Confessions of an Executive Producer

clique culture

I'm easing myself back into posting after an extended holiday vacation. With one of my New Year's resolutions being to better myself as a manager, the first step is delegating. I'll start by handing over the blogging mantle to industry PR maven Virginia Scripps of Press Kitchen. Enjoy!

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A popular friend at a high-end editorial shop said recently of the commercial filmmaking business, “It’s like high school.” This thought strikes terror in the hearts of those of us who were rebels, misfits or geeks in high school. Surely we have entered a more meaningful, choice-filled, artistically fulfilling and merit-based time of our lives? In high school we followed the rules in order to get decent grades and graduate. To make the grade socially, one had to follow the rules of the designated clique. Some of the heroes of commercial making have succeeded by breaking the rules in ways that changed the game forever. This renegade aspect of filmmaking is what attracted many of us to the field in the first place.

Last year I attended the high school graduation of my childhood BFF’s eldest daughter from our alma mater, Boulder High school. The speaker at the commencement was Chipotle Restaurant founder Steve Ells. I loved listening to his commencement speech for two reasons: one, that he looked like someone who was a geek at our high school who now had one of the hottest stocks on Wall Street. Secondly, I had already doubled my (admitted meager) investment in his stock, CMG, in less than a year. Geeks rule in our current era – a concept diametrically opposed to the clique hierarchy of high school.

So why does my friend’s comment ring so true? Plum projects are awarded based on personal relationships as well as the work, i.e.: “what have you done lately?” Word of mouth is powerful in a community that is tight knit and protective. Rumors that a company is slow are death; just as murmurs that a new company has entered the ranks of the A-list can spark interest and win work out of sheer curiosity. Who you know is an essential part of your personal brand, and repeat business a critical ingredient in your company culture. A remarkable number of people claim to be “best friends” with the same influential directors, EPs and agency people. I sometimes wonder how these oft-mentioned names handle the number of best friends they are purported to have. For lack of a better word, they are the popular kids, the prom kings and queens of our business. No surprise, then, that Caviar’s hugely popular holiday party is called the Winter Formal, complete with prom dresses, pale blue polyester tuxes and corsages!

Due to the ever-growing number of qualified companies vying for the best work, industry parties are, in part, work. Like many aspects of commercial filmmaking, if you are not having fun doing this, you’re not doing it right. Only those who have entered the hallowed ranks of the commercial production elite can confidently blow off the AICP Christmas party – and many arrive stylishly late to hang with the arrivistes, whether they still need to or not. We mingle to find out what’s up with people in our community, how their year went, what they’re working on, what interesting characters they’ve met and worked with. We also collectively celebrate another year of survival in an almost impossibly competitive arena.

This year’s West Coast AICP party was hopping on all three floors of a vintage club in Hollywood. After a few hours mingling with the packed, well-dressed, convivial crowd, my associate Jenna and I quietly left, knowing that what happens late at the AICP stays late at the AICP. 

Virginia Scripps is the founder & President of Press Kitchen PR, www.presskitchen.com, where she represents production companies and others in entertainment. A former copywriter, she has a masters in film from Columbia University. She is also a mom, an author, a skier and a Mad Men-aholic. She also the first repeat guest blogger in Producer Posts history.

 

is it asking too much for a call, text, email or IM...?

Today is a very special day. I have a Guest Blogger. Not just any Guest Blogger. It's Brent Novick. Brent has an on going IM banter with Mal Ward that has provided much amusement to me over the years. His perspective on sales and overall business is usually fair, often humorously acerbic and always insightful. 

So without further a do, the much promised and ever anticipated Novick post.

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In this age of instant connectivity – email, text, IM, Twitter, Facebook, “the phone,” - is it expecting too much to get a nod one way or another from agency producers when a job isn’t going your way?  

I recently had two separate jobs go down the same path:  board comes in, conference calls, director treatment, bid, turn stuff into the agency – and crickets. Crickets for like two or more days until we find out (in both cases) that the job was going to someone else.  Where is the courtesy of a phone call or email, or text?  My exec producers calling for some direction of how the job is going down – so we can manage “all” the jobs in front of a director and we get nothing.  Just silence.  Don’t get me wrong, we’re not angry, pissed, that’s the nature of the business we’re all in – but why is that so?  It takes 2 seconds to send a text – you can even be blunt and say – “you’re not getting the job, leave me alone.”  Fine, I’m moving on.

