"The secret to a good mix tape is to start big, bold, brash, amazing and on track 2 take it up a notch,"
The above quote is kind of what John Cusack said in High Fidelity, in my opinion one of the finest ManFlick films ever made. It teaches us how to be a man and deal with our fallacies, our faults and above all how to accept our faults and move on.
I've mentioned before in these pages that I use this blog to shameless self promote, update and convince myself of ability and drive. The fact that I haven't posted in what seems like ages could be an indicator that all isn't well in the state of Denmark. Well, yes. For the past few weeks I've lost the balance between work and work. I drifted into long hours, meetings, preparation, planning and execution. Tired, irritable, lacking in humour... This is my job and it really doesn't push any buttons of enjoyment. I think back to the start of the year and to February, two hours sleep, eight hours on a train between Manchester and London and Kent and London and Kent. Bouncing with energy, loving every second of arrangements and negotiations. I felt alive... tired but ALIVE!!
I'll admit that partly the reason I was drifting into the less satisfying work is because I'd been hoping really hard that we'd get our entry into the 2DaysLater film festival and I had two entries on the burner, simmering away ready to add the ingredients and let it boil. For one reason or another the projects stuttered and then stopped, leaving no entry to the festival. I won't lie, I was bitterly disappointed because this festival had been on the agenda since we first decided to give it a go so to go from two entries to none was a bit crushing.
I have however, been reading with great interest some postings on a website called Stage32. It's meant to be the Facebook/Twitter/MySpace/Beebo for media types. To be honest its not jumping out at me as anything special as quite a lot of my contacts are in America or don't answer me back, but I have been drawn to some interesting comments regarding how social networks translates to viewership and an audience. In my last blog I remarked about how the new project was going to be an all guns blazing attack on lots of different streaming media sites. (If I didn't remark then I should have) I now have an extra focus, building the audience, increasing the perception around the 12 Days Project and the Nun With A Gun brand.
I recently commented that the reason why some people struggle to get noticed is because social networking is saturated with people who are all take take take. Out of ten crowd funders who have followed me on Twitter only two have ever exchanged tweets with me. Out of twenty films looking for supporters I've watched a whole two films. The reason for this is because they're just faces and numbers on a board.
You learn your craft, you write, you create. The hard part is selling it, selling yourself. As a person who isn't arrogant or very good at talking myself up or taking credit the ability to promote behind an image appeals to me. So I have vowed to plough a lot of time and energy into the next project, prepare to be bombarded with blogs, websites, twitter accounts, Facebook groups, G+ stuff and anything else I can get my hands on. I may even call round at your house with a flyer and a sandwich.
