Television

Did I Ever Tell You About….My Strange Obsessions?

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I originally wrote this post a couple of years ago. As I was looking over my previous posts this one jumped out at me. Not because it’s no longer true (trust me it is still very much true); but with the influx of more obsessed Star War fans, and my daughters’ own geeky obsessions, I thought that it’s a good time to share this again.

The obsessions I discuss haven’t really changed much (the British version of Top Gear has fallen off the list completely and Antiques Road Show has started making its way on). I haven’t had the chance to watch a lot of television over the last year, so some of the active obsession has fallen off a bit. But, that doesn’t mean it’s not there. Just like something we thought we outgrew as a kid and we fall in love with again when we discover it as an adult, the obsession doesn’t stop, it just waits for us to find out way back.

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It’s difficult to admit. And every time I think I get one beat, I just end up slipping into another one. I can’t even remember where it started. Probably with Empire Strikes Back. But it’s included Star Trek (both the movies and the TV show), Star Trek: Next Generation, Star Trek: Enterprise (but surprisingly not the other shows in that universe), of course Star Wars (yes – I love both Trek and Wars!), NCIS, Bones, Top Gear (British Version on BBC America), Holmes on Homes, American Pickers, Bon Jovi (Not my fault, they stalked me first), Doctor Who, Sherlock (again the BBC version but the others are cool too), the list goes on and on, but my most recent  and current obsession is the TV show Supernatural. 

And I do mean….

Supernatural Season 10 Poster

Supernatural Season 10 Poster (You know I don’t own this right? If I did…well…never mind.)

obsession in the truest sense of the word. It usually starts with my husband or daughter introducing me to something and grows to the point where I’m annoying people in line at the amusement park with my theories on the impact of turning Demon!Dean back into just plain Dean (may or may not be a true example). It eventually gets to the point where my husband and daughter refuse to listen any more and basically just walk away when I start talking about the possible meaning behind the change in Sam’s hair length (may or may not have actually happened).

Mike Holmes

Mike Holmes, he makes things right. In Canada

I follow members of the cast and crew on just about every form of social media (not necessarily under my own name, I don’t want to look crazy). I watch videos of panels at conventions YouTube . I try to schedule meetings around talk show appearances. Please note, not all of these apply to all subjects of obsessions…l mean Mike Holmes is from Canada and rarely makes US talk show appearances…that is to say I have enough control to not actually do all of these things. All the time. As far as most people are aware.

In the old days it was easier to keep under control. There was Entertainment Tonight and fan magazines. If there was big news it made my small town newspaper and I could clip the article. Living in Pennsylvania with no way to get anywhere close to anywhere that any of the shows were made meant hoping for a form letter response was about as close to anything as I was going to get.

Supernatural's Chuck Shurley at the computer in a bathrobe.

Chuck, The Profit, writing strange & wonderful things in a slightly drunken stupor. (Again, I don’t own it)

Today it’s a 24 hours non-stop source of information for the mildly interested and a feeding frenzy of data for the obsessed. It’s all fandom, all the time. And it’s so easy to go down that rabbit hole to where the weird and wonderful lives…mostly on Tumblr…where there are “ships” and interpretations of character and episodes that even the writers would never have dreamed of in their worst drunken stupor.

It’s freeing to know you’re not the only one out there wondering who would win in a fight if two of your favorite characters, both known for their love of pie, somehow ended up in the same universe with the last piece of pecan. No, only me? Well alright. But you get the idea. With it being so much easier to find like-minded fans it’s easier to get even more wrapped up in a show. It’s like that big dark thing in the basement that starts feeding on it’s own darkness that no one wants to talk about and Sam and Dean will eventually have to come gank…still only me? Ok. Moving on.

I don’t think these obsessions are necessarily a bad thing. At the very core they are a means to escape every day life. They feel a void of some sort (need for excitement, need for creativity, need for control, need to be the hero, etc.) and give people something to look forward, something outside confines of their normal lives that is…special…exciting…supernatural (couldn’t resist).

The 11th Doctor talking on the telephone.

The has been known to get a little obsessed from time to time too, but even he talks to people (Matt Smith as the 11th Doctor – still don’t own a thing).

I think as long as we’re not running around claiming to be someone’s spouse, or that we run a network, or sending death threats for killing off a character, it’s ok. When you start tweeting actors and calling them nasty names because of something their on-screen persona did or accuse them of harboring ill feelings towards groups of people because the show doesn’t support the relationship you want their character to be in…it is way past time to step back. Push away from the keyboard. Go meet talk to people the old fashioned way, on the phone.

