We’ll probably get by – although there’s a reason I’m not a shooter – but it would be nice to have someone with reality/news experience who could manage the FS100 for that period. Not that it’s a particularly attractive offer because we can’t do more than cover costs for that phase. When we get a sale of the series we’ll be paying everyone involved decent wages, but it’s not possible to do it up front.

Ideally someone based in Florida or nearby.

If you’re interested email me. If you’re suitable you’ll be able to find my email address online.

Now, technically I can only view and select on one source at a time, but what happens in practice is that I select what I want from the device, tell FCP X to copy to the Event, and then move on to the next device.

As you may know, Final Cut Pro X is pretty clever at this. It immediately creates aliases in your Event folder and progressively copies the media from the device or card, progressively replacing the aliases with real media.

Couple of details: the devices or cards must remain mounted until the copy is complete. The Import from Camera window can be closed, and you can start working with the media while this happens. I suspect you can connect devices up to the limit you can physically connect, but the USB data rate becomes a limit eventually.

For us the advantage is that the Mac Mini ingest station can be remotely set up to ingest from multiple devices  quite quickly, then left to itself (without needing human supervision) while it completes the task.

Update: Jonathan Sanderson - @jjsanderson on Twitter – adds

I bought a 4-slot SD card reader recently and have had Final Cut Pro X ingesting from multiple cards simultaneously. The USB was slow, but worked well. The reader is Kodak-branded and I was ingesting mix of AVCCAM & Nikon H.264. Transcoding to proxy etc. very smooth.

• Bug fix for AV clips where only the audio is used
• Bug fix for still images and PDFs importing as black in a sequence
• Bug fix for an extra gap clip added to the end of the primary storyline using XML from Premiere Pro
• Bug fix for incorrect sequence duration using XML from Premiere Pro

That is the third different fix for Premiere Pro XML!  Looking forward to the Automatic Duck influence in future releases!

So, I’m a little fussy about the way things look. Hence, lighting. And logically LED, and therefore LitePanels. A mixture of Micro Pros, Mini Pros and a 1×1 for when I need a heavy fill or to light up a bigger area.

The cameras we’ll be using will produce good video in bad light. The NEX 7 in video mode sees the world much the way I see it. The FS100 is even more light sensitive. Great, we’re more likely to get something usable than not.  But I still want the option of control.

One of the Micro Pros (or perhaps a Mini Pro) will live on the FS100 as a soft fill, which is where the no-color-shift dimming allows us to dial in just enough fill without needing filters or diffusion.

But mounts. No room for a C-stand kit, nor really sufficient people to manage them. So for both camera and lights, I’m relying on a mixture of thePods black (thanks for the recommendation Loren); Gorillapods -  they can handle any of our cameras or any of our lights because everything is so light these days; and a pair each of Matthews grip and Gaffer Grip clamps.

Plus two lightweight tripods for the cameras. I’m comfortable for multi camera interviews, to set up two cameras with fixed shots, relying on the FS100 to provide the primary coverage, but with wide and close-up of subject as fixed shots.

The great thing is, other than the tripods, how little space those mounts take up. What will be interesting will be what becomes the go-to solution for cameras, and for lights.

• Research on surrounding attractions and contact details
• Our multi-user logging app will be on a remote server (most likely) or connected via the public internet to the server on Ra (unlikely). It needs this topography to make the multi-user aspect work.
• Upload daily video blogs, pictures, and blog posts for SolarOdyssey.com and PhilipHodgetts.com

We have need for connectivity on Ra for research and posting purposes, but also while off the boat for the logging app.

On Boat

In an ideal world, with a bigger budget than we have, I’d use a bandwidth aggregation product that took multiple cell services and multiplexed them together. It’s a complex system and frankly ended up too expensive with limited choices. The practical solution is to have multiple connections, with the expectation that one will be faster than the others in any given location, or we can share the usage across multiple networks.

To that end, we’ll have an ATT USB modem in the Mac mini, shared via internal airport across the boat as one WiFi network. We’ll also use a MiFi on Virgin Mobile’s network (in practice T Mobile I believe). The Verizon powered iPad also has capability for using as a hot spot, so that will be the third on-board network.

Switching between networks to find the fastest speed isn’t ideal but it seems to be the solution that fits the haiku!

