April 8, 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Citing the ‘recession that won’t go away’, Belefant, a commercial production company based in Portland, Oregon, announced today that it is reducing staff by 40%.
“It’s not as drastic as it sounds,” explains Brian Belefant, trying to put a positive spin on the announcement. “People aren’t getting let go and nobody’s salary is being reduced.” The reduction is in the hours people will put in. Effective immediately, all staff are being required to take two days off a week.
“At times like these it’s easy to forget why we do what we do,” explains Belefant. “We’re craftsmen. We live to create. Getting caught up in where the next job is coming from or how we’re going to make payroll doesn’t make us better at what we do. It makes us worse.” Because of that, all staff members will immediately be required to use two of every five days creating something.
“I don’t care what you make, just as long as you make something.” As for himself, Belefant intends to focus on several projects. “I haven’t been as dedicated to my writing and photography as I’d like,” says Belefant, who writes several blogs, including The 60 Second Director, which provides quick lessons in directing for up-and-coming directors. He’s also a celebrated fine art photographer, known for shooting through liquids relevant to the subject being photographed.
Belefant explains that the company is particularly well-positioned to survive a protracted slump. “We learned a lot from the last recession. Our move to Portland from LA two and a half years ago drastically reduced our overhead.”
The reductions will not immediately affect Belefant’s offices in the historic Ford Building, where huge picture windows flood the spacious offices with north light. Nor will the company’s fleet of vehicles be reduced. As a matter of fact, the 15-year-old Trek bicycle that Belefant uses for daily commuting is likely to have its front suspension replaced.
“At a time when agencies are shuttering all around, no matter how hard we work we can’t conjure commercials to direct,” muses Belefant. “What we can do is hone our talents. When work comes in, we’ll be in a much better position to do it.”
For more information, please telephone Brian Belefant at (503) 715 2852 or send an email to brian@belefant.com. Don’t bother calling Tuesday or Thursday.
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Wednesday, April 08, 2009
Monday, March 30, 2009
You can singlehandedly help end the recession.
On commercial shoots there's a lot of down time. And during that down time, people swap stories.
One story I heard was about a spot that, I think, was shot for Special K. It involved a woman getting out of bed on her wedding day. According to the story, the spot only ran four times because somebody called Kellogs to complain that it looked to them as if the woman had been sleeping with a dog between her legs.
I don’t know if the story is true, but it’s consistent with a lot of stories I’ve heard over the years. Clients that will pull spots because of one or two complaints.
Granted, as a copywriter I worked at agencies that often took pride is pushing the lines of taste and decency, but now that I direct I still hear them. And now, the stories are a little less apocryphal. Because I hear them from clients themselves.
Let’s assume the story about the Special K spot is true. What happened?
Kellogs clearly had a marketing plan, and that plan involved a certain amount of advertising effort against Special K. If they pulled the spot, what did they do about the media they’d bought? And more important, what did Special K’s brand manager do to continue on the track toward increasing the brand’s market share?
Resurrecting an old commercial wasn’t an option. After all, the agency had convinced the client that the old commercial needed to be replaced.
And not advertising wasn’t an option, either. Departments get budgets that need to be spent. If a brand doesn’t advertise this year, its budget is likely to be cut next year.
I don’t need to know what happened to know what happened. After a lot of discussion, the agency either re-shot the commercial or produced a brand new one.
A new director was hired, the team flew to L.A., and everybody—and I mean everybody from the bell hops at the Four Seasons to the bartenders at the Viper Room made money.
So I had this idea.
Our economy is in the dumps. And you and I are in a position to help fix it. What I want you to do is watch t.v. When you see commercial you don’t like, complain. Call, write a letter, whatever. Just think of something totally inane about the spot that offends you (and it’s got to be something more than, “I did a spot with exactly the same concept for Hertz in 1988.”)
You’ll be getting bad advertising off the air and giving the agency another shot at doing something really great. And you’ll be providing jobs and stimulating the economy.
