in summation

last class, we got the in on the biz. one step closer to the Illuminati(sp?)

here's notes from that day

start studio as LLC - limited liability company. + $7 for an alias

federal id tax number
-go to irs.gov to get it for free

get an accountant

income
- primary
- sub-contracted
- create a product

get business card

vendors


how much does it cost me to wake up
- 50 business weeks x 40 h = 2000 hs of possible work
-minus paperwork, marketing, accounts, meetings


animation salary surveys

cost plus

ask for 33% upfront.

then 33% delivered up first round

final 34% plus costs with finished product


WGA = security for ideas

WGA ≠ copyright

advertise

HAVE FUN

--------------------

thanks for sharing this.

I know that a lot of this information was acquired through trial en error. finding out the hard way as well as formal education. thanks for the attempt to save us the trouble. I'm sure a lot of us will still make the mistakes. but I think this will help us know why it was dumb. hopefully we are all successful. what we offer should be of high value, because not everyone does what we do.

I believe that I am top dollar and this is why

sell yourself. take pride in what you do. you invest too much to not do so. think of all the shit out there. what makes you think you cant excel in that environment.

why bother if you don't intend on doing so. think of your audience as potential fans, clients,business partners. give yourself a good artistic life span. you aren't just a ad, you are a movement.

we learned how to talk about ourselves to others. show them the bennies. but don't come off as a hooker, you aren't cheap!

top dollar!

what's the difference between a hobo and a charity fundraiser.

it's all about presentation. consideration. the authority you present to your audience. your assumed credibility. take your self serious and present yourself as a serious salesman. if a homeless man came to you, in clean clothes, and a more official sign, would you give him money? essentially he will still do what he could have done before, but this time you at least thought of the idea that he might not.

think about your work in itself. the packaging. the actual product. this is where you exercise creative artistic decision making. what are you trying to say and are you saying it as concise as you can. keep things short but sweet and in the end everything will fall into place. no one wants to sit through a novel. especially if they are already engaged in something else.

SEX. BOOBIES AND TIGHT POOPERS.

sex sells. selling to sexes also helps. target the specifics. we went through commercial watching. from commercials about cars, to commercials about food. and they all had angles that targetted the mentalities of the audience. promising sex, youth, individuality, and security.

who knew that a mcdouble could be sold the same was as a corvette.

these days people don't even notice this. everyone wants the fast version. so if you gie them a fast hit, the lines in between don't seem to matter as much. 30 seconds might not seem as much, but try holding off going ot the bathroom for 30 seconds when you feel like there's almsot no change you'll make it. 5 seconds in you start ot concider how you are about to do laundry anyway.

recap 2

the specifics might not be here, but hopefully some digestion will show through these entries.

----

so what is a good way to get someone's attention?

how does the news do it? good ol' fear. make someone feel like this is more than a product. make them feel like it needs to be in their survival kit NOW! I always like that most of the information we learn translates into all sorts of mediums. Sometimes authority can be processed as fear. Dictatorship? I mean, how else can a dictator come into power, he has to convince a few people first. build a following with some skilled men of all types but prefferably the kind that can help you further push your ideaologies. essentially he sells his deas to the world, and somehow people get convinced. and then it becomes too late.

such was the case of the snuggies. we are in this too deep. our dogs are now involved.

when the lack of entries happens.

I'm just gonna try to recap in seperate entries teh different importance I've learned in this class. trying to make up all of the entries would be overwhelming and probably not as informative as it could have been.

----


I can say that I have honestly learned alot from this class. on how to think of my work, how ot think of myself, and how to think of those who think of me and what I gain from taking these steps.

bouncing off of my last post, (which was really full of frustrations), I can start with the imporance of knowing your audience. Who are you throwing this at? why? once that has been established, the importance comes in how you do it. Everyone thinks in a 5th grade level mindset. So delivery is key.

We talked about using safe and neutral words. we also talked about dual coding and the importance of it. its a preview at the bennies of your product. it's the appeal of sunkist honey roasted ham versus best choice ham.

make them believe, ocne you get that, throw whatever you cna at them as long as they take it.

what about behind closed doors

so, listening real time dialogue can give you mass amounts of insight on how to write more naturally for characters, or how to better project concepts to your consumer. What about what people say in "private" or under their breathe. what about facebook or tweeter? with each status update people want the rest of their friends to indirectly know what they feel think and are doing at that moment. whether you wrote a vague comment relating to a certain love interest, or for specific example, expressing your pretencious ideologies to somehow persuade those around you to buy into your minimal efforts to actually creating anything worth deeming art.

Sorry for the side rant, but it further more proves my point, how much does this change how a person is percieved? Just because you don't mention it doen't mean it might not pertain to you. I might make a negative jewish remark ( not that I would with ill driven intentions) but I have no idea who actually might be jewish. I guess for comercials sake you just keep it safe. How do people actually dance around the social taboos out there? It's always funny when you can tell someone notices that they are just diggin themselves a deeper hole.

just cause you call it art doesn't mean its art. and if you are paying all this money to say that, then you are just making yourelf look dumb.

conversation

working at walgreens gives me a nice view of all the crazy people that depend of medications to not kill people. The other day we had someone bring in a fake prescription for 120 caps of oxicodone. What made it interesting is my prior encounters with him when I worked in photo. It's really wierd to see someone be caught in that act. how do "bad" guys really react or feel.

The other day, we had to take someone's plate away at the cafeteria because they didn't pay for food, knowing well we where just about to through it all away anyway. would that make them bad, the dialog was interesting in the sense that I knew this person, enough to feel bad for them. I saw myself in the same shoes because I myself use to sneak into the cafeteria and steal food. but at the same time my job is to make sure she paid. I convinced the guys I work with to jsut let her eat and in the end all was well.