Off Boat

Off boat it’s an iPad world. The Verizon iPad as a hot spot, with an ATT iPad as an additional network connection to ensure that we can log even if only one network is available. If we find the need we can take the MiFi device off boat as well, as it fits in a pocket.

Sharing the load across multiple networks also helps balance data costs, keeping some networks within their limits.

The other saving grace, is that most of the marinas we plan to stay at have available wifi at the docks, which will be a “land line” connection for media uploads.

Terence attended this year’s Hollywood Post Alliance retreat with the theme “Snowflake Workflows” and talks about the technologies that were previewed.

The things that stood out for Terry in the demo room: Sony’s Blu-ray archive solution to compete with LTO and $25,000 4K home projector;

There’s a side discussion how disruptive technologies often come out of the consumer divisions of the large conglomerates rather than their professional product division.

Terry then a panel where Disney discussed automating the diversity of outputs from master file (up to thousands of variations).

How does the combination of RAW and Lytro camera affect production? How much moves from production to post?

Terry also talks about the trends in production and consumption revealed at the HPA Retreat.

As much as possible I want to avoid the penalty and inefficiency of inverting power from the boat’s DC system up to 110V AC, particularly since every device we use internally is close to 12V DC. Now the boat’s native system – from the solar chargers to the batteries and motors – is 48V DC. Downconverting that to 12V DC is virtually lossless and the technology is well proven. Nothing new here.

But finding gear that has direct 12V (or other DC voltage) is difficult. The laptops are relatively easy. The input is 14-18V DC and, despite a lot of research elsewhere, it turns out that Hypermac has a great solution: pair their Magic Box adapter with their (included free) Hypermac Pure DC Car Charger and there’s the perfect solution for all our laptops. For the Mac Mini MikeGyver.biz has a step by step on what to do. I’m comfortable enough (and time constraints mandated) that I can perform the operation myself, but took advantage of the Mini DC conversion Kit item in the MikeGyver.biz store.

My most significant current issue is that we have a great partner working with us on modifying their drives for direct 12V but they’re constrained by their boss being out of the country and can’t commit. Given that drives run off 12V natively, that shouldn’t be too big an issue. So, there’s an open sponsorship slot (for the assistance) or I’ll buy and mod raids myself.

The Nady radio mic receiver combo has an external 15V DC power supply, which just happens to be right in the range of the output from the Hypermac Pure DC Car Charger. Another problem solved.

All iPhones, iPads and similar devices will be preferential charged via USB. 12V to USB adapters are very common and I use a two outlet version in my car to charge the iPhone. Easy.

MOTU 8pre has a built-in power supply and neither manual nor anything I can find online reveals the actual power need internally, nor even the power load at 110V – making it hard to estimate how much 12V power we’ll need for a typical production day. So that remains an unknown at the moment. The power rating will have to be on the back of the device, at least at 110V, but I’ll bet internally it’s not far from 12V DC (although it may have a more complex power need within the device, it’s hard to know).

As much as we’re avoiding paper – using iPad apps for clearances and metadata entry, etc – it will be necessary to print postage labels, etc, and scan in receipts and other documents. For printing we chose the HP OfficeJet Mobile 100 - it may even get through the journey on one charge! I suspect we’ll be able to charge via DC direct, but otherwise it could be charged from a 110V AC circuit at planned (power advantageous) moments.

Scanning duties will be handled by the bus-powered NeatReceipts scanner. If you like it, buy from Amazon, I didn’t have a good time with their ordering system. This should allow us to go as paperless as we can.

What I haven’t been able to find direct 12V equivalents are, as mentioned, the 8pre but also some of the battery chargers. In some cases I’ve been able to find alternate chargers (thanks Steve) and in others the amount of power they draw is so small that it may not be worth the effort.

The other big challenge has been calculating the total amount of power we need for production. It’s quite difficult to get the 12V equivalent current from the 110V stats. Sent me back to my high school days when I was totally on top of current conversion between voltages. Seems it was still residing in the back of my mind. Given the difference between average and peak load, I’ve asked for the peak hoping the difference between peak, and average will cover the things I didn’t account for!

Roughly half the power we need will go to production. Or putting it another way, without doing the production on board we could have twice the power available for propulsion, lighting, etc.

