Alex Jeffries

Monstrous Me: Now on Kickstarter

August 15, 2017 No Comments

Today, Monstrous Me is live on Kickstarter.

It’s been a scrappy, silly, winding journey to this point. I wrote the worst first draft of the very first monster in January, and also met the book’s illustrator, Elizabeth. In February, I suggested to Elizabeth that we consider working together on a longer project, possibly something book-length. In March, I ran off to Thailand to recover from a busy chunk of television producing, and to write. In April, we agreed on a reasonable number of monsters. In May, the first round of editors provided notes on the manuscript’s first draft. In June, we figured out a layout and a timeline. In July, I began sketching out the Kickstarter campaign as the drafts for the art were finished.

Now, halfway through August, the campaign for my first-ever illustrated collection is live.

By September 10th, we’ll know if the Monstrous Me campaign to get a print run of hardbound books was successful. If I should be so lucky, we’ll send the finished book out to the printer by the end of that month, and receive the copies ready to mail out by mid-November.

But enough about the past and the future. The only thing I really have a handle on is the Now, and my Now is about to get really monstrous.

To help show just how monstrous, here are a handful of monsters from the book (they’re not selfies).

Though the campaign will have been live since the night before, the first batch of e-mails and outreach goes out before dawn on the east coast. In order to answer any questions that you scallawags might have, I’m going to make like the Morning Slug and rise early with a full 8-cup Chemex of coffee and take on the questions and concerns as they come.

Before I can fully embrace my sluggish morning, though, I’ll have to do battle with a series of alarms. After spending a week in Mountain Time, I hope this fight isn’t too drawn out. To be safe, I’ll have three backups set, just like the Snoozer Sloth.

Despite a day’s vigilance over the newly launched campaign, my over-scheduling tendencies are in full effect. Some tasks, like taking the car to the mechanic, are meant to keep me from pressing refresh all day long. Others, like my picture book writing class, keep me looking forward and building a momentum that goes beyond a single project.

Through it all, I will feel ever more like the Startvaark, as Monstrous Me is full of starts (a book project!), firsts (Kickstarter!), and launches (a lengthy campaign!). In that way, it’s similar to the projects of past. I’ve never had problems summoning up the energy and ideas to bring comics, animations and temporary companies into existence. Where I struggled was shepherding them to a natural conclusion. Serial projects, like webcomics, puttered out when I couldn’t maintain self-imposed schedules. Companies faltered for a lack of serious partners, or an inability to pick a partner with complementary strengths.

Now, though, I have a manuscript written, the art is being finalized, and the Kickstarter is alive and, well, kicking. We have momentum on our side. Should the campaign raise the necessary $5,000 to get a limited, hardbound print run, Monstrous Me will be published before the year is done.

The hope with this post was to take a moment out from the animating and e-mailing and editing and pitching to take a few breaths. I believe this campaign will be successful, and that a long-held dream of mine to create an illustrated collection of stories will soon be realized.

Still, I’m nervous. As I was writing e-mails to old friends and coworkers and lost collaborators, I felt a twinge of nostalgia. In the past, I was naive and bold, and shared my work (‘work’ being an adult term for silly things like sheep-themed comics and short films about superheroes) often. Since college, I grew reluctant to talk about what I was doing in public settings, or share much of the process beyond a few tweets or pictures. I was happy enough to let those ambitions simmer, and the daily practice of writing and creating slow. I turned down jobs in line with this passion, because, I told myself, if I was really into writing, then I’d be writing more. Whether one should conflate or confuse work with passion is a point for a different post. The nerves, in that case, came down to believing in myself, and whether I could make something of my writing. Despite qualms or quibbles I may have had with past projects or opportunities, I believe in this one.

I’m proud of what this project has become, and I’m excited to start sharing it with you. Thank you for coming on this ride with me. Whatever happens, I know we’ll have fun.

I’ll see all of you monsters under the bed and on the other side.

Monstrous Me

Monstrous Me: Sketches

July 14, 2017 No Comments

Though the timetable for the Kickstarter and eventual release for Monstrous Me has shifted back a month so, we are still plugging along at a good pace. Last week I received the majority of the sketches for the monsters, and I was impressed with how they are shaping up.

If you’re interested in these early drafts, I threw together a brief video with a few dozen.

Artist Liz is onto color palettes and we will soon be taking monsters to the final stages. This also means dusting off my InDesign skills from my high school journalism days and diving deep into page layouts and typography.

