BURIED IN WORK

Crazy week.

Deadlines all day every day. Slept about 3 hours a night the first few days of the week.

We're contributing and art directing designs for both mens and womens Iron Horse Jeans fashion collections. Plus comps for a nationwide child seat print advertising campaign, photography and packaging for a bunch of Rokenbok toy boxes, website development for about a half dozen sites, conference call along with Legacy games for a big government funded online game web project proposal, a few logo designs in the works, and trying to manage my fantasy basketball team despite Blake Griffin's knee injury.

Anyway, more details and photos later. I have to get back to work before Matt catches me blogging in the middle of the day.

GLOW IN THE DARK

The new Kanye book arrived the other day.



Spot varnish printed cover, behind the scenes photos and a disc with unreleased songs and stuff - very nicely put together. Even though the whole world is panicked that the Kindle is going to kill traditional publishing, books like this remind you that some things cannot be replicated digitally.







Saw the concert earlier this year. I thought it lived up to the hype - which was no small feat. Love him or hate him, Kanye is a uniquely talented individual. I think it's a mistake to judge him based upon the tabloid media's portrayal of his antics. At the end of the day, as long as he's producing compelling music, everything else should be secondary.

A WEEK IN THE LIFE

Wrapped up a 3 week project working on site in Culver City today.

Between all the regular 0484 stuff we have going on and Jordan's film during the same time, it all went by in a blur. Here's a few iPhone pics from the past couple weeks...


As expected, the commute was the worst part of the whole deal. Traffic was pretty unpredictable. On Columbus day I made it from Newport to Culver in record time, but on days it rained - game over. Honestly though, I don't even mind traffic as much as most people. I was on the phone most of time anyway. (80% work calls/10% Dr. Laura/10% Drake and Kid Cudi)




Top secret project for the undisclosed client. (Hint: Billion dollar conglomerate headquartered in Europe...) More info on the actual job/client later.


Lunch




Sort of crazy that the iPhone could even capture this.


Had a firedrill one day. This is when it started to feel like I was living in a cross between Dilbert and The Office.


Hard to tell in this photo but this dude in a Hummer had an anti-Barack (surpise, surprise) bumper sticker on his car. It had the words LOL and NOBEL intersecting and the 'O' was the Obama campaign logo. Politics aside, this is so corny. Who still puts bumper stickers on their cars? This isn't like a Ross Perot era artifact, it's about Obama's Nobel Prize - the guy must have put it on like hours before this photo was taken.

I don't know what kind of right-wing, crossword puzzle fanatic is printing out these bumper stickers but someone needs to tell him about the internet - the new way to spread lame ideas like this. Stop treating the back of your car like a sticker book and go get a blog or something.


Gym


Almost home


Catching up on 0484 business over dinner


Best things to get in the mail? Shown here: #1 Checks and #3 Magazines.


#2 Lakers tickets

MAGIC MOUSE

Need to stop by the Apple store and grab one of these on my way home today.

For the record, I was never a big fan of Apple's 'Mighty Mouse' - sort of heavy (in terms of mice) and the left/right clicking on it was clunky - so I've been using these wireless Logitechs (below) with tiny nano-receivers for awhile. The receiver is so small you can basically leave it plugged in all the time. (The first time I unplugged it to use its' USB port, the receiver was so damn small that I lost it within 30 seconds and had to buy a whole new mouse - for real)

But the new 'Magic Mouse' works via bluetooth, so it's receiver free.

And I've been meaning to pick up one of these for awhile as well - custom designed by Brent Rollins for Undefeated. I'll admit that $22 for a mousepad is a bit questionable, but I missed the last batch (below) and I'd been searching for one ever since.

I know this all seems a bit overboard, but try to remember that Matt and I spend about 16 hours a day, sometimes more, on the computer.

We are professional mouse clickers.

PRODUCTION: DAY 2

A few more stills from last week's filming.


We shot with 2 Panasonic HVX 200's and a couple standard tripods. Not 16mm, no crazy lens adapters, no dollys or cranes. My philosophy, at this point, is to cut out all the bullshit and try to tell a story.

I know that I'm in the minority on this - I'm ok with that.


{Click on the photos to magically enlarge them}






One of my favorite images of the day.




My boy Rick who currently work for the DGA.


Wrapped.

LUNCH TIME

Still working on-site in LA for a few more days.

Brought my lunch today. Microwave here is the worst ever. All dials, no buttons. To operate it, you have to spin the dials, read the messages on the LCD screen and then push the dials in the correct sequence. This thing must have been made by the people who manufacture Rubik's cubes, for real. After about 10 min spinning and pressing the wrong dials someone walked in and helped me out. Not sure what department he works in but I wouldn't be surprised if he was a PhD of some sort. Whatever - they have a Ms. Pac Man arcade game next to the microwave so I can't complain that much.