Since Final Cut Pro X runs so very well on MacBook Pros, primary editing will be done on two mid 2011 Quad Core i7 MacBook Pros with 8 GB RAM each. Even better there are readily available 12v native power supplies for these computers and an older Core2Duo (December 2009 vintage). While this isn’t an ideal machine for Final Cut Pro X, it has other advantages and uses, as we’ll see.

Server

The server is an Mac Mini Server Quad Core i7 again, with 16 GB of RAM (Crucial kit). Now that they moved the power supply internally, this will need to be modified to run off 12v direct. (Yes, voiding the warranty, but while it’s open I’ll add in the 16 GB of RAM.)

Storage will be directly attached to the Mac Mini. In an ideal world that would be Thunderbolt connected, RAID 5 in a four drive tower with 3 TB drives, formatting to around 8.7 TB. However, since we need these modified to work directly on 12 volt (the native voltage of hard drives) we’re currently working with ProAvio to use FW 800 drives. Since we’ll be mostly working with 24 Mbit/sec for ingest, and ProRes Proxy for editing, FW 800 will have the bandwidth we need.

Whichever we get (and sponsorship is open still) we’ll need two. The second unit will stay off most of the time, being our backup backup. Each day there would be a moment where the changes to Array 1 are replicated to Array 2, for an on-boat backup. With this configuration I could lose a drive in one array and not lose data and still have redundancy in the second array.

The Mac Mini will be headless – no keyboard or monitor – and operated by screen sharing from (primarily) the Core2Duo MacBook Pro. Analysis processing and proxy generation will happen with FCP X running on the Mac Mini server (which is also recording audio, unless that proves to processor intensive, in which case a base Mac Mini will be modded and added or we’ll ship an older laptop we have for the purpose.)

The server will also be used to run the custom apps that store and merge metadata with media, and trim audio media to match logged metadata.

SAN

With Xsan server built into Lion server, included with the Mac Mini model we chose, that was the first logical choice. Except the requirements are very unfriendly for our haiku and so it was eliminated from the discussion. (Not a slam at Xsan, it’s fine in most circumstances.)

At NAB I’d done my research, as we were skeptical that Xsan would work, and confirmed with Tiger Technology that MetaLAN and MetaSAN server would indeed do the job: even connecting over WiFi if desired.

And it most definitely works. We currently have it set up and working in the office feeding to two laptops via WiFi. Why WiFi? Historic really. An earlier boat we were going to use was an existing solar craft that we could not drill holes anywhere, making cabled SAN difficult. Some research suggested that ProRes Proxy, at around 6 Mbit/sec and 802.11N would comfortably cover at least 6-8 editing streams.

However, given that this boat is Skipper Jim’s design and ours to work with, there’s no reason to add the potential instability of a WiFi network when we can run Gbit Ethernet instead. MetaLAN works well in either configuration: WiFi or Ethernet, and looks like it will meet our needs 100%.

The only limitation with MetaLAN is that it doesn’t control read/write permissions so we will have some “human engineering” solutions to prevent people logging into the same workspace and “sharing” a FCP X Event or Project. (That would be bad.) Fortunately Final Cut Pro X will  auto-mount the last used share points, so it will be quite workable and not a real limitation.

Off-boat backup

One additional challenge is off-boat backup. I’m comfortable that we’ll have enough redundancy on board, with RAID 5 and duplicate towers (and two matching drives in case of failure) but I’m also a disaster planner: what if we get half way round and some disaster happens and we lose Ra? Everything on board would be presumed lost, so it’s important to have redundant off-boat copies of our merged and metadata-tagged Events and Projects.

I initially defaulted to hard drives, naturally, but rejected them for a couple of reasons. Hard drive sizes would mean that off-boat backups would be every 250 GB or so, or about 20 days of anticipated shooting. That’s too long to not have a backup. Drives are also more difficult to ship, requiring special padding etc. Plus the expense: drives are cheaper but not inconsequential.

Solution: after considering SD cards and rejecting because of cost, it looks like 8 GB USB sticks will be the media of choice. Each day, or second day, two copies of the new material will be posted out (as we’re near civilization almost every night). One copy will come to our home and be filed by the person house-sitting for us. One copy will go to another location.

So, Internet wisdom, what am I missing?

No such luck here. There’s simply not room in the crew for a dedicated audio person.

There are also two audio problems to solve: on Ra (our boat) and off Ra.