The timeline at this point has the majority of the art arriving by mid-August. Since I’ll have the text mostly ready – for the book, Kickstarter, and accompanying promotional pieces – it should be a matter of incorporating the art over a few days to finalize the campaign. I’d hope for a Kickstarter launch mid-to-late August, to run for a month, and then another two months or so to get the books ordered and delivered. That means a potential Halloween release, which is very fitting.

In addition to a book trailer and Kickstarter video, I am hoping to create a brief animation for each monster, to be released each day of the Kickstarter. Depending on how much the launch and life of the campaign overlap with my return to full-time work, this idea may be sidelined.

From the last round of edit notes to now, the project is currently sitting at 40 monsters. That means some of the ones in the video above won’t be included in the final book, though a few of those leftovers will still be illustrated and find a home online in the near future.

Today I sent out the 3rd draft to the next batch of editors, including a television writer, former principals, and a librarian. Having addressed the notes on the 2nd draft, and having sat with it for a month, I am feeling more and more confident about it. Each monster that’s made it this far is more than a clever name or a improvised situation; the stories are stronger, and more relatable, and I have the editing process to thank for that (and, you know, the editors).

On top of all this, I went to the Society for Children’s Book Writing and Illustrators conference last week. I have all sorts of feelings, about writing and publishing and self-publishing and process and doubt, but I am choosing not to dwell on that overwhelming mountain of information and instead choosing to tackle each next step with this book. Monstrous Me is actually coming alive, and I am still in disbelief.

So, while I wait for new art, and edit notes, I’ll hammer out Kickstarter verbiage, and play around with InDesign, and maybe even go outside.

You know, before the hard work starts.

Animation, Fantastic Ballads

The Cat Lady’s Cat: A Look Back

July 14, 2017 No Comments

After several name changes and seven years, The Cat Lady’s Cat – the other original Fantastic Ballad – is revised, refined, and raring to go!

Origin Story

Originally called Mrs Kowolski’s Cat, then Callie the Calico Cat, the Cat Lady’s Cat is the other original Fantastic Ballad that I worked on with Josh. The story is of Callie, and how she’ll go to any lengths to keep her Cat Lady Dee from finding true love – because if she finds true love, Callie thinks, Callie and the other kittens will get kicked to the curb.

Like the Gingerbread Man’s Last Stand (the first ballad), this story has series of mishaps and a nice twist that, to me at least, have aged nicely. In tandem, these stories laid the foundation for what a Fantastic Ballad could be.

Concept Art

Per usual, Josh did an incredible job capturing a devious and adorable protagonist. In taking these sketches and turning them into sepia-toned illustrations, he captured the essence of an intimate story worth hanging on the wall.

To be honest, he did too good of a job. Whereas with the Gingerbread Man’s Last Stand I was comfortable separating the art from the background and adding little animated movements, it felt sacrilegious to interfere with what he worked to create.

The Ballad, Version 1.0

Our original ballad was in four parts, with five framed pictures per, all hung down a wall with a flowery wallpaper. I enjoy looking back at these pieces now because they show just how much revisions have affected the story. The character’s names were once Eleanor and Rob (a nod to my grandparents), the illustrations more directly reflect the text here, and the meter isn’t great, despite some fun turns of phrase.

Taking this ballad and animating it was a simpler process than the Gingerbread Man’s Last Stand, as I set out to capture the feeling of the original ballad, rather than transform it entirely into a cartoon. I recreated the scrolling look and feel, though I did add cat wallpaper, which, while a little on the nose, was too delightful to pass up.

Additionally, the first cut had the frames going down, one after another… but I realized (with some wifely help) that there aren’t too many homes with the space to display 20 frames vertically. I made the proper adjustments, and the piece is all the better for it.

Next Up

It’s been edifying to be able to practice with such charming characters (it certainly makes my efforts look more impressive than they actually are) as I get a better handle on the functionalities of the Adobe suite. For better or worse, none of the other original ballads have nearly as much artwork as these two, and later ballad-related collaborations and commissions resulted in four or five pieces of art, which, while they help to capture the tone, are not sufficient for a four-minute video. Going forward, I’ll be writing brand new stories and commissioning illustrations from new artists.

In several ways, this summer has felt like a reboot, both in the “reusing old source material” way and a “getting back to basics” way. As I venture ever further into writing for kids, animation, and storytelling, I love that this project has become my own personal Giving Tree, one that continues to nurture and provide as I grow.

