executive producer/partner
Lucky 21
1) Increasingly, companies who were known for one area are expanding into others – clients/brands are building internal agencies, agencies adding production, and so on. This has some understood pitfalls, but can also have significant upsides. One, is a greater understanding of what is involved from strategy and concept to execution. Our expertise is in production, but it behooves us to understand the intricacies of what agencies and brands do so that we are better partners to each. The other is the opportunity to connect and to partner, be iron sharpening iron, rather than build walls between each other. Be a resource and an outside voice to address the problem or need at hand. For this to work well, businesses should retain a paramount focus, rather than trying to do it all. It is challenging to make it work – in any industry. There’s an ethical way to expand and adapt that can yield great results, helping everyone thrive.
2) David Lowery’s “A Ghost Story” is a simple, powerful story that effectively uses time as an elemental force, where pacing acts almost as character. Not just from this year, but resonant nevertheless, Peaky Blinders is a vintage story that feels extremely modern in part because of the incredible use of music. And Black Mirror is a chilling comment on our times. People say that everyone has shorter and shorter attention spans, but the consumption of serialized entertainment, like binge-watching Game of Thrones or podcasts like S-Town demonstrate the sustaining power of storytelling to still capture the imagination for hours on end.
3) Gillette’s film “Handle With Care,” through Grey is one of my favorite advertising projects of the year, and I’m obviously not alone based on the award wins. It is a niche product, a razor designed for assisted shaving, that was launched with a piece that is about family bonds and the imperceptible things that can make a big difference to quality of life. If you watch it with dry eyes, you probably kept them closed.
4) Community engagement is becoming an important part of our industry. From brands that are helping effect change to organizations looking to add meaning and value to members. The AICP Southwest recently held a volunteer day where members worked at a Dallas farm which was established to grow food and support a neighborhood that’s historically experienced an urban food drought. Our goal, as a chapter, is to do more of this kind of participation. Brands also have the ability to do the same on a wider level – changemaking that can boost brand image and help others.
5) The recent award show winners affirm that the best work makes people care. People are so sophisticated with their approach to media – they are perpetually surrounded by technology and brands, and a contrived approach is quickly dismissed or ignored. We are living in an age of bombardment and selection – people filter out what is a cheap sell, but give them something that emotionally resonates, something that respects one’s time spent, and you can create powerful brand appeal and loyalty.
From Restoring To Hopefully Preserving Multi-Camera Categories At The Emmys
When Gary Baum, ASC won his fourth career Emmy Award earlier this month, it was especially gratifying in that the honor came in a category--Outstanding Cinematography for a Multi-Camera Half-Hour Series--that had been restored thanks in part to a grass-roots initiative among cinematographers to drum up entries. Last year the category fell by the wayside when not enough multi-camera entries materialized.
In his acceptance speech, Baum appealed to the Television Academy to keep multi-camera categories alive. He later noted to SHOOT that editors also got their multi-camera recognition back in the Emmy competition this year. Baum hopes that after resurrecting multi-camera categories in 2024, such recognition will be preserved for 2025 and beyond.
A major factor in the decline of multi-camera submissions in 2023 was the move of certain children’s and family programming from the primetime Emmy competition to the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences’ (NATAS) Emmy ceremony. For DPs this meant that multi-camera programs last year were reduced to vying for just one primetime nomination slot in the more general Outstanding Cinematography for a Series (Half-Hour) category. It turned out that this single slot was filled in ‘23 by a Baum-lensed episode of How I Met Your Father (Hulu).
Fast forward to this year’s competition and Baum won for another installment of How I Met Your Father--”Okay Fine, It’s A Hurricane,” which turned out to be the series finale. Two of Baum’s Emmy wins over the years have been for How I Met Your Father, and there’s a certain symmetry to them. His initial win for How I Met Your Father was for the pilot in 2022. So he won Emmys for the very first and last... Read More