So for those who don’t know – here’s a bit of knowledge coming at you.  First, good directors are very busy – when you send me a board- you’re probably not the only agency/person I have a board in from for a given director.  So, my job, along with my EP – is to manage our director into the best situation/job.  We’re always juggling schedules, interest, timing etc.  That’s the way it goes.  So when an uncaring, inconsiderate agency producer holds off telling me I’m not getting the job for 2 days – you can understand how that might impact our ability to juggle a couple jobs.  I just want to know – the good, the bad, the ugly.  We’re all adults – we can HANDLE it.  You tell me I’m in the 2nd slot – that’s fine – I wont throw out the boards/bid – but I will prioritize so that if agency B comes back to me and says – we’d like to reco your director – can you accept – I can say yes.  

Seems like so little to ask for – professional courtesy?  I always get back to producers about director interest, schedules in a timely manner.  Agency producers are very busy people.  They’re juggling 19 things at the same time.  They’re talking with five directors, five reps, five Eps, a client, maybe more than one client, a cost consultant and a creative team.  Probably a creative team in three different time zones.  So I get how the simple act of sending an email or text could be “so” difficult.  But give it a try.  Don’t hold onto the information – share it – you’ll be amazed at how understanding people will be.  Always better to know that to not know.  Or in the words of one long time veteran director I worked for - “if I see your spot on the air, does that mean we didn’t get the job?”  

Don’t let that happen.  

Brent Novick, Independent Rep for broadcast and digital is based in San Francisco.  Clients include Smuggler, Psyop, Blacklist, MassMarket, Final Cut, Human and Jam3Media.  He started in PR and advertising, moved into sales for still photographers, which ultimately led him to represent film directors.  Brent is married and lives in Marin County.  When he’s not “closing” jobs you can find him riding waves off the Northern California Coast.  

portrait of a filmmaker as an agent

GUEST BLOGGER - Walter Partos, Owner Partos Company

I was having lunch with Jack Rapke, former CAA co-chair and agent to Jerry Bruckheimer, Ridley Scott, Imagine Entertainment, Michael Mann, Michael Bay, John Hughes, Terry Gilliam, etc.  He said that he was a successful agent because, at heart, he was a filmmaker.  Jim Cameron said, “I had pictured myself as a filmmaker, but I had never pictured myself as a director, if that makes any sense at all.” In that same way, I always pictured myself becoming a filmmaker but never pictured myself as an agent.

 

Most good agents are former writers, actors, or musicians.   From Jack Rapke, who demanded his assistants share his love and knowledge of what constitutes a great script, to my friend Arthur Axelman, who started as a teen writer and represented writers such as David Mamet and James Baldwin, to my colleague Martijn, who has an MFA from USC in film and is a walking encyclopedia of cinematic knowledge (second only to my former client Quentin Tarantino) all of them share a love of film.

 

I remember a weekend I spent with Mardik Martin and Sal Polisi (former wise guy and consultant to the Sopranos) working on a script about the Mob.  I remember Sal telling me about being in witness relocation but visiting Brooklyn regardless and almost ending up dead. He was happiest when he was closest to losing everything.  My job was to keep them on track.  Mardik was a screenwriting teacher at NYU alongside Scorsese and co-wrote Raging Bull.  I could not fake it with these guys.  I had to know what I was talking about. 

 

Every good agent I know is at some level a frustrated artist, and they bring the love of film to their work.  They put that passion into their clients’ careers. They also love procedures and policy. Agents are to the entertainment industry what policy wonks are to politics.  We love knowing what is going on and who is doing what and who they are doing it to and what they are doing it with.  

 

An agent gives his clients space to breathe when they aren't sure what they want to do.  We are the bulldogs so they can focus on creative issues.  We try to represent each client according to his voice and never in a generic way.  We take into account the people hiring our clients and try to create situations where everyone wins. However, sometimes we have to throw an elbow but never in a capricious way. It is a last resort.

 

It is 3 a.m. on a Monday morning, and I am up all night finessing a deal for one of our UK-based clients that needs to be completed by 7 a.m. West Coast time.  I read and loved the script as well as the director’s work.  My client loves the project.  There is nothing as exciting as giving something your all.  This is the stuff we live for.

 

Am I a filmmaker?  I think that it would be presumptuous and silly to say I am.  I know my clients are, and I would like to think after spending my entire career as an agent that my involvement is more than the purely transactional passing of information back and forth and negotiating deals. I would like to think I bring more to the process than that.