Animation, Blog

Player 2

July 9, 2017 No Comments

A week ago, I suggested to Eric that we animate one of his daily MONOVLOG monologues. He agreed with enthusiasm, I wrote out a short piece, we settled on a look, and off I went. One week later, here we are: the premiere of Player 2!

Overall, I am pleased with how Player 2 turned out – the chiptune music underneath it is charming and emotional, the pixel artist who transformed Eric into a character did a great job, and the backgrounds give it a nice vibe.

Any faults in the piece are my own; the most glaring is that I did not execute the walk cycles for either character as well as I should have. I’m still learning the ins and outs of Adobe Animate, so I justified not obsessing over the walk cycles by telling myself the other components – the visuals, the story, the backgrounds – would be more impactful to the overall piece. Which is true, given the retro video game theme, but it’s also an excuse. For the next animation, I need to push myself.

For Eric’s MONOVLOG project, collaboration was the key. The idea for this monolog in particular came from a recent visit to a local arcade (why are old video games so fun for a few minutes, and then so disappointing right after? The nostalgia just isn’t what it used to be…), and I set out to see what I could do visually to recreate that feeling.

As an Adobe Creative Cloud user, I get access to 10 Adobe Stock images each month. The other small projects I worked on in June didn’t necessitate much additional art, so with a week left, I still had eight images to burn. I looked for buildings and cities that were illustrated with a flat design motif, and found more than enough to establish a tiny world.

Then it came time to think about the models. I am no artist, so I looked to Fiverr to find someone who might be able to turn Eric into a cartoon of some sort. I stumbled across Ash who makes pixel art, and he put together a front and side view of Eric, as well as Eric’s Player 2, for a great price, plus he included several expressions, and the models broken apart. Without going into the details of animation software, just know it’s much easier to animate the models when they’re broken apart ahead of time.

Finally, the music. I’m very appreciative of Free Music Archives’ Chiptune selection which is a blast to scroll through and sample. For whatever reason, whether nostalgia or something else, I find the chirpy glitchy genre hits me just right, and it fit the video game aesthetic of Player 2 perfectly.

With the characters, backgrounds, and music set, I knew I could create a world that resembled an old arcade game.

Or rather, I knew I could create the world given the art that others had created. Without them, this piece wouldn’t have been possible, but interestingly, only half of ‘them’ know they’re involved in the piece. With that, it’s worthwhile to note the difference between active and passive collaborators.

Eric, Ash and I were all actively collaborating – requesting, editing, revising, giving and taking feedback. From that communication came improvements and enhancements. Still, I view the background illustrators and chiptune musicians as collaborators, too, even if we weren’t in contact, because even though ours was a more passive collaboration, their impact on the final piece is just as substantial.

As I continue to make projects of different sorts, my own abilities and weaknesses come into sharper focus. Some, like animation, are ones I want to improve, as they help guide the project and put the pieces in place. Others, like illustration and music, are fascinating and fun and I’m happy to mess around with, but I’m such a novice that I feel lucky to have access to more accomplished creators. Working with them, both actively and passively, is always the right move.

More and more I realize that collaborators are the compound interest of creativity. Over the length of a project, and the length of one’s career, collaboration and creativity build on top of each other in increasingly impactful ways.

Ideas are cheap, so when we trade and exchange and collaborate and innovate and create together, we’re all the better for it.

Animation, Fantastic Ballads

The Gingerbread Man’s Last Stand

June 30, 2017 No Comments

After 12 years of revisions, three artist collaborations, lost luggage and murder, the Gingerbread Man’s Last Stand is illustrated, animated, narrated, and done.

For 12 years, I have been working on this story about the Gingerbread Man. For a so-called Last Stand, that’s a pretty long time.

In taking a moment to think about that journey, and after leafing through the e-mails documenting it, I want to share with you the story behind the story of the above animation.

In July of 2005, while working with a cartoonist on a short story I wrote about a rampaging sheep named Clarence, I soft-pitched him an idea I was working on…

I’m in the middle of a, about 20 verse ballad about “The Untimely Fall of the Gingerbread Man”… where revenge is exacted by several other kitchen characters upon him for being too successful.
Thoughts?

– 16-year-old Alex

A few days after this e-mail, I let the cartoonist know that the story had “been edited about three times now, and I think it’s almost complete.”

(Attention, future collaborators: ‘almost complete’ is Alexspeak for ‘only 12 years left!’)

