Thoughts from Verna

"Give me a lever long enough and I could move the world." A quote by Archimedes the ancient Greek philosopher and mathematician meant simply the ability to do more with less. I had the pleasure of interviewing Carl “Video” Verna my former teacher in the Film program. I caught up with Verna and he spoke about the value of leverage.

In a sense, we can apply leverage in everything that we do in our everyday life. With leverage on our mind we can start on a personal level and even by reading this blog you are already doing so. Verna simply put it, we should learn to invest in ourselves doing so will gain skills and talents.

Verna told me of a story where he was a young personal assistant for Saturday Night Live. He told me of the struggles working for nothing, his work going unappreciated, and trying to network. After working there for six month he met with his Executive Producer and asked for a full time position and full benefits. Verna came with his ducks in a row highlighting his attendance, work ethic and his technical skill. Doing this made his boss take a stern look at his performance.

After a couple weeks had past Verna had not heard anything from his boss about it. He was then forced to do something he had never done. Verna then gave his boss an ultimatum if he doesn’t get what he wants he would call it quits. Verna was reminded about military training about always having an ace in the hole. He then brought his job offer from NBC giving him a strong BATNA this gave his boss an easy choice. Verna boss hired him after that.

"Give me a lever long enough and I could move the world." A quote by Archimedes the ancient Greek philosopher and mathematician meant simply the ability to do more with less. Leverage is something we all should take advantage of.

CHINA POWER ....

If you miss a payment on your brand new car someone will be out to repossess it that night, what if you owed a billion? China is the largest foreign debt holder owned more than $800 billion dollars. The president of China Hu Jintao is visiting the States this week to talk to President Obama and some top CEOs to talk about China’s currency manipulation, the huge debt, and QE2.

China currency manipulation is to devalue their dollar to keep the price of their exports down. This in turn keeps labor cheap and appeals to American companies to move to make more revenue hurting our labor force. This manipulation makes the value of the there goods cheaper so it forces people to buy their goods over ours and lead to their current state of hyper inflation.

QE2 is an unconventional monetary policy used by central banks to stimulate their economy. How it works is the bank creates money where it uses to buy government bonds and financial assets, in order to increase the money supply and the excess reserves of the banking system. Through the actions of the QE2 it subtracted more than 100 million but devalued our dollar in the process. Another effect of this is higher inflation they’re being too much money in the market. The deficit with China has become so large that America has to pay with inflated money. Politicians have argued about China currency devaluation but America in theory is doing the same thing.

The best plans in place will not be enough unless the people fight for a smaller government less expensive controlling every part of American life. Taxpayers would be relieved of the burden of fueling this overly huge powerful government with inflated salaries great health care benefits, and even early retirement plans while our tax payers stay broke, work till they die, and expensive a failing healthcare system.

Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and hansom old Kentucky gentlemen have become one of our hottest exports to China. Yum who owns all three restaurants has made over forty five percent of its sales from China while sales dwindle in America. It’s laughable when you think about American culture being our largest export. 

http://money.cnn.com/2011/01/18/news/international/thebuzz/index.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing

http://money.cnn.com/2011/01/18/news/international/thebuzz/index.htm

http://www.examiner.com/conservative-in-national/to-slash-the-us-deficit-most-of-federal-government-must-be-privatized-1

DGA

My love for film production and producing Television shows would hopefully lead me toward the Director ‘s Guild of America. Since I was very young I have dreamed about being in the entertainment industry and I always had a passion for telling stories and cinema.  This dream soon turned into a lifetime pursuit of happiness when I chose Full Sail University to study film.

The directors Guild of America was started in 1936 representing film and tv directors as a labor union. As a union that seeks to organize an individual profession, rather than multiple professions across an industry, the DGA is a craft union. It represents directors, assistant directors, stage managers, and production associates in television, and directors, assistant directors, unit production managers, technical coordinators, and location managers  in film as well as similar positions in television commercials production.

The union works mostly in the negotiation of work agreements for its members. It also sets the minimum wage for directors and orders what acceptable working and traveling conditions for its members. The dga has established clearly defined guidelines for the director's creative rights on a production. More than 10,000 members of the DGA are involved with theatrical, industrial, educational, and documentary films as well as television, radio, video, and commercial productions. The Artists' Rights Foundation was created by the DGA in 1990 to protect artists' works worldwide.

