End of the Year Blues - Part 3: Optimists vs Pessimists

Oops.  So, in my last blog I wrote that it might be my "last blog" for the  year.  Here we are with a whole day and then some left to 2017 and I'm blogging again.  Why?

A few reasons.  My guests are all checked in and report they're doing fine.  It's cold outside and writing is more fun than yard work would be today.  Also, I have some news to report.  This is where the optimists vs pessimists part comes in.

Optimists are generally pretty happy.  Expecting things to work out.  I used to be one of these people, I think.  If I ever had those leanings, live certainly beat them out of me.  Making me a pessimist a lot of the time, or as I look at it, a realist.  Pessimists generally seem unhappy and worried most of the time to most people, however, while optimists will often find themselves disappointed that things, in fact, don't always go to plan, pessimists more often find themselves either justified in their thinking and thus prepared for a bad outcome, or pleasantly surprised that things did indeed work out.  Optimists rarely have a plan B.  If something goes wrong, they're caught entirely off guard.  It is at t his point that they become unhappy, complain and start asking for help because they have no idea what to do.  Pessimists, however, usually have a plan B already set to go and may even have the pieces of a plan C in place should plan B fail.  When things go wrong on a prepared pessimist is when they smile to themselves, think "I knew this would happen" and move on to the next plan.  "This is what insurance is for," thinks the pessimist.  "I need a crowd funding page!" cries the optimist.  This is not to say one way of thinking is better than the other, although, realists who can be cautiously optimistic, yet prepared for things to sometimes go wrong, probably have the best balance of things.  Otherwise you're often nervous and worrying or sorely disappointed and caught unprepared.

How does this pertain to me?  Recently?  My last blog I said I wasn't optimistic that Amazon would get "The Simplest Things: Season 2" approved before the year's end.  Well, they did.  I am a pleasantly surprised, if not entirely happy, pessimist.  Why not entirely happy?  Well, the new file I uploaded because they claimed the old one "didn't sync", wasn't all that different.  I added a line and dropped a music indicator.  As far as I could tell there was no difference in how the captions sync with the audio at all.  What is different?  I amended the file's name with the word "FIXED" at the end of it in big capital letters like that.  Did they check it?  Did they check the first one?  Or did they just see the same file name and not bother to see if was, in fact a fixed file overwritten?  I can see not wanting to recheck the file on a feature, but on a two minute episode? Come on!

Watch The Simplest Things Season 2 Here.

I believe I set it for "Free with Ads".  That only seems to be showing up on the first episode, but if you have Prime I know you can see all six.  Don't rent or buy it if the episodes only being 2 to 3 minutes long will disappoint you.

End of the Year Blues - Part 2: And Showeroke Makes 20

This time of year many of use start making goals for a new round of 365 days that are going to "start fresh" on January 1st.  While I think goals are a good thing, I also rant about how foolish it is that we do it once a year and often abandon those goals at the first obstacle that makes us a lose a step or two before January is even over.  That said, I did set a few goals last year and as this year closes I can see that I hit one major one.

I wanted to have 20 titles on Amazon Prime before the close of 2017.  This is mostly because I also want to hit a monetary goal with my titles, which I missed by country mile this year, and 20 titles was one of the ways to get there.  It wasn't an arbitrary number at the time I came up with it.  I had read somewhere that 20 titles were the requirement for having a subscription channel.  There are many more requirements which I would now need to hit, but hitting that 20 titles at least showed me, that even with other jobs constantly poking their noses into the mix, I could make these things happen.

"Showeroke" is just about a minute long and went live only a few days, but it makes 20 titles on PRIME.  We actually have 21 on Amazon, but "All Wrapped Up" still needs closed captions.  A second season of "The Simplest Things" is still going through approval and with weekends and holidays not being days that count towards this process, I am not optimistic that it will hit before 2018.

There were some goals I didn't hit also.  I don't have a subscription channel.  I'm still finishing "Jack vs Lanterns" ( go buy about 200 posters at www.hocfocprod.com/lumbervsjack and I can take the time off to finish it off pretty easily ).  There are three or four things in my woodshop waiting for the finishing touch and so on.  However, as Facebook memories pop-up I start to see the answer to the question, "Where did all the time go?".  Weather, medical issues, injuries and family matters often pop-up.  If the worst these things cause is a delay in production or in finishing off a cabinet rehab, I'll take it.  Many find themselves deep in debt or worse over less. (Incidentally, these also wound up answering my other end of the year question, "Where did all our money go?")