Boy, a lot can happen in 12 years. Given the tragedies and traumas that afflicted the production process of The Gingerbread Man’s Last Stand, I began to sympathize with the evil cookies… right when I felt like I’d gotten my way, something would come back and derail the plan.

In August of 2005, it was set to be illustrated by an Irish guy I’d met online. I received an e-mail update that his cousin had been ‘stabbed and killed’ and from that point on, his priorities shifted away from colorful cartoons.
In June of 2007, my friend Rachael embarked on the illustration journey. Over the next nine months, she sketched, and illustrated, and then painted Gingerbread with watercolors. In this precious time before smartphones became ubiquitous, she didn’t take any progress pictures. Then, she was flying back to LA with the paintings in her luggage when… they airlines lost her luggage, and the paintings.
Then, in January of 2009, I met Josh while interning at Nickelodeon. In 2010 we got together, tossed some ideas back and forth on how to collaborate, and The Untimely Fall of the Gingerbread Man was given another life. In September of 2010, we had ourselves an illustrated ballad. But, as was the case so far, things did not go as well as expected.

We kept refining the ballad and futzing with the proper way to show it to the world. At one point, we released a page at a time like a serialized webcomic. Then, I built a website where the ballad ‘hung’ on a fridge, in five parts.

By September of 2011, I had renamed the story The Gingerbread Man’s Last Stand and it was part of a larger series called Fantastic Ballads, which were fantastical rhyming stories that I wrote and Josh illustrated. As an aside, this was an energizing time in my life, as we’d meet regularly to talk about story, create together, give each other feedback, and push each other. I’m not sure I’ve tapped into that same level of creative fulfillment since.

Then came the disagreements: about how much time we should be expected to pour into this, what we wanted to get out of this, and how we should move forward. After two finished ballads, we decided to end the partnership.

Still, I kept writing them. Time past. I would occasionally repurpose the ballads, like I did in the spring of 2014, when I wrote a weekly story and my friends narrated them. Though intended to be a podcast, I stuck it up on SoundCloud. I knew they were more fun to hear read aloud than to just be read online, and felt I was onto something, but the pace of writing those weekly stories while working at a late-night show wore me down.

Around that time, a coworker suggested it’d be easy for him to animate the illustrations, though his offer came as our show got the axe. I never followed up on it.

I kept writing. Occasionally, I’d commission an artist to do a few illustrations per ballad. The four or five pieces of art were not enough to complete the ballad, but they did help to give a sense of the characters and the story (those live at Fantastic Ballads). Now I knew the stories were more fun with art and they were more fun with narration… I just didn’t put the two together.

Maybe I thought it wasn’t possible to do, or that I couldn’t figure it out. Whatever the case may be, I didn’t pursue it.

Until this summer. With the time I have off in between talk show seasons, I decided to learn an animation software, instead of waiting for someone else to offer up their time and skill. Taking Josh’s gorgeous cookie cartoons, I dragged them through Adobe Photoshop, Animate and Premiere, until I had pieced together the animation you see above.

Giving this cookie chase a new lease on life was important to me because of how deeply I care for animation. It’s a medium I’ve always loved, and studied, and enjoyed. Seeing the cookies dance and cavort, as herky-jerky as the finished product may be, is endlessly delightful. While I won’t say all 12 years of waiting to see this story come to fruition have fueled me with that same delight, it must have been necessary. Surely the story has benefitted from the revisions (though I did feel like George Lucas at some point, thinking I should just leave it alone).

So, the Gingerbread Man’s Last Stand is finally done. It’s in the format that best suits it (until I figure out VR!!!). Now, I can move forward. Just like Ginger is left to Rest in Pieces, I can let the Gingerbread story rest. Other stories are coming, along with other illustrations. I’m glad I hung onto this story for so long; I’m also glad to be moving on from it.

For those of you who’ve been watching this since the beginning, I thank you for your patience and support. If this is your first time seeing or hearing about the Gingerbread Man’s Last Stand, I look forward to hearing your thoughts. I owe this story a lot. It’s the story that comes to mind when I think back to identifying as a writer. To know that it had merits and qualities worth salvaging, revising, and embellishing on throughout the years is frankly astonishing.

And to Josh, without whom this would not have been possible, I am endlessly appreciative. You’ve seen me at my worst, and you still delivered the goodies.