Inspired by ProducerPosts, Walter just launched a blog about media, MediaMonster.biz.  Partos Company, www.partos.com, represents Cinematographers, Production Designers, Editors, Costume Designers and Producers for films and commercials.  Our clients have won most major awards including Oscars, BAFTA, Emmy, Cannes (Grand Prix, Gold, Silver and Bronze Lions), awards at Cannes, Venice and Sundance Films Festivals.  Towards the ideal of being green, Partos has the distinction of being one of the first agencies to move from DVDs to having their artists work online.   Partos has operations in Los Angeles, Toronto and London.  It is dedicated to managing the careers of our artists and towards finding innovative and creative work wherever it may be. Walter began as a literary agent and his clients included Quentin Tarantino, Mardik Martin (Raging Bull), Chris De Vore (Elephant Man, Frances), Richard Brooks (Looking for Mr Goodbar, Elmer Gantry, In Cold Blood). He lives in Santa Monica with his girlfriend, a few thousand books, ten thousand or so songs and a handwritten letter from Einstein.

on being creatively agile

Guest Blogger - Joel Wynn, Owner GateHouse Production Services South Africa

A Chinese curse goes “May you live in interesting times” yet reading William Goldmans’ book on screenwriting we learn to only write a story from the point in time where something interesting happens or a change occurs to the protagonist.

As people working in media we do not have the luxury to merely watch people living interesting times, we have been thrust down the rabbit-hole whether we like it or not.

Responses to the challenges of our times have varied from Jerry and others’ practical business approach to this amusing contrarian’s point of view  http://bit.ly/cbOan5. The key difference is mind-set i.e. framing the situation as a problem or an opportunity.

Coming from a multi-disciplinary background I often look for overlap in areas of expertise that could have impact in a realm never considered before. One which has been catching my eye recently is the agile approach to software development (http://agilemanifesto.org. This is a style of coding that takes into account the fact that clients often do not know exactly what they want and that the specs of a project tend to change over the course of its duration - sounds very familiar to any producer of any commercial!

The agile manifesto states that one must value:

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiatio
• Responding to change over following a plan

 The principles for the manifesto are as follows:

• Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous deliveryof valuable software.
• Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage.
• Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
• Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
• Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done
• The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
• Working software is the primary measure of progress.
• Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
• Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility
• Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is essential
• The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing team
• At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.

SoDA (Society of Digital Agencies) has already asked the question about applying agile to what they do in this article as well as this article about agile being applied to brand strategy . Perhaps the key process strategy is what will provide the differentiator between "new agencies" and "old school agencies"?

I know that I have not explained exactly how agile can be applied to an agency and neither have the 2 articles that I mention above, but the truth is none of us know. Figuring it out is possibly what will make your company better at meeting your client’s needs and demands than your competitors.

Who will be able to implement this system best?

Traditional agencies with their layers of compliance and political infrastructure are poorly placed to implement agile. Productions companies, with their flat structures are better placed to implement it.

What most appeals to me about agile is that it attempts to answers a question that Jerry and I posed a while back about the “How?” of working on projects in the digital space that do not conform to the old commercial production approach.

Joel Wynn works at a great film-service company called Gatehouse Commercials (www.gatehouse.tv) in Cape Town, South Africa. I have worked in several industries before including finance, computer development, new media, advertising and now production.

I feel very privileged to work with wonderful people in my present job and to be able to leave work and be walking with my wife and 2-year old daughter next to the sea 10 minutes later.

the deadliest virus

The deadliest virus…

Is not H1N1, as we’ve all been cautioned to believe.  For anyone who’s visited a hospital recently – which has been unfortunately frequent for me as I care for my rapidly aging father – you’ll find anti-bacterial dispensers at every turn.  But the greatest concern amidst the rapidly mutating viruses is more immediate and relatable.

The time-killer is the social media vortex.  Reading this, I am guilty of – and you probably exhibit - many of the symptoms:  inability to think in greater than 140 character sentences; communication solely through Facebook updates, messages and events; and information disseminated primarily through news-aggregating sites and user-rated postings.  I opened my laptop to look at emails after dinner last night, found a Facebook-generated email message from a friend I haven’t physically seen or spoken to in over 30 years and 3 hours later, I was cruising Facebook for others who went to summer camp on Lake Pleasant in Oxford Maine.

Information moves quickly but relationships take time.  Time to establish, build and reap mutual benefit for the parties involved.  The entertainment and advertising industries in particular wouldn’t exist without personal connection.  So how do we navigate this?  Social media is the antithesis of actual human contact, but it’s global, readily available and faster than having lunch at Gjelina.