So, as the year draws to a close, I urge you all to look more towards what you DID accomplish, rather than what  you didn't.  Didn't reach any of those goals you set last  year?  Hey, you're still here.  If they're still important to  you, keep them as this year's goals.  Make some new ones.  Maybe cut  yourself some slack and make them a little easier.  Resolve to wear matching socks every day that you wear socks this year.  Promise  yourself to keep up with those 5000 mile oil changes (you'll thank  yourself later). Maybe even set a goal to watch all 20 of my movies between January 1, 2018 and December 31, 2018.  I mean, by then, if I stay on track, there should be at least five more to enjoy ;)

Happy end of the year, gang.  Not sure if I'll be writing any more of THIS blog this year, but new videos will be popping up on my channel pretty much until New Year's even. http://www.youtube.com/c/hocusfocusproductions

End of the Year Blues - Part 1: Retail

As the end of another year approaches and the winter gets even closer it's easy to look back at the plans that didn't work out and the projects that have yet to be done, but this year I 'm going to try something different.  I'm going to bask in my successes, as small, silly and completely insignificant to others as they may be.

Recently, through the help of my wife changing her work schedule a bit in order to be able to concentrate on our business I fulfilled a desire do something I have wanted to try for YEARS.  Swimming with sharks? Nope.  Skydiving? Nah. If a plane is doing okay I'll just stay inside of it.  Wrestling alligators? Wouldn't be fair to the alligators. No, the thing I have wanted to do for years is work in a Halloween store.  I love Halloween.  October is easily my favorite month of the year.  The weather has been good in every state I have ever lived in during October.  The colors are great and people like to be spooky.  It's the real start to the Holiday Season.  The opening act to the fun the rest of the country seems to get all excited about.  But, I'm usually pretty busy this time of year.  Especially recently it's the wind down, but not the end of my hospitality work and since people are in the mood it's generally a good time to rally the troops and film something scary.

But this  year my wife was willing to handle the hospitality stuff and I decided to try for a nice, part time, temporary retail job.  I hadn't worked retail in decades. That's not entirely true, of course, since my self distribution has seen me selling DVDs and merchandise online and at shows, but store front retail is different.  It hasn't changed much except for the credit card scanners and laser bar code reading, but the "part time" thing didn't work out.  Circumstances had me get hired on as an assistant manager, which turned into an odd 50 - 60 hour week covering shifts.  In the end, it was mostly the fun I anticipated, but there were some drawbacks.   I was still handling some of the hospitality stuff.  Staying "on call" and handling emails on my breaks or when at home.  I was pretty much tired all of the time, so less editing and shooting got done than I would have liked and my decorations didn't get the full treatment they usually do.  I missed almost all of the trick or treaters on the actual night of Halloween.  On the plus side, the discount came in handy, I scored some cool props by know where they were and getting to work early the day after Halloween before my shift (  you see two of them in "Strange Gifts" and another is in a short we shot "X-24".   The job helped lead to our "shoot of opportunity" short film, which we hope to be able to show at festivals in 2018 and I met a few cool people.  Even though I didn't get to celebrate Halloween in the way I usually do, I did get to see it from a whole lot of different perspectives through the people I helped get decorations and costumes that month and that was pretty cool.  Plus, retail work always gives you a few stories to tell at a party.

Would I do it again?  I honestly don't see me having the time any time soon.  The time of year they really want people to start is right when I am in the busiest season at my other jobs.  If someone hadn't quit this year I probably never would have gotten the opportunity.

I am glad I did it.  Even though during the first week all I wanted was for it to be over.  Looking back it was a good experience.  And I think that's how a lot of years go.  Some are treacherously bad, I won't deny that.  But most, how good or bad they were, all depends on what kind of lens we look back at them through.

The Miniature Helicopter Experiment

This was largely a failure.  What we wound up doing after this was recording the rotor separately.  I would even consider using a mechanical helicopter's rotor recorded in front of a blue or green screen and super imposed on the model.  Still, I think it has more a physically real look than most low budget or indie CG copters I've seen in movies.

Annoying Your Friends and Family.

Remember when the internet and social media were a major part of grass roots marketing?  You told two friends and they told two friends and so on and so on and so on...

Now, you can have 5000 "friends" Facebook.  Countless followers on YouTube ( I do not ), Instagram and whatever else is running around out there.  But to get these large groups of friends and followers started,  you almost need to hit a "critical mass" number to get things started.