On Ra

My solution for on-boat audio is pretty classic – radio mic everyone! To our advantage we’ll mostly be out on the water, well over a hundred yards from any likely sources of interference. I would love to put together a Sennheiser kit with six channels but there’s that budget constraint again.

While certainly no Sennheiser, this Nady kit seems like it will do the job. It seems focused on small venue support so I’m confident it’ll minimize cross interference. The receiver is a one rack unit high, with either composite output, or eight individual channel outputs. We have a crew of six, plus possible guests, so normally six channels will go directly from the receiver, via a MOTU 8pre and be recorded direct to disk on the Mac Mini server. The receiver unit runs on 15v, easily achievable on board where nominal “12v” usually runs a couple of volts over, with internal regulation clamping it to 12v internal to devices.

This is not the cheapest eight channel system in the market, but eight channels for $295 seemed way too cheap to possibly be worthwhile.

Two additional PZM (surface effect) microphones will feed into the additional two channels – possibly both in the cabin for a fall back recording, or perhaps one in cabin and one outside to record ambient. (I’m still undecided.) I also haven’t yet chosen the two PZM microphones, so suggestions in the comments, please.

The radio mic outputs, and microphones, will go through a MOTU 8pre into a multichannel recording that will run most of the time we’re on the boat. (Metadata will be used to automatically pull selects for any audio that’s been marked as useful, by adding metadata at the time in our new metadata app. That app will also label each channel with the person’s name.)

Final Cut Pro X (or Pluraleyes, whichever works best in our workflow) will be used to synchronize audio with appropriate video. I also figure that if we have to cover 5-10 seconds at the start of a story with some b-roll, as long as the audio is good, I can get away with it. That’s where having that dedicated Go Pro would work (right Steve O?) as “safe” cover visually, and the more I think of it the more I like the idea.

Monitoring will have to consist of spot checks, rather than the luxury of a dedicated person.

Off boat

It’s off boat that having a dedicated audio person with the traditional boom microphone would be nice. Very nice, because they would also be monitoring. Again, not going to happen.

A somewhat lateral suggestion was made by my friend, and audio guru, David Lawrence  suggested individual recordings. I’ve been testing the Audio-Technica ATR-3350 Lavalier Omnidirectional Condenser Microphone feeding into a Zoom H1 and it works well, as long as the limits of lavalire microphones and kept in mind (position and clothing rustle). My only issue with the ATR-3350 is that it comes with a very long cable that I don’t need but don’t want to cut. I think I’ll heat-shrink wrap it!

Each crew member would get their own unit off boat (well, four people will).

On the FS100 I’d like a typical short-shotgun. I’m open to better suggestions than Sony’s default for the FS100.

Which still leaves me with the problem of casual-but-close audio. I’m thinking about trying to get the best sound from people on an adjacent boat, for example. So here’s my second problem: what microphone to use that won’t be too big and clumsy but has a good hypercardiod, highly directional, pickup pattern, with noise isolating hand grip? That would feed another H1 or (if XLR) an H4.

Again, metadata and audio waveform-based synchronization will be used to bring audio and video together in Final Cut Pro X before editing starts.

I think the amazing thing is how much technology has changed over the last five years. Without the ability to sync based on audio waveforms (in my mind pioneered by Bruce Sharpe at Singular Software) I doubt we’d be able to get decent audio on this journey. At a minimum we’d need one additional person; a bunch of Lockit boxes (or similar) and a lot more fuss before a shoot. So, like the video side, the convergence of technology is what makes this production even plausible within the limits.

For me, it has to have a large sensor. Large sensor video cameras just produce nicer images (particularly if you know how to focus!).

DSLRs are definitely inexpensive compared with cameras of years gone by, but they become unwieldy if you want to make them function more like a video camera. An F3 would be very nice but out of my budget. Skipper Jim, the founder of the Solar Odyssey adventure, had selected a Sony NEX FS100 and I’ve had no reason to reconsider that decision. It shares the same sensor as the F3 but has a street price under $6,000 with kit lens.

Once I read Adam Wilt’s detailed review I decided that there was zero reason to rethink the decision. Choice of mounts will be that of the primary camera person on board, after all she’ll be the one using it. (And yes, we’ll need neutral density filters and a wide adapter at a minimum.)