Blog, Running, Throwbacks

On the Run in Rio

June 15, 2017 No Comments

In 2011, I ran the Rio de Janeiro Marathon.

Sort of.

While this picture shows me running in the race, I wasn’t a registered runner. Instead, I was running alongside Rebecca, above in pink, as she knocked another marathon off of her ‘7 marathons on 7 continents’ challenge. We’d met the day before in line for Christ the Redeemer (or rather, she allowed us to cut the line and join her), and when she mentioned that she’d be doing a marathon the next day, I offered to tag along.

My own willingness to run surprised me, as just four months before, I had been sitting in a coffee shop in Pasadena, hiding from the rain, and as far removed as I could get from the running of the 2011 Los Angeles Marathon. I had been hurt training for it (though in retrospect, running 40 miles a week while sleeping three hours each weeknight wasn’t really laying the groundwork for success), and still felt hurt that I couldn’t be a part of it – especially because it was raining. Who doesn’t love running in the rain!? I’m sure I even called my family at one point during that angst-ridden winter and declared myself unfit to ever run a marathon, and I would never, ever try again.

Yet, here I was, in Brazil, offering to run a marathon, or at least, part of one. I had kept running after professing my disinterest in marathons. Maybe that consistency emboldened me. Maybe it was the possibility of Adventure. Whatever it was, she took me up on the offer, and we made a plan to meet around Mile 9, and jog together to the finish. That morning, my friend Chris and I positioned ourselves in wait, and waited.

And waited.

And, 30 minutes or so after we expected her, I ran upstream to find her. I found her around Mile 5, walk-running through a tweaked leg injury. Together, we made it along the rest of the course (including Mile 22, better known at the Copacabana Beach), and found Chris at the end, chasing a beer he’d just had with an ice cream bar. I stepped off the course after a total of about 25 miles, and Chris and I cheered her to the finish line.

Despite the spontaneous joy of the Rio race, I don’t have a great relationship with marathons. My record of completing the ones I sign up for is spotty. I’ve signed up for nine. The next one, this July in Santa Barbara, would be the eighth of those. The ninth is later this summer in Colorado.

I’ve completed three.

The most recent three that I didn’t complete – Catalina, Tamalpa Headlands, and Surfer’s Point – came at the tail end of busy periods in television. I convinced myself while signing up for each one that this race would be different, my schedule more forgiving, or, at the very least, that my scheduling skills were more refined. The results, and the DNSs (Did Not Starts), say otherwise.

Like LeBron’s finals record, my marathon appearance record is about to be 3-5 (as I’ve downgraded my July race to the half-marathon). Laying it out like that makes it harder to identify as a marathoner, while also making it far too easy to embrace being a runner, with the hope that each new race will bring with it a better outcome.

That optimism, the desire to keep going against solid evidence against my ability to train for and race long distances, often clouds my better judgment, as I can’t dispense with the foolhardy idea that I can do everything while sacrificing nothing.

Still, I remain hopeful. I’m scaling back the marathon ambitions for the next few months, allowing my body to heal over more manageable miles, and striving for consistency.

After all, it was that consistency that put me in a position to say yes to an impromptu marathon before. Maybe that’s the evidence worth looking at.

Blog

The Grincubator: Making Delightful Deals

June 9, 2017 No Comments

Here is an idea for our rollicking, roiling, politically aggravating times: an incubator designed to develop delightful businesses.

These businesses, products and projects would have in common a positive mission and a plan to become self-sustaining, because while one-off delights are fine and dandy, it’s the sustaining, evolving delights that will make our world a better place to be.

Let’s call it… the Grincubator.

Now, why place such a high premium on delight?

The raison d’être of any product should be delighting the customer. The faster a product achieves this goal, the sooner it embeds itself into a user’s work flow, creates a sticky consumer experience and makes it hard for the customer to walk away.

The moment when a user is delighted for the first time directly maps to when that person could be considered likely to convert into an engaged customer. Engagement is that point when the user has bought into the value proposition of the product and adopts it as a means to solving his or her problems.

Delight causes users to be transformed into a company’s forward-marketing team. Fueled by euphoria, these users talk about the product to friends and family and on social media and their thoughts are circulated across their networks.

– Kumar Srivastava, “Delight, The Awesome Product Metric That Rules Them All“

Maybe you have the next fidget spinner. Maybe you have the next cheap fare flight finder. Maybe your 3D-printed ceramic coffee mug monthly box delivery service is one promotional video away from a Kickstarter.