How crazy is crazy really? to what degree have we actually encountered someone in such a horrible place in life, or someone just completely unstable and unaware of the consequences that follow if their actions. We all believe what the media tells us is crazy just so we won't havbe to experience it first hand.

full circle

It's actually really interesting that I'm in Doug's pre-production class this year and taking this class at the same time. The two are starting to take the same structure so that I can learn about structure myself. In Doug's class we are learning how to create a well rounded character. Appearance and mannerisms.

Then in this class we are learning the contructs and certain guidlines to adress when making a story. Boht obviously importnat ot one another and I think developing both is helping me understand the other, granted, I feel more comfortable developing a character, especially one based on assumptions I believe to be my alter ego. But building the story behind him will be like a self reflective process, and maybe that's what gives a story more credability, or atleast more umf.

depth.

Putting together a working story should be complex in structure maybe not in content but definitely in structure. Last class we made our own sequel to the Three Little Pigs, and we where made aware through a quick exercise that gave us first hand experience as two the many technicalities that come up when developing a story. The audience is more than one person, adn thus your story needs to be viewable from multiple perspectives. This is necessary so that through your story, everyone has an opportunity to be lead through the same path with trust and comfort in what brought them into your story in the first place. Something that is obviously desired in a more commercial setting but is what makes a good film as well.

Even if the story has a direct representation of you, you need to understand and feed everyone a seemingly personal a unique piece that is eventually leads to the same place which should be your punch line or your whole plot point. Again, those awful snuggies assured that even the most lame of lame people can seem normal under a snuggie. What is going to be worse is when poeple actually start wearing those in public. they are going to become the next Moomoo.

c'mon america, say no to snuggies.

The Awareness Of A Character

In my pre-production class, our assignment which is meant to be built on throughout the semester is to create a character that would be considered our own alter ego. I don't know what he is going to be like but i have physically designed him and given him some superficial characteristics. How involved am I actually going to get with this character? I thought about the Abraham Maslow Heirarchy and but I felt like I haven't developed him as a character with choices to categorize him. I don't know how in depth I'll go because I feel like if we go to deep, trying to encase everything that this character is will be tough for a short story line.

I know he's a goofy guy that is very musically inclined. I thought about him aesthetically more than anything, just as far as how he'd move around. I tried to understand his body language more and this deduct a listing of possible characteristics that will help develope this character.

I feel like I'm trying to name a pet, the name should reflect it's personality. I guess I had already decided on Fernando simply because that would have been my parents second choice for my name when I was born, so I guess maybe find out what the name Fernando means, and try to see how that reflects on my character.

I think that's what I'll do.

Analysis

What makes a story successful? During my years of learning the rules of fine art, I came to learn that once you knew and understood the rules, it just meant that it was time to learn how to bend them or even break them successfully. Learning technicalities of anything is always good practice, but what separates a technical exercise from a piece of art is how well you use these understandings to express yourself conceptually.

So how well does this apply to story telling, or better yet, how well does this philosophy translate into the commercial world? are we trying to keep things dumbed down all the time?

I always felt that the average person will either like or hate a piece of work, and more often than not now-a-days, people just write it off. Only those who are familiar or have experienced the process can truly benefit from taking in a piece of art. So do we make art for artist and commercials for the common folk? of course, but what does that say about the stories and movies out there today? Writing is still a form of art, mastering of the english dictionary and using it's contents as arsenal to create an experience like no other. But do people just dumb things down now-a-days to make a quick buck. According to what we learned in class last, it seems so, because it doesn't matter how many there is, one can always live off of making horrible slasher films.

what about those who seek nothing but artistic satisfaction? More inportantly, what would be the best life choice at this point? make something inspiring, or make money.

such is the life of those who concider themselves artist.

Gather Around

So this is a blog dedicated to the writings, discussions, and concepts generated in one reference or another by my class called " Writing For Media"

Topics in communication and story telling as well as methods to persuade and convince the audience are crucial, and we can't deny that without a lower educated population, how will the stronger and more intelligent progress. As cruel as that sounds, if said statement wasn't true, then how in the world would Snuggies be so successful? there's a world of people unknowingly ready to be manipulated, and someone will always find a way to make them feel in need.

So to take a step back, I don't consider myself a writer. If I was a writer, I wouldn't resort to such means such as blogger to express my lack of proper grammar and to flaunt my syntax errors. BUT, I do love to tell stories. Inspired by the verbal presentation of epic poetry I believe that a story,though same content, can be told in many different ways. Delivery can be changed depending on purpose, though I also believe that the different ways have to come from the content. In a class last year I heard a quote from Robert Creely where he said,

"For is never more than an extension content."

I think this applies to alot of things, but what happens when someone achieves this? Does that make them successful? Is it actually achievable? Apparently so, because of Snuggies, and other products like the Egg Genie. I think the reason is because at a time when we all feel so helpless and lost with all the problems in the world, people want solutions to thinks they can't be bothered with solving...? maybe, I still will never feel like the voids in my life can be filled with a Snuggie. I can say that I have felt that way of other "material" things.

Freshman year, a friend named Kalei let me listen to a song that her friend made. It was a nice little beat, with a nice build up of bits from a sampled or preproduced sound clip. Once the full sound clip played out it said,

first guy: " Neccessity is the mother of invention"
second guy: " WHAT? no way!
first guy: " whaaaat?"
second guy: " Well, I know I'd never give a child of mine a name like INVENTION!"

damn you Snuggies.