So, that’s a nice primary camera, but one thing I’ve learnt is how much easier editing is when you have two angles to choose! Particularly with interviews. But budget precludes additional FS100′s making the compromise the NEX 7, just released at the start of April. A slightly smaller APS-C sensor (but still bigger than a RED 1 according to the second comparison chart at CreativeCow.net) it’s in the same family and I feel confident that they’ll cut together. (Similarly, if I’d chosen the more expensive Canon C300, the DSLRs would have been Canon for the same reason.) At a kit price of $1350 with lens, I can add 3 additional NEX 7′s – for helicopter, b and c cameras. I got one in advance and shot both still and video at NAB 2012 and have been pleased with the results.

I fully recognize the compromise here: being 24Mbit AVCHD at 4:2:0 for both FS 100 and NEX 7 we’re not going to have a lot of headroom for color correction. On the other hand, I was unable to ‘break’ the compression on the camera despite testing it against rapidly flashing lights around various Las Vegas casinos. These were situations that I feel confident would have shown artifacting in HDV.

The relative affordability, and 1080P60 capability of the NEX 7 means I can mount one permanently on the Hoverfly helicopter throughout the journey, keeping setup times to a minimum.

Importantly, testing the NEX 7 I can be shooting video within 3 seconds of picking up the camera and turning it on. In reality TV that’s a huge plus. (By comparison the FS100 takes 12 seconds.) Kept available and ready to go any moment, these will likely get a lot of use.

The NEX 7′s will also be used for still photography – a long time hobby of mine and part of a deal we’re doing with Save the Manatees Club - so the 24 Mpixel sensor doesn’t hurt there either.

That’s the primary shooting kit – NEX FS100, three NEX 7 (one in helicopter). Then there will be at least two iPhones on board (my iPhone 4, Greg’s iPhone 4S) that shoot HD video (the 4S doing a much better job). Plus, another five 1080P cameras in the iPads on board (for our metadata entry app in development and to keep social media and casual browsing off the higher power-needy MacBook Pros). And likely two Go Pro Hero 2s for close and underwater work.

That’s six people on board and 12 accessible HD camcorders, plus the one in the helicopter. So, I think we should be able to “get the shot” regardless of what happens. By preference FS100 and NEX 7 as primary cameras, but if it’s a case of “getting the shot” I’ll take whatever camera is handiest.

Much like the constraint of a Haiku focuses on both simplicity and structure, the production choices I’ve had to make for Solar Odyssey are the paring down to absolute simplicity. Oh, and invent some new technology along the way!

The constraints are many: a small crew, a small space, tight schedule, etc. Oh, and everything has to run off solar energy. Fortunately we tap into the boat’s main power, but by my calculation, production could use as much power each day as the engines on a typical day. So, we run off 12v, directly as much as possible. (Ironically, it seems battery chargers are the hardest to get direct 12v versions of.)

Then there’s choice of equipment. Did I mention another of the restrictions was that we have an incredibly small budget? It’s another constraint but it has forced me to rethink most of what is conventional wisdom for this style of production.

The other focus of a Haiku is the structure: very rigid. In my case the structure is that we want to produce television – a reality TV show. And those guys are structured! Almost rigid. So, combined with my forced simplicity, and frugality, is a need to deliver way more than we should, theoretically, be able to do. Hence my interest in putting more quality on the screen than is in the budget.

How these constraints have affected my decisions will be the subject of a few upcoming posts on:

• Cameras, because the look is important, but so is getting an image.
• Audio, one of life’s special challenges because it underpins perception of quality.
• Computers and SAN – did I mention that 12 v thing?
• Backup – again both on board and beyond.
• Power, both on board and beyond.
• Connectivity – one can’t produce without Internet for research, communication, blogging, video blogs, etc. And we need our Facebook!
• Lighting, because even with sensitive cameras I still like to be in control, but challenging. (See next point!)
• Mounts, because we don’t have space for what would be a “normal” complement of C-Stands, and there isn’t room anywhere on our boat Ra (after the Sun God) to put a camera on a tripod. (Nor the extra bodies that would be needed to carry and set up lights.)
• Planned workflow with Final Cut Pro X and a hint at the “secret sauce” we’re cooking up?
• Finishing.

I think I’ve done my research – often with input from friends – and have good solutions, but by discussing them here, perhaps I’ll avoid an overlooked looming disaster. That is, other than the whole project is probably mildly insane.