To apply for a spot in the Grincubator, we’ll ask for a 2-minute video explaining your delightful idea, its current stage, and what 12 weeks of focused attention could do for developing it.

Over a 12-week part-time program, 12 teams would work to develop their MDP – their Minimum Delightful Product – and present at the end of each month to show their potential, their progress, and finally, their MDP.

Over those three months, each team gets $5,000 and an industry mentor. At the same time that they’re developing their own idea, they’re expected to contribute, critique, and help out with their fellow Grinners. While it’s not enough money to live on, it should be enough to hire freelancers and designers, or front a small digital ad buy.

As a bonus, each team gets weekly access to a rotating group of award-winning creatives from across a wide range of industries. Then, at the end of 12 weeks, we host a live event where our creatives, board members, and investors listen to the pitches for new companies and products.

Some, blown away and smiling at the innovation that’s taken place, will undoubtedly invest. We’ll celebrate their achievement, and await the next crop at the Grincubator to see what they’ve got up their sleeves.

Now, this is whole idea is more than a little far-fetched. For one, where would the funding come from? Either we go the route of investors, and take a tiny portion of each company who enters into the Grincubator, or we find a corporate sponsor, one willing to front $75,000 every three months to be associated with delight, merriment, and creativity. Whether it’s a “presented by” sort of arrangement, or we, like the good content creators we are, endeavor to create a stream of interviews, videos, updates and more about each of our cohorts, to keep the sponsor’s name present, remains to be decided.

And secondly, and perhaps more fundamentally, is a delightful mission enough to sustain regular entries and interest? Are there enough economically viable ideas that could be delight-heavy?

Who knows?

What I do know is that sincerity, effort, and collaboration can take us all much further than we can go on our own, so why not add a sprinkling of delight to the mix? If we have to be the change we want to see in the world, then let’s make a space for more delightful products, projects, and businesses.

—

“Ideas on Fridays” is a weekly effort to test, flesh out, and/or purge ideas from my brain. If you want to use one of these ideas – or collaborate on one – please get in touch.

Blog, Throwbacks

Sharpies and Shoes: My College Muses

June 8, 2017 No Comments

Given that I made three stop-motion animations solely about drawing on shoes, another animated short about a shoe stampede, and a short film about finding your true love called Sole Mates (surprise: it features shoes), it’s fair to say shoes were something of a muse during college.

So today I’m taking a look back at a series of stop-motion animations that feature Sharpies and Shoes that I made each year of college to see if there’s anything to be learned.

Sharpie Shoes 1 (2007): Frustrated by a gooey brownie stain you can see at 00:01, I lay down on my not-so-clean dorm room floor freshman year, and got a doodling. You can see how flimsy the camera stand was because it dips ever so slowly the more I press the shutter. Besides that dynamic error, the shot is static. The shoe isn’t stuffed with anything, so the tongue is flapping around. And yet, without this little adventure, would any of the others have come to be?

Sharpie Shoes 2 (2008): A major improvement in every conceivable sense. Well, except for actually planning out the art ahead of time. Despite not doing that, I remain impressed with how the visuals turned out. Different camera angles, rotating shoes, different pen thicknesses, and music… how much better could it get?!

Sharpie Shoes 3 (2009): Oh, how I’d grown as an artist by my junior year. Just before a spring break trip to Japan, I propped my shoes up on our apartment’s dining room table and set to work. I gave more thought to the composition of each individual shot (is that… depth of field?!), the sound design, and the art itself. Somehow, the shoe actually bears a passing resemblance to Hokusai’s Great Wave off Kanagawa.

Finally, my senior year. To make sure I went out with a bang, I put together what looks like a thesis film compared to the others. There are shoe extras, stunts, and, yep, still some sharpie animations. What’d you expect? I had to go 4 for 4.

So, without further ado, here is Stampede (2010): a story of dramatic rescues, angry mobs and stunning heroics.

(At least, that was the intention. Re-watching it now, I get maybe 70% of that ambitious storytelling. You be the judge.)

I feel a certain fondness for this progression; I also feel a reverence for the process. Each video leans so heavily on the one before it. Without the mistakes and the lessons of the first, the second wouldn’t have been as strong. Without the improvements of the second, the third wouldn’t have been as refined. Without all three, I would not have had the confidence to make a short film. Yet, finishing college with an animated short film about shoes wasn’t what I was thinking about the night I spilled dessert goop on my shoe.