For YouTube, the magic number seems like 1000 subscribers.  Now, people to subscribe to so many things that you also need to click a "bell" icon in order to actually be alerted to when a channel you subscribe to posts something new.  The 1000 subscribers isn't a number I'm just guessing at.  YouTube uses that 1000 mark for a few things.  For example, my channel, with it's 258 subscribers (and shrinking at the moment ) can't enable "Super Chat".  I need 742 more subscribers to enable a feature that I don't even know how to use.  Also, videos that tagged "Not suitable for all advertisers", which could be for any number of reasons, including, "we're not sure it IS suitable for all advertisers so we're going to mark it as not suitable for now", will not be manually reviewed "until your video has at least 1000 views in a seven day period" or if you have 10,000 subscribers (a new magic number I've just noticed).

So, in order to hit these numbers, you need to start somewhere.  You would hope that putting out good, entertaining or informative content consistently would do the trick and it some cases, perhaps it does, but to me, it seems that most of the time, without a certain number of views to begin with, the automated systems don't "push" your content.  So, if you don't hit 1000 views in those first seven days, the likelihood of being at the top of a list during a search are pretty low.

How do you get those first numbers?  You bug your friends and family.  You try to get across how important it is that they like, comment and share your stuff.  The trouble is, if you're like me, you have a few dedicated cheerleaders, but their crowd isn't really the crowd that enjoys the genre you produce.  So, what you have is free advertising to the wrong market.  That becomes frustrating for them and eventually, the shares and watches, reviews and clicks become exhausting for all of you.

At this point,  you start to consider two things:
1. Giving up, which if  you've followed this blog, I have done before.
2. Paid promotional online marketing, which I don't think I've done since before this blog existed.  It was a total waste of money, time and effort, but I did attract a large following of people who wanted to sell me more of the same.

So, do  you risk annoying your friends and family with constant posts about sharing your stuff, watching it and bragging about it?  That's entirely up to you.  I can't even tell you that it has really worked for me so far.  I have seen if work for friends, so I suspect part of the problem is, I really just don't have than many friends and they may not enjoy my stuff that much, so it's hard for them to "pimp".  Like asking your buddy who is having a garage sale to sell that waffle maker you never use. You think it still works, but lost the cord three years ago.  Also, you would like to get $40 for it because you saw one for that much at Macy's and it wasn't even the cool avocado green that your "classic" model is.

Sorry, did I go off on a tangent?  In the end, ask  yourself a few things:
1. Do I try to lift others?  Do I share posts, projects, art and other things?
If yes, why not expect the same?
2. Do my not artsy friends still share stuff with me they know I can only really be interested in because it comes from them?  You know, like that video of a dance recital you have to watch, like and comment on, not because it's the best 87 minutes of ballet you've ever seen 3-6 years old perform, but because one of those kids, the one halfway in and who manages to stay on the stage for 32 seconds, was spawned by one of your friends.
If yes, why not expect them to watch, like and comment on the 4 minute short film you wrote, produced and directed for $6?
3. Do you really need friends who find your life's work "annoying"?
This is a big one.  Maybe it's okay that not everyone you're friends with cares how hard you work to make these things.  Maybe it makes sense that your success shouldn't depend on help from others.  I mean, when  your friend opened that shop, did they expect you do keep buying overpriced goods there instead of at the "big corporate place" that sold the same stuff for 1/3 of the price?  Maybe selling to your friends puts them off.  It's not like once a year you're hit with "offers" to buy magazines, cookies, candy or whatever thing you have no use for so their kid can go to the Washington and see how government works or get new football uniforms.  The real question here, for me, is not whether someone likes everything I do.  It's whether they find asking for simple help, like sharing, watching, subscribing, so annoying that they're willing to end a "friendship" over it, if they're a friend worth worrying about losing?  This past year, I've gone with "no".

Maybe if I annoy them all enough I can become known as "That Annoying Asshole, Jason" and build a following of people around that.  From what little bit of watching reality TV I've done, it seems like annoying assholes attract pretty fair sized fanbases.

By the way, if you'd like to help us hit that magic number of 1000 subscribers, our YouTube Channel is: www.youtube.com/c/hocusfocusproductions

The Multi-Job Shuffle - Mixing work with your passions

This time of year I usually try to make about writing because we're coming up on the slow season for my other business, people tend to have less time to travel for work during the holidays and the weather is a bit too unpredictable to schedule a lot of outdoor scenes.  Yet, I still find days, when even just writing, an indoor, not too costly, activity I can do by myself, is hard to schedule.

I have to meet a  guest mid-day today.  That leaves a few errands to run before hand and means I have to be available to answer questions or solve problems most of the weekend.  Mostly a great schedule for writing.  Except, I have some personality quirks that interfere.