Or is it?  Transparency is the key to building trust in this digital labyrinth, yet it requires a leap of faith.  Many brands – both clients and colleagues – have relied on a mystique to establish and grow their businesses. Until now.  As my PR colleagues and I have surmised, our job has changed as we fill in the content gaps created by the demise of journalism.  So content creators we are, and embrace as writers, but someone still needs to read this stuff.  This brings into play all digital means necessary – the dynamic social networking arsenal.

My youngest niece, now in her first year of college, used to remind me that I came from the ‘dark ages’ of technology: when I was a co-ed there were no answering machines – just dry erase boards on dorm room doors.  And to reply to a message, I’d walk down the hall and knock on the door.  I miss the interaction.  Call me.  It’ll be analog.  It’ll be old-school. 

Kim Orchen Cooper is VP at Press Kitchen PR and now Social Butterfly online, launching this month.  www.presskitchen.com and www.socialbutterflyonline.net

 

if it's april fools, it's got to be sales

GUEST BLOGGER - Carolyn Hill, Independent Sales Rep 

Send the link.

Get the board.

Book the job.

April Fool’s!

I can’t tell you how many people told me to stop right there. But, I can’t because Jerry has generously given me the space to say a couple of more words about sales in this tricky commercial market. And, I love that I’m following on the heels of the mighty Scott Cymbala, with whom I had the pleasure of working with at Elias Arts.

When I was first starting off in sales in the early ‘90s as a baby rep on staff at Crossroads films, my above three-line poem was possible. I would messenger out three quarter inch reels, get a call and board faxed, book the job.  I should think it was because I really knew what I was doing. But, the truth is, it was really about how many projects were out there and how many commercial production companies existed at the time.

Back then, commercials were a segregated aspect of the film business.

Feature film directors did features. Commercial directors did commercials. And the new people out of Art Center slummed it in music videos i.e. Michael Bay and Tarsem.

Here in 2010, we’ve got Oscar-nominated feature film director Lasse Hallstrom directing a Bertolli pasta commercial for McCann/New York. And why wouldn’t he want to go to Rome and shoot food and people? Looks delicious.

It’s about the directors reel. It’s about the production company. It’s about the treatment.

April Fools ! (got you again) 

I need to add words like :

Cost consultant

Client

Testing

It’s a time of getting a script on a Friday and needing a full character exploration by Monday afternoon. Oh, and it’s for Rhythm + Hues and they are in LA and you sent me the project at 4 p.m. on Friday and need it by 4 p.m. on Monday and we’re bidding against Passion. SO, we have to knock it out of the park ! Because another thing I’ve learned is that doing a good treatment can mean something. Joe Murray, who is a new director/cinematographer with R+H, taught me this most recently with a Nissan project he was bidding. It turns out the creative director remembered his previous great treatment and wanted to bid him again.

But, is it all recession awfulness? Not really. The more screens, the more advertising based work for all of us. It’s all about packaging and non-broadcast work. That gives me hope. You have to have hope.

To sum it all up, Nick Litwinko, my EP at Blind, has determined that this business in 2010 is like living April Fool’s day every day.  Be ready to laugh.

Carolyn lives in New York City with her husband, Wayne Bjerke, who works at Grey Advertising and their daughter Paige. www.carolynreps.com

digital age hostage

GUEST BLOGGER - Scott Cymbal, EP/Partner MassiveMusic

Guest blogging. The last thing I ever thought I would do, but I couldn’t pass up the chance when Jerry reached out to people to “cover” him during spring break.  He also gave me an opportunity to guest blog on my 43^rd birthday which is today. Of course our birthday gives us a moment of pause to consider the passage of time and witness our own chronological transformation.  This is the first year in a long while that I’m actually acknowledging my own birthday.  I sort of stopped counting after I turned 38.  There are moments when I forget how old I am.  This all leads to the point of my blog.  The discussion is of change/transformation and our adaptation to this over the course of time. 

I am of a generation that straddled the line between the analog and digital worlds.  My first video game experience was playing a glass tabletop version of Pong.  I remember when the electronic calculator was a “miracle” device.  The first money I ever made in the music business went to purchasing a Brother brand fax machine.  I knew I had achieved an advanced level of success once I bought such a “high tech” piece of equipment for my home office.  There’s one thing that has dogged me over the years.  It’s more of an attitude problem than anything else.  I find myself to be a resentful embracer of change.  This would apply to personal, business and technological change.