So, while we can’t always see what we’re building up to, there are still so many reasons to keep building on what we’ve done.

Blog

Hitting the Books

June 7, 2017 No Comments

One of my crippling fears about working as a television producer is not having a tangible skill set. While I may be comfortable with the different aspects of scheduling, budgeting, research, and project management, I worry about not having the level of skills that future jobs may require.

Then, I wonder about why I’m worrying. I know part of the worry comes from the uncertainty of our industry, of freelance jobs that end after two months, two weeks, or (my personal record!) two and a half days. That worry (mixed with curiosity) led me to get my MBA. In many ways, being able to define your skill set makes the idea of finding the next job seem more palatable, and more doable. As a counterpoint, though, what sort of work do I really want to focus on? What are these mystical “future jobs”?

Ultimately, I don’t know the answer. What I do know is that I like to produce things, and write words, engage people, and delight them.

So, to that end, I am cracking open the books this summer, and exploring new avenues to create those kinds of stories. On my desk are three books that’ll help me access the tools to better realize those dreams: Adobe Animate (for animating Monstrous Me artwork), Adobe After Affects (for enhancing those animations), and Adobe InDesign (for laying out this book, and subsequent short-form projects).

Together, these books have 39 lessons. Over the next 10 weeks, I’ll take on 4 lessons a week, allowing for a mix of structured learning and enough free time to practice. By mid-August (when my summer ends), I should have accumulated enough time and skills to confidently declare myself to be… a great beginner.

And if the goal is to become a great beginner, then I’ve got to start beginning.

The Constant is Change: How to Survive a TV Show’s Summer Test Run

June 6, 2017 No Comments

Summer is here, and if you’re a TV producer, that means you get to do one of three things:

Enjoy your (forced) hiatus as you wait for your show to begin production in the fall, by seeing friends, cooking, traveling, and creating other projects, all while reveling in how responsible you were in saving during the year
Don’t enjoy your (forced) hiatus as you wait for your show to begin production in the fall, by refreshing Staff Me Up and posting your resumes on Facebook groups every hour on the hour, rueing that month-long trip you took to Thailand in the middle of the season
Produce for a summer test run

I’ve had the pleasure of doing all three. But for today, I’d like to talk more about what a summer test run is, and, if you’re considering this special brand of insanity, how to survive it.

Over the last eight or nine years, production companies have embraced the idea of testing talk shows over short summer runs of 10 to 30 episodes that air in June, July and August. This summer, Fox is testing four. The idea behind them, as Marc Berman lays out, is simple enough:

The primary reason, of course, is money. If a show fails to catch on — and many do — you avoid spending upwards of $30 million to launch a high-end production. But the model provides other benefits, too. Producers can use early feedback from test markets to tweak the show before rolling it out across the country. And for a station group like Fox, which has two stations in the same markets in a number of different cities (aka “duopoly”), these tests represent an opportunity to fill unused time periods.

Marc Berman, Test-run programs: the new normal in first-run syndication

Over my “career” (no TV producer I’ve known actually calls the freelance life that feels like monkeys swinging from vine to vine a sustainable career), I’ve helped launch five shows on networks like Fox, NBC, and CNN, and three of those have been summer test runs. The shows I worked on produced 10, 15, and 30 episodes, and lasted from four to seven weeks. On two of them I was involved in all three stages of production (pre-production, production, and post-production), while the third mostly kept us out of the editors’ bays.

While the shows produced per week over a summer test run doesn’t appear exceptional (most daytime talk shows do 5 or 6 a week, while court shows can do upwards of 10), it’s the pain of squeezing the whole life cycle of a show into less than two months that makes these tests such an unruly beast. Essentially, you’re developing a brand new show (the starting point is often little more than, “Here’s a host, and an hour to fill), and delivering that brand new show to a network with highly demanding specs – two processes that have career paths and companies devoted to them – while also producing the show, all at the same time.

Having been through this strange, sweaty crucible three times, I wanted to put together a list of the best ways to survive the summer test run for those of you who are considering making the same move. I hope that, if you’re deciding to take a summer job, these tips will give you a glimpse of the environment you’ll likely find yourself in. If you’ve already taken the job, I hope they help you get to August intact. While there’s no shortage of lessons learned (and NDA-barred stories I can’t share), the following 10 tips will get you through the chaos that is a summer production.

