretty smart / well educated to begin with. If you were not, why would you be interested? And of course, when philosophy takes such a prominent roll in things, I believe there’s got to be some license for my going off the deep end here and there.
Still I do want to try and break down, my more complex ideas, into simple bite sized chunks that anyone can understand. The trouble is, understanding some of my more complex ideas is contingent on understanding lots of other ideas.
For this reason it seems that each entry of mine is full of various puzzle pieces. The puzzle pieces, at least to me, sometimes look to be full of loose ends, or at least unestablished points. These unestablished points are a problem, when they outline positions that are contrary to the readers position, at least in some cases. I’m specifically thinking of times when, from the surface, it could look like this or that part of my thought isn’t well thought out. The way the puzzle piece system works is.. sooner or latter I’ll get into that point, and properly establish it. Of course, while this might be a grand process for artifice building, it’s probably not ideal for communications.
Ok, now to the “where do we go from here” problem:
I think I basically just need to put more energy into my podcasts. It may very well be that my process is too labor and energy intensive, given all the directions my energies seems to be going, in which case there’s a need to economize, which means different strategies.
Latter still:
I’m just now attempting to edit this entry. Dear lord is it long! Too long I think! And how much of it was really self criticism anyway? Ahh, screw it. It’s something.
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.