Just goes to show that delivering a product people want at a price they’re prepared to pay, is always good business.

Says Chris Dodds:

The truth is that neither the content nor the technology industries could survive without strong protections for intellectual property. 

But the reality – easily checked by anyone with a browser - the truth is:

Hollywood did come about because of strong patent protection, but not the way Dodd seems to be suggesting. Instead, the reason that filmmakers moved out to Hollywood was because it was about as far away as they could get from Thomas Edison, who held the patents on basic filmmaking technology, and demanded exorbitant licensing fees. So the main reason that Hollywood is in Hollywood is because they were seeking a place to hide from patents.

It’s a bit ridiculous for Dodd to try to rewrite this well-known history, and pretend that Hollywood developed because of strong IP protections when the exact opposite is what happened. I realize that Chris Dodd spent most of his adult life as a politician, so perhaps it’s a bit naive to expect him to actually tell the truth, but at some point someone who works for him (I’m sure there’s someone on staff who has accessed the internet once or twice) might want to explain to him that people can fact check him these days with relative ease online. Perhaps the next version of SOPA can be used to block people mocking Chris Dodd’s inane statements as well…

I just don’t understand why *anyone* would believe a single word that comes out of this liar’s mouth, let alone any supposedly intelligent person in Congress.

A very interesting article on the increasing computer algorithm use to make landings and take-offs safer:

Fighter pilot Mary “Missy” Cummings saw it coming while landing her F/A-18 supersonic jet on a Navy aircraft carrier — the world-changing disruption barreling toward the present.

Instead of landing the multi-million-dollar machine on the small deck of the ship herself in the 1990s, a computer accomplished the tricky feat for her.

“Here the computer was taking off better than I could, landing itself better than I could and doing the mission better than I ever could,” Cummings said Tuesday during the Wired Disruptive by Design business conference. “It was really humiliating. That was what used to make me better than everyone else.”

Missy Cummings chose to get on the side of the robots:

For now robots and humans seem to perform better as a team. “Humans are doing a pretty good job, but they do it even better with the assistance of algorithms,” she said. “This research … is really showing the power of how, when algorithms work with humans, the whole system performs better.”

I think that’s where I am with the application of algorithms to post production and transmedia: they make the work of the editor/storyteller easier, while letting those people add the human element to the project.

Certainly, there’s no way we can produce Television at the rate we need to for The Solar Odyssey Challenge without some automatic application of metadata.

In order to qualify for the world’s record, the boat will travel during the day only on electricity that is exclusively generated by solar power. No plugging-in allowed on this adventure! If all goes well, it will be the first time this has ever been done and the crew hopes to make it into the Guinness Book of World Records as the first solar-powered vessel to complete the Great Loop.

The entire journey will be filmed for a documentary series by Intelligent Assistance’s Philip Hodgetts and Greg Clarke, using unmanned camera systems from Hoverfly Technologies, Inc., Sony FS100 cameras for primary shots and Sony’s NEX 7s for secondary coverage.

It’s that last paragraph that presents the biggest challenges for me! In fact, I’m about to run a series of posts discussing these challenges. Basically, it requires throwing out every assumption  I know about reality production!

Respect

One of the problems I’ve constantly encountered with medical professionals of all kinds is that they rarely respect their patient’s time. In my world the provider of a service (yes, even medical) should be able to schedule their time so that customers (aka patients) do not waste excessive time. Unfortunately until this week, I’ve never attended an appointment where the medical professional was ready at the appointed time. Some have been even egregious: hours behind the supposed schedule.

Dr Adomian’s admin support had all my paperwork ready, and I was in to prep right on time. That’s the first thing that impressed me: he respected my time as much as his own.

Lesson one: Respect your customers.

Communcation

Throughout the entire process, I was kept informed about what was to happen at all times. Being a curious person I like to understand what’s going on and why. Every step was communicated ahead of time, including why his injections took so long. (Aside, because he didn’t rush like other dentists I’ve attended over the year.) While the extraction was happening I was constantly kept informed about what to expect, including the inevitable bit of tooth flying off as it was being extracted.

Lesson two: keep your customers informed as to what is happening.

Delight

An idea that has long been part of my portfolio of marketing ideas. Back in Australia (a lifetime ago) we would design a nice VHS (and later) DVD cover for the clients’ projects, instead of a plain wrapping.