Controlled Panic – Don’t panic about what you can’t control. Because, invariably, you will be given a lot of news that seems panic-worthy. No segments to produce? Panic. Too many segments to produce? Panic. Canceled celebrity guests? Panic. Host doesn’t like you? Panic. Unless it directly affects you in your duty as assistant, PA, AP, or Producer, save your anxiety for actual problems you can actually work on.
Backups on Backups on Backups – Getting to know the likes and dislikes of your executive producers, talent, and network in under a month, and then delivering what they want, is one of the bigger challenges of the summer test run. Because of this overly critical gauntlet, most of your ideas will die an early death. So, have a backup plan, or three. If you’re producing the celebrity interviews, have backups for games, questions, and surprising photos. If you’re pitching a human interest guest, have others who are available, or local options, or kid options. If you’re pitching a news story for the table discussion, think of two or three different conversations that could be had about it.
The Work Week is A Week – You may get lucky and work 5 days a week. You may work 7 days a week. But my average for summer test runs is something like 6.33 days a week (repeating, of course). You can ask as much as you like in the interview process what the expected workload will be, but you’re going to get a conservative answer (“We’re totally going to leave by 6pm every night!”). The longer nights and weekend days may also be tied to new responsibilities and interesting roles, so the extra work isn’t a categorically bad thing. Just adjust your expectations: a summer test run doesn’t mean Summer Fridays.
Serving Two Masters – While producing for television nearly always means getting approval from the show’s executive producer, as well as the network, the summer test run means you’re often getting regular, prolonged exposure to both groups, at the same time, as they butt heads on making the best possible show, while also appealing to a very specific audience. There aren’t rules on how to handle this, necessarily, just be aware that you’re about to experience some fun dynamics. You’ve got two moms now.
Don’t Bitch About Pitching – Though the burn rate for ideas is higher during these pressure-cooker summer tests than a season-long run, idea generation is a part of television. TV is fueled by ideas. If you don’t like ideas being pitched, discarded, and born again from the ashes, you’re probably not in the right industry.
Level Up – If you’re between jobs, this summer test run can be a chance to try on a new title for size. If you’re returning to a job in the fall, you can get experience you might not have otherwise gotten in the more ossified systems of a season-long show. From PA to Executive Producer, you have the chance to create opportunities for yourself, and grab on to the next swinging vine.
Let Me Reiterate: Iterate – The show will change. The format will change. Your responsibilities will change. Then, they may change back. Roll with it. With new teams, raw talent, and lots of network cooks in the kitchen, the show’s identity will change a dozen times before you start taping. Then, if you’re lucky, it’ll settle in for the run. Likely, it’ll keep changing throughout. That’s the nature of this experiment you signed up for. Solutions are only meant to last for two or three weeks, not six or eight months, so don’t expect every iteration to be the most logical one.
The Great Departmental Divide – Sometimes you’ll be staffed with long-time TV friends. Other times, you’ll know no one. Some staffs and stage crews have worked together before. Others come from wildly different backgrounds. During long office hours and longer tape days, strange allegiances form, between teams on the staff, between the staff and crew. Make an effort to keep communicating and checking in. Communicate, don’t fester. Bridge the Great Departmental Divide, and the show, and your experience on it, will be that much better.
Eyeing the Finish Line – Freelancing is frustrating because the jobs keep coming to an end. How people handle the finish line speaks volumes. Some spend a lot of time and energy looking for their next jobs; their focus will wane, and they’ll make mistakes. Others keep locked in until the bitter end. What can you do about it? Handle your own business. Pace through to the finish.
Closure? Yeah, Sure – Summer runs are like summer flings. Enjoy them in the moment – don’t worry about what’s going to happen in the winter. Don’t expect a satisfying conclusion where the show’s future is explained and everything makes sense. Go to the wrap party and celebrate that you pulled off making a massive show with a skeleton staff, and don’t worry about the show getting “extended” (spoiler: it won’t). If it’s going to get picked up for another season, you’ll likely hear about it in December or January.

While I’ve painted a picture of summer test runs that’s no doubt frenetic, frantic, and more than a little frustrating, it’s worth disclosing that my favorite job was one of them. I worked with an incredible host, a team as strong as Achilles (and yes, with a heel like his, too), and the show was perfect.

You do need to know that these summer tests are gambles. No one can predict the outcome from the start – that’s why they exist in the first place. While the payout for the show isn’t guaranteed, you can help your own odds. If you have the right attitude, and a lot of patience, you’ll leave the table with more chips than you put down.

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