See, I am a semi-willing hostage during our age of technological advancement.  The pace of change astounds me. How we adapt to these changes and the upside/downside of this transformative period in history intrigues and challenges me.

Everyone has his or her own opinion in regard to what technological advancement they think is the most innovative, productive and/or beneficial.  I am no different.  The Sony Walkman was a transformational piece of technology until the advent of the iPod.  Working in the business of music and sound, the launch of the Apple iPod is of particular significance to me.  On the other hand, a piece of hardware/software that allows you to watch your own television shows on your computer (The Sling Box) is less appealing.  I just can’t imagine being so vested in my daily television programming that I HAVE to watch it while sitting in my Dallas hotel room during a sales trip.

The technological advancements that most intrigue me are the ones that change our collective culture and common vernacular.  If you had a conversation with someone five or more years ago and used the phrase, “I’m going to Google that” or I just downloaded a “podcast” people would’ve looked at you like you were crazy.  The pace of change today is so rapid we invent new words and take them for granted before we’ve realized it.

In a way it’s ironic that I work in a business that feels the effect of technological change first.  The MP3 audio file started to obliterate the entire structure of the music industry on every level before the first version of Final Cut Pro was released to professional editors and generic consumers.  Digital audio recording has transformed how music is composed, produced, mixed and delivered.  I would surmise that the change has been a net positive, but with some serious negative side effects.  It’s a bit like when drug companies advertise their latest pill.  It will lower your cholesterol and your sperm count as well as give you possible chest pains.  The efficiency of the digital world is miraculous, but I sometimes miss the contact and warmth of the analog world.  So bound and gagged this hostage of the digital age will be dragged into the future whether I like it or not. 

Scott's career in the music industry  spans twenty years. He owned his own record label and artist management firm. Wrote for Ray Gun Publishing and fell into music and sound design production working for tomandandy and Elias Arts. Now a partner with MassiveMusic. He's EP of their west coast studio. Married with a 4-year old son and residing in Los Feliz.

  

does this self promotion make me look fat?

GUEST BLOGGER - Chris Ozeas, CInematographer

Back in college, when I was new to LA, I used to walk around Hollywood and see this “crazy” guy driving around with his resume photo plastered on the side of his whacked-out van, with the words “Dennis Woodruff, Actor” written on the side. I would think to myself, or out loud to whomever I was with, “Wow, THAT guy has lost it.”

Since then, I’ve come to realize that maybe Dennis was just that far ahead of me in realizing that surviving in Los Angeles’ production community takes a ton of Self Promotion. If no one knows your name, there is a good chance that no one is going to hire you.  

   

Last Monday I switched agents, so self promotion was already at the forefront of my mind. On Tuesday, I was on a runway at LAX when I read Jerry’s request for guest bloggers. Funny enough, I was about to board a plane to Miami to shoot a spot for a skin care product that Kim Kardashian is putting her name on. Reality “stars,” as they are, are masters of self promotion and have a gift for creating fame out of thin air. So I started thinking more about it….

I was raised to be humble, respectful to others, and let my work speak for itself. But as it turns out, in Hollywood, this is not always enough. Of course, shooting beautiful footage is, in the end, what matters, but at the beginning it is about getting your foot in the door. To do that in our world, it’s important to have a strong ego and to know that you can deliver the goods when you write that script, direct that movie, or roll that camera. Is being egotistical (and using that word in as positive a way as possible) just an element of Hollywood freelance survival?

With the advent of social media, including Facebook, Twitter, blogs and personal websites, it has become increasingly easy to let the world know what you are doing in real time. These are all ways to keep your name circulating in the minds of the hundreds of people we work with on a day-to-day basis. The world gets smaller and faster every time a new social site is created — embrace them now, or you might miss the boat. Or rocket. Or hovercraft.

To do so, you have to realize that it’s not just the Angelynes and Dennis Woodruffs that self promote either. Some of the biggest names in the industry are masters of it. James Cameron and Peter Jackson are well known for their shameless ability to promote their product, and to great effect.

So then, back to agents. They’re there to make the calls, close the deals and expand your contacts, but when it comes down to it, they’re there to help promote your name. This new week begins with me working with a new agent, Richard Caleel. After spending time with two larger agencies in town, Richard has decided to put his own name on the door, at The Caleel Agency.

After all, isn’t that what we all are doing? Hanging our names on the door and waiting for someone to knock.

And, wait for it… Here’s the pitch...