In fact, I don’t mind if you complain about something I’ve shot. Sure, I’m proud of it. And I realize I’d never be hired to shoot the commercial that was created to replace it. But I’m thinking big picture here. I’m willing to sacrifice my work for the good of the nation.
Besides, maybe I’ll get to bid on the new spot for Special K.
One story I heard was about a spot that, I think, was shot for Special K. It involved a woman getting out of bed on her wedding day. According to the story, the spot only ran four times because somebody called Kellogs to complain that it looked to them as if the woman had been sleeping with a dog between her legs.
I don’t know if the story is true, but it’s consistent with a lot of stories I’ve heard over the years. Clients that will pull spots because of one or two complaints.
Granted, as a copywriter I worked at agencies that often took pride is pushing the lines of taste and decency, but now that I direct I still hear them. And now, the stories are a little less apocryphal. Because I hear them from clients themselves.
Let’s assume the story about the Special K spot is true. What happened?
Kellogs clearly had a marketing plan, and that plan involved a certain amount of advertising effort against Special K. If they pulled the spot, what did they do about the media they’d bought? And more important, what did Special K’s brand manager do to continue on the track toward increasing the brand’s market share?
Resurrecting an old commercial wasn’t an option. After all, the agency had convinced the client that the old commercial needed to be replaced.
And not advertising wasn’t an option, either. Departments get budgets that need to be spent. If a brand doesn’t advertise this year, its budget is likely to be cut next year.
I don’t need to know what happened to know what happened. After a lot of discussion, the agency either re-shot the commercial or produced a brand new one.
A new director was hired, the team flew to L.A., and everybody—and I mean everybody from the bell hops at the Four Seasons to the bartenders at the Viper Room made money.
So I had this idea.
Our economy is in the dumps. And you and I are in a position to help fix it. What I want you to do is watch t.v. When you see commercial you don’t like, complain. Call, write a letter, whatever. Just think of something totally inane about the spot that offends you (and it’s got to be something more than, “I did a spot with exactly the same concept for Hertz in 1988.”)
You’ll be getting bad advertising off the air and giving the agency another shot at doing something really great. And you’ll be providing jobs and stimulating the economy.
In fact, I don’t mind if you complain about something I’ve shot. Sure, I’m proud of it. And I realize I’d never be hired to shoot the commercial that was created to replace it. But I’m thinking big picture here. I’m willing to sacrifice my work for the good of the nation.
Besides, maybe I’ll get to bid on the new spot for Special K.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
YouTube, The Great Satan
If you’ve been following me for the past month, you know that I finally finished ‘Burning Passion’--my brutally cynical dark comedy about a guy who ejaculates fire.
I’ve done film festivals, and frankly after playing in more than 50 of them I got tired of showing my work to other people there to show their work to me. Not that they didn’t have good work. Some of them had extraordinary work. But it was at best a mutual admiration society and at worst a mutual bitch session.
So I decided to take an alternate route. I set a date (Valentine’s Day), on which I planned to release the film to the world. For free.
As part of the plan, I put a trailer for the film up on YouTube. And thanks partly to a clever selection of tags and the early and enthusiastic support of a lot of film bloggers, the trailer racked up more than 17,000 hits in two weeks. Not amazing by YouTube standards, but incredibly respectable.
And then YouTube took the trailer down. I got a notice that I had violated Community Guidelines.
The guidelines, in a nutshell, are
No pornography or sexually explicit content
No bad stuff like animal abuse
No graphic or gratuitous violence
No gross-out stuff
No copyright infringement
No hate speech
No predatory behavior
And no misleading tags, titles, or thumbnails.
I’m a firm believer that things are usually named for exactly what they’re not, so the fact that YouTube calls these rules Community Guidelines is a pretty clear indication that there is no community there. In fact, most of the thousands of people who rated the trailer gave it four or five stars, so I think it’s fair to argue that the trailer actually appealed to the community’s shared values.