Anyway, still pulling a crazy schedule. Matt and I are working ridiculous hours - except for the 4 hour midday surfing break he took yesterday (no kidding). But at least it's Friday - which means tomorrow I can sleep in... before working the rest of the weekend.

LOBSTERS

We started doing some work the other day for a new client through my boy Carter.

The next day he showed up at my house with 11 live lobsters. (This is as random as it sounds - the project had nothing to do with seafood) He threw them in my freezer and said they were partial payment for the work we had started - I'm pretty sure he was joking, it was kind of hard to tell.

Gabe and I don't eat seafood. At all. Carter seemed pretty excited so I didn't have the heart to really break it to him. There are a lot of things we would trade design services for - Lakers tickets, frequent flier miles, frozen yogurt... but crustaceans are not one of them. I have a feeling that when Gabe gets back from that office gig he's not going to be happy about this arrangement.

PRODUCTION: DAY 1

Woke up at dawn Saturday and Matt and I headed out to Glendale.


First up, exteriors.


Everything went pretty smoothly. We didn't necessarily have the proper permits to shoot the exterior scenes, but it worked out alright. One cop came by, we offered him snacks from craft service, he kept it moving.


So, this guy in the striped shirt was kind of a trip. He momentarily interrupted production when he walked past us yelling out to no one in particular before stopping to snort some cocaine (on the sidewalk in broad daylight in front of everyone).

Then the dude starts rambling his life story off to Jordan, told him he works as a rocket scientist. The best part was that Matt had missed this kids antics, so when he started chatting Matt up, Matt just thought he was an eccentric actor and one of the cast members.




Extra pro lighting set up rigged up by my boy Anton. It's hard to tell in this picture but he zip tied Kino Flo bulbs to foam core and drilled the makeshift fixtures into the alcove in the ceiling. Real MacGyverish.






Most important thing to have on set? A good vibe amongst the crew. That and plenty of food and caffeine but the two sort of go hand in hand. Seriously.

They don't teach you that in film school but it's true.

0484 BOOK CLUB

Picked up a couple new books from Amazon.

Upstarts by Donna Fenn

Discusses the rise and success stories of businesses founded and run by young punk kids like Matt and I. Includes interviews and coverage of all the usuals, including:

Josh Spear - A kid from New York who started blogging in the back of a college classroom a few years ago and now runs his own mini new-media empire. Today his site has a slew of contributing writers, he's endorsed by Yahoo! and he travels the world blogging about all sorts of stuff from art and design to Global Economic Summits. I ran into Josh a few months ago outside this year's TED conference - nice guy.

The Hundreds - Two former USC Law School students, Bobby Kim and Ben Shenassafar, who started a streetwear brand in 2003 inspired by Southern California skateboarding lifestyle. They started a daily blog - back before anyone knew what a blog was - which served to connect with their customers and define what their brand was all about. Now they have 2 flagship stores, did nearly $5 million in sales last year and refuse to distribute through national department stores out of fear of alienating their core audience. Matt and I see these guys out in LA all the time, especially at Lakers' games.

I've yet to find the chapter in Upstarts about 0484CREATIVE and our rise to global supremacy but I'm sure we must be in here somewhere.

Tribes by Seth Godin

World's most popular marketing blogger discusses the idea of brand building and cultivating 'tribes' of devout fans who embrace whatever it is that you do and help spread your message. Besides ours, Seth's is the other blog you should be reading every day.

PHONE TAP?

Great little video via my boy jeffstaple's blog.

If you guys knew how often we had this conversation with "potential new clients" it would make you sick. For real.

Warning: Contains a bit of scrappy language, but I won't tell your mom if you don't.

THE OFFICE

Working on a project, on-site at a client's office in LA for the next couple weeks.

I was hoping the whole experience would be sort of Dunder Mifflin-esque but so far it's not really as funny, more just real life-ish.

Plus we got all the other usual stuff going on - sort of a crazy schedule for awhile. The Iron Horse Jeans guys are out in China this week overseeing production of samples for all sorts of things that we're helping put together. We're working on about 4-5 websites in various stages of production. I shoot Jordan's movie this Saturday and Sunday - lots of last minute pre-production stuff to take care of. But, most importantly, Jim and Pam get married tomorrow (9pm / 8 Central).

PANCAKES

Working from Matt's house down in San Diego today.

Busy day. Conference call at 10. Lakers tickets presale at noon. Meeting at 1. But breakfast first, before all of that. I requested Mickey Mouse or at least chocolate chip - Matt sort of just scoffed. We'll see what happens...

THE REAL BRETT FAVRE

I don't really watch a lot of football.

But from what I've heard, I think that Matt's right that Brett Favre is clearly one of the better 51 year old quarterbacks playing in the NFL today.

Anyway, saw this commercial the other day. The last second touchdown pass was ok, but let's be honest, this is what Brett is really known for...