My obsessions have never gone that far, thank goodness. Some have been much shorter than others. There are a few that are still there, they’re just in hiatus waiting for the next opportunity to drive me just a little bit crazy. Honestly it’s kind of fun. And, of all the kinds of things out there I could be obsessed with in the grand scheme of things, mine aren’t so bad. Actually, I can’t wait to see what I get obsessed with next (neither can my family, but probably for totally different reasons).

I want to hear from you! Let me know in the comments below what TV shows you’re obsessed with now, and what new shows this fall may be making your obsession list.

Filling the Quiet Moments

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It occurred to me the other day that I was filling all my quiet moments. I listened to podcasts on my way to and from work. There were books and movies and television and the internet during my off times. Most every waking moment was filled with information and “input”. I was even listening to music or relaxing sounds as I drifted off to sleep.

I wasn’t giving myself any quiet moments. There wasn’t time to let my mind wander or relax. All the messages coming in weren’t giving me opportunity to connect with my own thoughts. While I thought I was spurring my creativity I was actually stifling it because I was giving my mind time to process and use it.

How many of us are guilty of filling our days with information and sound? Input is important, but we need the quiet time to let our minds relax.

Writing for Your Audience and Your Medium

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Family watching television, c. 1958

Image via Wikipedia

Over the last few days I’ve been reminded again how important it is to write for your audience and your medium. We’ve all heard about writing for the intended audience (you don’t write at a college level when your audience is 4th graders) and how important it is to make sure the audience will understand what you’re trying to say. If we’re lucky we’ve even had a little time to study the audience and understand them. The final product has a better chance of being accepted when we know the audience and write for them.

A lot of people forget about the importance of writing to the medium as well. In my experience a lot of people forget that there is a difference between the way you should write for a text-book, a presentation, a website and video. The delivery method has a huge impact on the way information is received, so it should influence the content itself. For example, how do you think a video would be received when the script sounds like it’s been directly lifted from a text-book? Would a presentation have the same feeling as an article on a web? If you want to be successful the answer should be no.

I’ve worked in video, marketing and instructional design. I’ve written for everything from TV promos to kiosks to instructor guides. Trust me, if you want to hold people’s interest and make your point you need to think about how your message is being delivered. If what you delivered will be read aloud, then you need to read it out-loud. You need to hear the way the words sound together and make sure it’s easy to listen to, and just as importantly, that it can be easily read. If the words are awkward or hard to say the person you are trying to communicate with will have a hard time receiving the message. I have had the opportunity to rewrite a number of scripts so that look good on paper, but when you read them out loud it is a whole different story. (As a side note, scripts that have been proofread and approved by lawyers is often difficult to read out-loud and to hear).

Take my advice, and save yourself a lot of trouble, add delivery medium to the list of  things you think about before you start to write. Your audience will thank you for it.

What the Heck is Corporate Video Anyway?

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High end linear editing suite, 1999.

Image via Wikipedia

When I started college as a Radio/Television production major I thought I would work in television or movies. I never thought I would end up corporate video. Like many of my classmates I entered the wonderful world of small market television after college eventually becoming weekend director at a top 100 market. After a couple of years I figured out that not only am I good at video production, I love it. I also figured out that I hate news production. After some work in marketing and public relations I discovered a home in corporate video production.

The much less sexy cousin of television, corporate video covers a range of uses and purposes. While it might not be as glamorous, it’s filled with variety and options that television just doesn’t have. One day you could be working on a training video and the next be working a flashy marketing piece. And chances are that unless you work in news your whole life, at some point you too will work in corporate television.

Most production companies will at some point be involved in corporate video. Whether they like to admit it or not. Doing commercials is a lot of fun, but unless you’re a big firm there usually aren’t enough of them coming through the door to pay the rent. Trust me, this was not the career path I would have predicted, but you know it’s not that bad. The hours are a lot better than TV that’s for sure!

The best part is that I get to do such a variety of videos, I don’t get bored. Some have been a little less exciting than others, but in the end I’ve learned something. The challenge is to make each and every production fresh and interesting, because that’s what you’re clients deserve.

More and more companies are moving toward video to reach their customer base. They’re going look for people with vision, creativity, and high quality standards to help them do it. I think that many of these business will be looking to form long-term partnerships with small production companies rather than forming internal teams. If you only want one or two videos a quarter, the overhead for putting a team together and outfitting it with the right equipment is not cost productive. Hiring a local production company to handle videos from concept to completion is likely a better investment. One or two videos a quarter may not seem like much at the start, but if marketed well and producing good work that one company turns in to three or four, and it could just keep growing from there.

To answer the question, corporate is a growing lucrative market for those interested in a career in video. It’s fairly stable and there’s a lot of room for growth. My only words of advice are, be good at what you do. Do you’re job right and the possibilities is limitless.