Chuck Ozeas is a director of photography in Los Angeles. www.chuckozeas.com

Agent, Richard Caleel, www.thecaleelagency.com

proud to be a digital immigrant

GUEST BLOGGER - Erika Levy, VP Sales & Marketing/Wiredrive

I was over-prepared for SXSW. I got myself and my team geared up with A/V equipment, armed with apps and in sync with a strategy to document the entire interactive festival. We had all logistical information at our fingertips and 11 different ways to connect with each other and the outside world: Facebook, Twitter, Tweetdeck, Tumblr, iCal, SXSW App, i-nigma, Bump, Foursquare, text message and the actual phone.

The funny thing, though, is that I still found comfort in going to the information desk to ask a human being for directions, and sometimes it was faster. They had computers set up all around, but I noticed a lot of people went to the booth to ask questions. I always thought the term “Digital Immigrants” referred to my parents or ancestors, but I guess I do still have one foot in the past. 

From Marc Prensky’s Essay Digital Natives Digital Immigrants (http://bit.ly/cAkI3S):

The Digital Immigrant “accent” can be seen in such things as needing to print out a document written on the computer in order to edit it (rather than just editing on the screen); and bringing people physically into your office to see an interesting web site (rather than just sending them the URL).  

...the single biggest problem facing education today is that our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language. 

I think the same is true for advertising. That is why it was so encouraging to see “traditional” ad pros at SXSW. We are no longer in denial. We are no longer afraid. We are becoming more humble and open to learning. Partnerships between “traditional” and “digital” agencies are forming. Though they both aim be the leaders, they will always be dependent on one another. The business models will change, but the skill-sets that each possess are both needed to guide clients through to the other side.

Everyone’s been talking about creating “original content” and making a video go “viral” for the past 2 years. Now it’s all about “real-time” coverage. I wanted to try it out for myself, so I put together a strategy to accomplish the following: 

Post real-time coverage to a blog we set up for SXSW (http://wiredrivesxsw.tumblr.com)

Conduct video interviews with speakers and attendees

Create a microsite (powered by Wiredrive mRSS) to showcase photos, videos and blog recaps 

My team and I were able to post 45 times to the blog throughout the festival and we tweeted over 100 times.  However, I don’t think anyone could really digest the amount of information we doled out. As much as we crave information, consuming it is like eating empty calories most of the time. It goes right through you. Brands who target digital natives will get a much higher ROI on real-time advertising than brands who are trying to get the attention of digital immigrants because they are still fumbling with adoption and overwhelmed by the constant flow of information.

I think the biggest payoff will come in April, though, when we launch the microsite. As Damon Webster says, “You gotta filter the grid.” You have to use aggregators, filters, lists and bookmarks to scan information, keep up with what you’re interested in and come back to it later. How information is organized and presented is still one of the most important factors in landing sales.

Technology has always been in my DNA. Speak to my father, Mitch “GadgetJunkie” Levy, and he will tell you I was born with it. My mother is a psychologist so I love connecting with people and studying them as well. The biggest challenge for me at SXSW was being a real-time documentarian. How was I supposed to live in the moment and capture it at the same time? Some of the best connections I made were when I put down my phone and was present in the moment. I hope we don’t lose that natural instinct as we evolve because some of the best moments are the ones you don’t capture. 

 

Erika graduated in 1999 from the University of Oregon with a B.A. in journalism and communications and a minor in marketing. Her first job was as a PA at Zentropa Commercials, owned by Dancer in the Dark director, Lars von Trier.  She returned to the U.S. in 2001, moved to Los Angeles and became a below-the-line agent at Montana Artists Agency.

Erika has worked for Wiredrive (http://wiredrive.com) since 2004 and is currently the VP of Sales and Marketing. She has consulted with hundreds of clients on digital workflow for production and sales. 

 

guest bloggers wanted

It's that time of year. Spring break with the kids. 

I would love to get a bit of break without my site going dark. Nothing worse than posting no content for a week. The audience goes right into the tanker. 

To offset this dilemma, I am once again looking for some guest bloggers. If you want a place to vent, have an idea or thought you want to share, or just like to rant, here is your opportunity. 

As always, this is an open platform. It can be any topic somewhat related to this blog or not. Also, I don't censor. The only requirements is that it remains somewhere around 500-700 words and it isn't snarky. Other than those minor parameters, I'm offering something rarely given in this business, full creative control.

In the past I've had many people email me expressing interest but only a few have come through. Here's your chance to make good. 

My dates are Monday, March 29 thru Friday, April 2nd. It's a week away so get writing. Drop me a note if you're interested. Thanks!