Also this week, we will start getting ready for a midterm exam over Carol Saller's "Subversive Copy Editor" and other readings to date, including handouts like those you got in class last week and will get Tuesday. It will be a take-home essay test tentatively due Thursday, Feb. 16. Since we haven't talked much about Saller yet, I'm willing to move that deadline back a week to Feb. 23. But I'll let you know well ahead of time what the essays will be about, so you can focus your reading.
(You can already guess, can't you? If I don't ask about editing as a management function and the collaborative nature of publishing, I'm not doing my job. And if you're not thinking about how you want to write about those issues, you're not doing yours. Right?)
In class Tuesday we'll start off by watching a couple of videos. According to a behind-the-scenes report about the Puppy Bowl programming this weekend on Animal Planet, the two-hour broadcast involved a great deal of collaborative effort. (See where I'm headed with this?) Here's an excerpt from the report by Dylan Stableford of Yahoo! News:
"We've been trying to take it up a notch every year," Melinda Toporoff, executive producer of the Puppy Bowl since 2008, told Yahoo News, "while trying to keep the poop off the field."There it is: Editing. Collaborative effort. Teamwork. Cute puppies, 9.2 million viewers in 2010. Nothing ever happens by accident in the communications industry. See where I'm heading with this? These are the kinds of things you can mention on an essay exam.
Last year, the production moved from a small soundstage in Silver Spring, Md., to a six-camera shoot at a full-on studio in New York. Nearly 100 people work on the Puppy Bowl—from animal wranglers to stage managers to directors and producers, and, of course the referee, Dan Schachner, a commercial and voiceover actor from Oceanside, N.Y., who calls the penalties on the field ("illegal retriever down field," "excessive cuteness") and cleans them up, too. ("Intentional grounding" refers to, well, you guessed it.)
Taping of the Puppy Bowl occurs in the fall, something viewers Toporoff said are "flat out shocked" to learn.
This year's affair was shot over two days in October, with 58 dogs of varying breeds—all of them from shelter and rescue groups, adoptable, and most about 10-weeks-old—rotating in and out of the 19-by-10-foot Animal Planet Stadium in 20-minute shifts, so as to not tire out their paws. Crew members often adopt the puppies during the production, meaning most of the dogs are not available by the time the game airs. And they all "compete" for the coveted MVP: Most Valuable Puppy.
More than 70 hours of footage was whittled down for the two-hour broadcast, which Animal Planet smartly replays in a 12-hour marathon that goes on well after the real Super Bowl ends.
"It's a behemoth editing job," Toporoff said.
Here, by popular demand, are a couple more videos you can watch Tuesday and mention on the midterm if you're so inclined. As you watch them, ask yourself: What evidence do you see in these videos of the collaborative nature of the creative process? How much of it involves teamwork? How much planning goes into it? What evidence do you see of planning -- e.g. storyboarding, writer's conferences? Take notes as you watch, and post your observations as comments below.
The first video is a spoof by freelance film director Joe Nicolosi of "Kittywood Studios," a fictional film production company that does cat videos. Shot in a real studio (Rooster Teeth of Austin, Texas), it's a nice satire of production agencies and the communications industry in general. Check out the "Steve Jobs"-like product roll-out. Oh, and, of course, the collaborative nature of creative work. (You already know where I'm heading with this, right?) It's an effective satire because it picks up on some of the things that really happen in the industry.
Kittywood Studios came out in August. In November, the Toronto ad agency john st. (pronounced "John Street" as in the agency's address in Toronto) came out with a video titled "Catvertising." Its blurb: "To stay on top of the ever-changing advertising landscape, john st. has opened the world's first cat video division. With production, filming and seeding all in-house. Ask yourself, what can cat videos do for your business?" Again, the satire is effective because they've got the process nailed. And the creative process is ... not to be too blindingly obvious about it ... collaborative.
ALSO THIS WEEK: Before class on Thursday of last week I posted links to: (1) a summary of management styles; (2) a how-to handbook for television professionals; and (3) a discussion of the consensus model of decision making. I asked you to read them and answer a discussion question I posted to the blog. Since no one posted an answer to the question, let's say the opportunity to do so is still open to you. Capice? And I will be noticing whether you take that opportunity or not.
So here, with light editing and updating, is last week's question again: Please read the documents linked
6 comments:
When watching the first video, I noticed the unnecessaary nitpicking going on in the conference room (with Jack Daniels, coffee mugs, and Red Bull providing notable background imagery). While cat videos are about fun, the articles in the magazine do require a purpose. News articles, sports, even some creative work will need to have some reason to be put up. We should all figure out what needs to be in and what can be spared, but before we do that, we need to get those ideas first.
The success of the Kittywood video and its collaboration is due in part to the medium in which it is working. They specifically deal with viral marketing, video marketing in the more broad sense. We are dealing with a magazine, a text based layout. I feel like tensions will erupt like in the Kittywood conference meeting, if we don’t switch our mode of collaboration as listed by the Decision-Making Styles. We need to jump into the unilateral directive category. We need draconian leadership. We need to agree on a student boss, an alpha student per se, rather than an overall direction of the magazine, if the magazine is going to successfully come to fruition. The steps taken in the Kittywood and Catvertising videos, all the lessons given by Saller aren’t really applicable in the brainstorming stage. They are only wholly applicable in the “doing” process. To write anything else would be venturing into the realms of fluff.
I want to start by saying that I think the Kittywood series is hilarious. I think they have the right idea when it comes to creating a finished product. We need to see the magazine through the eyes of our audience. We need to plan carefully and stick to a schedule. The success of our magazine relies solely on the dedication of our team.
Purpose! That is what Kittywood has. They know their audience, their mission, and their goal. Where are we by comparison?
Something is holding us back. Kittywood makes us all smile (except for John: he hates kittens), but they work assiduously with purpose .
After watching the Kittywood video I feel like that they have made really good progress with what they are trying to do with it. I thought it was entertaining when they all were sitting around in the conference room talking about what they wanted to do with them. Like they have said before Kittens are becoming more popular to us.
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