But nothing caught me by surprise and delight as much as when my phone rang at around 7pm that night. It was Dr Adomian calling to make sure everything was OK: that the pain was under control (thank you Vicodin), that the bleeding had stopped, etc.

This totally floored me. I’ve never heard of anything like this. Ever. Heck, I’d have been impressed if his office rang the next morning!

This is a level of surprise and delight that, when you think about it, is both a great marketing strategy, but is also good for Dr Adomian. There can’t have been that many oral surgeries or extractions in the day – it’s a single dentist practice – and it was only about a one minute phone call, but it totally delighted me. As for the dentist: should there be any complication or issue, he’s being far more proactive at managing that – and more likely to catch something early, rather than waiting for a patient to think things were “enough” to call him.

Respect, communication and delight. Great tools for improving relationships with clients and great marketing. I just never expected them from a medical professional!

And they validate parking!

Now anyone who predicts the imminent doom of “Hollywood” is probably going to be wrong, but that doesn’t mean the long term trend isn’t in that direction.

The Wikipedia founder, delivering a keynote address at the Internet Society’s INET convention in Geneva, predicted that Hollywood will likely share the same fate as Encyclopedia Britannica, which shut down its print operation this year after selling just 3,000 copies last year.

“Hollywood will be destroyed and no one will notice,” Wales said. But it won’t be Wikipedia (or Encarta) that kills the moviemaking industry: ”Collaborative storytelling and filmmaking will do to Hollywood what Wikipedia did to Encyclopedia Britannica,” he said.

Wales hedged by saying predictions are easy — and he’s usually wrong. But he looks at a generation of kids growing up in a world of video and mastering editing software at a young age. His own 12-year-old daughter, Wales said, is already adept at iMovie and won a local award for a short film she made.

But that’s not like making a feature film or TV series. Not at all.

But telling a story and building a feature-length film collaboratively is much different and much harder than collectively adding verifiable facts to a Wikipedia entry. So it’s unlikely that Hollywood’s going to pay much attention to Wales’ prognostication. Which means if the next generation turns out to find away to creating the next Titanic on a $5,000 budget, Hollywood won’t even see the blow coming.

While it’s still an outlier, Star Wreck: In the Perkinning points to what can be done: full length feature film made by two people, with hundreds contributing remotely, in a 10×12′ room. CG and green screen, and lots of time, created a movie worth watching.

Iron Sky, the next project, is a mix of traditional and fan funding.

It must be the day for delusional old media executives but this one is completely nutso.

It appears that Paramount’s “Worldwide VP of Content Protection and Outreach” Al Perry also fits into the same unthinking mode. We’ve already discussed Perry’s recent talk to Brooklyn Law School, but there was one section that caught my eye and deserves a separate post. It comes right at the beginning:

Perry opened by noting that one has to articulate a problem before seeking to solve it, and he refers to the problem as “content theft.” He pointed out that copyright law gives creators the right to monetize their creations, and that even if people like Louis C.K. decide not to do so, that’s a choice and not a requirement.

Now that seems bizarre and totally unsupportable. Remember, Louis CK made over $1 million in just a few days — an amount that he admits was much higher than what he would have received just for a straight up performance. In what world does going direct-to-fans, building a good relationship, automatically mean no money made at all? Not the one we’re based on.

Apparently the real problem with old media executives is that they simply lack any sense that a different approach works. And works damn well.  Lewis C.K. gets more money than he otherwise would have, fans get a decent, no DRM deal, but Al Perry doesn’t consider it monetizing?

How is it that he still has a job?

I’ve long hated commercials and want a reasonably priced alternative. By reasonably priced I mean that the price I pay is about the same as the revenue from advertising (25-65c per person per program) not the usurious prices through available outlets.

After watching earlier seasons of The Walking Dead on Netflix, iTunes and recorded on his DVR he caught up and watched an episode live and had this reaction:

“We watched that live,” he said. “It was not nearly as good. The commercials broke the tension. We had watched the other episodes with blankets over our heads. I hate to say this to the AMC executives and everybody else in the business, but I will never watch ‘Walking Dead’ live again.”

So, when you’re running the entertainment business for an ad supported broadcast network, ads are just fine! But when you’re a viewer, they’re not?