One, when I start writing fiction, I can get kind of caught up in it.  An interruption leaves the world I'm creating in limbo.  I may be in the middle of my characters facing a monster or defusing a dirty bomb.  Nobody wants to leave that sort of situation mid-action to go to the grocery store for some paper towels.  It's a problem I can largely get over, but I do find myself avoiding it if I know my other job(s) will start before I think I'm finished.  Like right now, I'm blogging because I know I can finish this before I have to leave and even if I don't, I won't be leaving fictional characters in the lurch if I don't.

Two, for the movie review blogs, I need to watch a movie.  That's 90 minutes of a day gone.  I can get some other stuff done, but if I do, I'm not being fair to the movies I'm reviewing.  So, I miss a few of those a week. I can't watch the types of movies I review when I'm with family and friends unless they're the types who enjoy those movies too.  It's not fair to them and again, not really fair to the movie to have someone constantly interrupting me to talk about what they're reading on the phone because retro-independent-B cinema doesn't interest them.

Three, the CGM blog isn't getting a lot of news.  Maybe I'm not pursuing it enough.  Maybe we're not popular enough yet to be a place filmmakers and artists want to submit to and maybe, just maybe, the same slow down that makes this my "writing season", makes it less likely new and interesting things are happening in other parts of the indie world.

That said, content counts.  The more quality you put out the more loyal followers you'll gain, but you can't discount  quantity either.  I have clicks here and views on the YouTube channel even on days I producer nothing.  Why?  Because with enough content you're bound to have something floating around on the internet that someone, somewhere is looking for on any particular day.  Keep that content flowing and you can help people find information they need, keep them entertained, keep a steady flow of viewership and even have it happening on your days off.

If you see a big busy season approaching, stocking up on content and setting it to publish on specific dates is a way to go.  You need to either plan it to coincide with the date it will publish, like a "romance" movie in February, or make it general enough that the information isn't likely to change between when you create the article and when it posts.  Setting up weekly posts for March-October would be a good way for me to spend time in January and February.   So, don't be surprised if things slow down here, but do feel free to comment or write to me if you think I'm letting too much time slip by and have let the blogs down.  It usually happens at some point in the year and it takes me forever to "re-launch" them.  Blogs, vlogs and anything "serial" is like long term financial investing.  They do best when fed into regularly and are allowed to continue to grow.  They need adjustments with market trends, but the main factor to success seems to be a constant building upon the foundation you put down.  Any big lapses or withdrawals cause a need to rebuild and the loss is exponential. (Did I use that word correctly?)

Alright, heard my phone ping.  I may need to head off to work now.

I can see you! Or can I?

That time of year again.  The annual visit to the eye doctor.

Eye sight is one of those things many of take for granted, but we take it less for the granted the older we get.  It used to be I needed glasses for live events because I couldn't focus sharply, quickly without them.  As I got older I started to need them more for working a monitor.  Eye pieces can just be adjusted to one specific eye, but some of my cameras don't even have an eyepiece, leaving me with an LCD to use for focusing.  Especially the smaller cameras I use in "run and gun" situations or that I have on me in less than ideal weather conditions, etc.

Also, those who know me or have followed me for awhile know, I have a chronic eye condition, that is now under complete control with meds, but that was a terrible distraction for nearly two years.  I need to see my eye doctor regularly to keep track of that and so that he can refill my prescriptions for it.

When it comes down to it, shooter, editor, director or just reviewer, my eyes are important to the work I want to do with movies.  A once a year trip to make sure they're working as well as they can and are staying in good in health really isn't too much to ask, I suppose.  Glasses on other hand can get pretty pricey, but not having them when I need them will cost me more in the long run.

So, yes, I can see  you, but if I'm not wearing my glasses, I probably can't see you too clearly.  So, if you see me on the street and I don't wave, don't think I'm being rude ( I may be, but don't think that ). If I'm wearing sunglasses, they're not prescription and  you're probably a little blurry.  If I'm wearing no glasses, same thing.  If I am wearing glasses, but have a camera around my neck or in my hand, those are likely my "close up" glasses and anything more than 10 inches away is even blurrier than if I don't wear glasses at all, but my photos will be crystal clear (if I'm paying attention) and that's what really matters.

If you really want me to wave back and shoot me a text saying something like, "That blur waving to you is me."  I'll probably smile and wave back.

And I admit, I do tend to leave my glasses off when I'm not working or watching a movie because many things look just a little bit better when they're slightly out of focus.