In my time at Full Sail University I had the privilege of learning my true passion of directing. In my 16mm production class I was chosen by my classmates and teachers to direct one of three class projects. I was overcome with a sense of joy and nervousness I had never been in this position before but I was a proven leader. This is when I first learned of the Director Guild. I read every article that was on there rss feed to better my knowledge of the subject of Directing. Although the project wasn’t an Oscar nominated performance but my crew and I worked to the best of there abilities.

sources
http://www.answers.com/topic/directors-guild-of-america
http://www.dga.org/index2.php3

Project management plan or plan to fail : Interview with Allen

Managing a project is like managing a business any Project manager can tell you that.

The challenge, of course, is actually pulling it all off. Here are four strategies shared by entrepreneurs and project managers who've successfully tackled their own big projects that can help your company take the risk and come out on top, It may force you to embrace new technology and/or hire more employees. The pressure will be enormous; failure could jeopardize your reputation as well as your balance sheet

The famous quote by famed Project manager Allen Carner “A Plan is a trap laid to capture the future”. Planning is the process by which you determine whether you should attempt the task, workout the most effective way of reaching your target and prepare to overcome unexpected difficulties with plenty resources as it helps to achieve the maximum effects from a given efforts.

Budgets demonstrate the potential of your business to investors and lenders. Budgets can also be used as a management tool. They can help you establish milestones and require accountability for accomplishing the milestones. They can help identify risks and show benchmarks.

Running a successful project requires a high degree of stakeholder management. So who are stakeholders? A stakeholder is anyone who has an interest in your project or will be affected by its deliverables or output. It is important to understand the values and issues that stakeholders have in order to address them and keep everyone on board for the duration of the project.

Project management control systems are the modern tools for managing project scope, cost and schedule. They are based on carefully defined process and document controls, metrics, performance indicators and forecasting with capability to reveal trends toward cost overrun and/or schedule slippage. Identifying those trends early makes them more amenable to successful management.

I feel that if a project manager doesn’t plan that project leader plans to fail. If you have an understanding of these four strategies planning, budgeting, project control, and customer satisfaction gives you and your team the best chance for success.




Special Thanks to Allen Carner

To Build a Team

“We must all hang together or assuredly, we shall all hang separately.” A quote by the revolution leader Benjamin Franklin inspiring the colonist to stand as one or fall as many, I think that in order for a team to be successful they must stand together. In the film industry having a great team is everything to the success of the film. A film is combining multiple forms of art such music, photography, and acting with these working harmoniously together can measure the success of the film.

In the past couple of years the way I have been choosing my team is based on who I can afford, schedule, personality, and talent. I am an independent producer and work in primarily work with little to no budget I try to make sure that my crews at least have a meal and a copy of the finish product. Schedule is a big part of building a crew the schedule must be in order so the crew can plan accordingly. Different personalities and the mixing of them have to be taken in to account when building a team. Some personalities are better suited for working with each other than others and bad mix of personality could hurt the team. Last but not least I feel you, as a leader should surround yourself with talented individuals that can help you reach your goals.

I feel as leader you should take upon yourself to delegate tasks, let the team know what is expected of them, set a time so a team can mesh, most important motivate, and finally execute your plan.

Interview

This past week I had the pleasure of sitting down with a local Orlando producer Jason Blanchard a very quirky and inspirational kind of guy. I asked the question how do you deal with the failures and the feast and famine of this industry? He gave me a this you will get ninety nine no's before you get a yes. To say that wasn't the answer I was looking for is putting it lightly. He went on to say that yes it is hard but anything worth doing will be. Answering the question about the feast and famine part of our industry "make your own projects and keep your skill level high". I left this interview with a lot of valuable knowledge and insider information he left me with this quote “God doesn’t choose the equipped, he equips the Chosen.”

3D vs 2D

Yesterday I had the pleasure of reading an article by indie film director Ben Childs. The article spoke about  the recent trend of 3D movies in today's cinema. 3D technology has been around for almost seventy years and its popularity jumps through every innovation. With the great success of Avatar nobody really knows how big of a role 3D will play in modern day cinema will 2D be merely for lower budget project and 3D be only for the huge studios. "3D should only feature the kind of content that lends itself to the experience”(Ben Childs October 3, 2010) I couldn't agree more everything comes back to comes back to story . As the old saying goes you can make a good script into a bad movie but you can never make a bad script into a good movie.