Whatever.
The part that irks me is that there’s no mechanism to question the decision. Sure, YouTube might argue that a film about a guy who ejaculates fire might somehow violate numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4, but can you say the same thing about the trailer for the film?
Then again, the film is extremely well produced. As is the trailer. I shot everything on 35mm film and even spent a ton of money to hire the same guy to do the voice over for the trailer who does all the Hollywood trailers. So maybe they’re concerned that I violated someone’s copyright by putting it up.
They didn’t ask, and if they had I would have showed them all my cancelled checks, licensing agreements, and copyright certificates.
More likely, someone flagged it.
Flagging is a way the “community” can police YouTube for content they think is inappropriate. In order to educate viewers about how to flag videos, YouTube has created, of course, a video. A video which, among other things, uses a voice over to tell you it’s not okay to post a video showing something shocking while showing images of a man reinserting his intestines into his abdomen.
Call me vengeful, but I think that kind of imagery should not be allowed.
So join me, won’t you, in flagging YouTube’s video. You can find it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZA22WSVlCZ4&eurl=http://www.youtube.com/t/community_guidelines. Sure, you won’t accomplish anything, other than tripping some algorithm that identifies you as a troublemaker in the YouTube database. But if enough people get tagged as troublemakers, eventually YouTube will have to concede that we are, fundamentally, its community.
I’ve done film festivals, and frankly after playing in more than 50 of them I got tired of showing my work to other people there to show their work to me. Not that they didn’t have good work. Some of them had extraordinary work. But it was at best a mutual admiration society and at worst a mutual bitch session.
So I decided to take an alternate route. I set a date (Valentine’s Day), on which I planned to release the film to the world. For free.
As part of the plan, I put a trailer for the film up on YouTube. And thanks partly to a clever selection of tags and the early and enthusiastic support of a lot of film bloggers, the trailer racked up more than 17,000 hits in two weeks. Not amazing by YouTube standards, but incredibly respectable.
And then YouTube took the trailer down. I got a notice that I had violated Community Guidelines.
The guidelines, in a nutshell, are
No pornography or sexually explicit content
No bad stuff like animal abuse
No graphic or gratuitous violence
No gross-out stuff
No copyright infringement
No hate speech
No predatory behavior
And no misleading tags, titles, or thumbnails.
I’m a firm believer that things are usually named for exactly what they’re not, so the fact that YouTube calls these rules Community Guidelines is a pretty clear indication that there is no community there. In fact, most of the thousands of people who rated the trailer gave it four or five stars, so I think it’s fair to argue that the trailer actually appealed to the community’s shared values.
Whatever.
The part that irks me is that there’s no mechanism to question the decision. Sure, YouTube might argue that a film about a guy who ejaculates fire might somehow violate numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4, but can you say the same thing about the trailer for the film?
Then again, the film is extremely well produced. As is the trailer. I shot everything on 35mm film and even spent a ton of money to hire the same guy to do the voice over for the trailer who does all the Hollywood trailers. So maybe they’re concerned that I violated someone’s copyright by putting it up.
They didn’t ask, and if they had I would have showed them all my cancelled checks, licensing agreements, and copyright certificates.
More likely, someone flagged it.
Flagging is a way the “community” can police YouTube for content they think is inappropriate. In order to educate viewers about how to flag videos, YouTube has created, of course, a video. A video which, among other things, uses a voice over to tell you it’s not okay to post a video showing something shocking while showing images of a man reinserting his intestines into his abdomen.
Call me vengeful, but I think that kind of imagery should not be allowed.
So join me, won’t you, in flagging YouTube’s video. You can find it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZA22WSVlCZ4&eurl=http://www.youtube.com/t/community_guidelines. Sure, you won’t accomplish anything, other than tripping some algorithm that identifies you as a troublemaker in the YouTube database. But if enough people get tagged as troublemakers, eventually YouTube will have to concede that we are, fundamentally, its community.
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