BANGERS 'N MASH PT. I

One last trip for 2011.

Ryan and I are out in Ireland for a few days. We shot a wedding for one of Ryan's boys yesterday in Killkenny. The afterparty lasted until 5AM. No kidding.





Few new Irish friends from the pub.


That's Shane and his brother Ross. Shane's dream is to visit America because we wants to try Wendy's and Hooters.



Flight over was actually not too bad. We flew Air New Zealand from LAX to Heathrow. I was sort of dreading the 10 hour flight but Air NZ was so legit it was actually really chill. All free on-demand TV and movies, nice staff and two good meals including chocolate Santas and Haagen-Dazs ice cream.

Tomorrow morning we're checking out the Ring of Kerry. Anyway, internet's sort of dodgy here. More pictures soon. Talk to you lads later.

CATCHING UP

Back on my blog game.

Things got hectic last week, here's what you missed.

TUESDAY we went to a dinner with Tim Cadiente from Barton Perreira. It was sort of a Wrap Party for a shoot we helped work on a couple weeks ago. I'll throw some photos of that up as soon as I'm officially allowed to. Anyway, had some steak at 555 East in Long Beach - good time.


Got this sample of AeroShot Energy in the mail - it's like breathable flavored energized mist or something that comes in a little inhaler cartridge. Neither Matt nor I drink coffee - we'll see how this goes.

WEDNESDAY we went up to The ID Agency offices in LA and cast actors for a little commercial shoot we're working on.


We're also working on a small thing next week for Shriner's Hospitals for Children and they mailed us a few flash drives. We're shooting some stuff for them at this year's Tournament of Roses Parade.


A couple issues of Arkitip came in the mail - old and new. This Sheperd Fairey one with a stencil cover is legit - I'm looking forward to catching up on these.

THURSDAY Matt went up to Santa Barbara and he and our boy Josh actually shot video of a wedding proposal for Cloudless. The client hired a planner, a photographer and us to document the entire proposal - kind of a cool idea.

Meanwhile Ryan and I went to The ID Agency Holiday Party. Sushi, bowling and karaoke (don't look at me, it was not my idea). Anyway, really good time. Nice to chill with everyone outside the office. Ryan and I hit Krispy Kreme on the way home, came back to OC and went to sleep around 3AM and woke up 5 for the commercial shoot.


FRIDAY we shot at a private gun range out in Simi Valley all day. Shoot went well. More details later.


Our 0484 Holiday cards arrived from the printer. I'm leaving tomorrow for a week so these will probably start making their way out the door in early January. Whatevs, not too worried about it.


SUNDAY New sneakers courtesy of my brother. Would've been such a perfect Christmas if only the Lakers could've executed down the stretch. Oh well. Rose is a beast. Lakers reserves look real questionable (and pale).

Anyway, Ryan and I are going on a little trip. I'm currently downloading Horrible Bosses, Reservoir Dogs and Page One: Inside The New York Times on the iPad in preparation for the flight. Sort of a random movie assortment, right? Our flight is this afternoon - I haven't started packing yet but the good news is that I did just find my passport.

MAKR

Stopped by the Makr Carry Goods studio over in Winter Park last week.

Matt and I had like half a day free when we were in Orlando so we decided to go check this place out. Makr is basically a high end, hand crafted specialty product design company started by this guy Jason Gregory a few years back.



To be honest with you, I really hardly knew anything about Makr before we went down there. I'd seen a few of their products online and in magazines before but I'd never spent much time on their site or purchased anything. But, I went on The New York Times Travel section to find some cool stuff in the Orlando area and Makr's studio popped up there.

I had no plans or contacts at Makr, just thought we'd pop into their showroom / workshop and look around a bit.



So we walked in and met Shane, who basically runs the place, and he gave us a tour of the studio and sort of just explained how it all goes down. Almost everything is made onsite, by hand, and they're really stringent about quality and overseeing their supply chain. Anyway, Shane was cool - he introduced us to the rest of the guys working there and we actually ended up all grabbing lunch together.

Shane's just out of business school and handles that side of things for Makr. It was really interesting to sit down with him and talk about the phenomenon which is Makr in terms of the the numbers and how the financials effect the business decisions.

Makr is an incredible story and it's completely emblematic of the time we're living in right now. This guy Jason quit his job, bought a used laser cutting machine and started designing handmade leather wallets in his apartment. A few years later, they've blown up largely thanks to the power of the internet. And now they're making dozens of products, have expanded into furniture, and despite being carried at a select group of boutiques all over the world, they're still moving a ton of product direct to consumers from their website. This guy took a laser cutting machine and pieces of leather and created a million dollar global brand that sets all it's own terms, has a cult online following and does not advertise at all.



Anyway, really cool company with an amazing story - very inspiring and insightful visit. Glad we decided to take the time and go pop our heads in over there. The alternative was killing time at Epcot center but that'll have to wait until our next trip.

WTT

Clocked out early yesterday and went up to Staples to see Jay and Kanye.



No opening acts so you sort of just chill for a couple hours at first. Drake showed up and everyone went nuts as he walked through the crowd. Then H.A.M. came on and everything kicked off.



3 hours of hits. Amazing. Their solo stuff was even better to me than the WTT tracks and it's unbelievable how many smashes they each have. Gold Digger, Hard Knock Life, All Falls Down, Jesus Walks, Big Pimpin, Black Album hits, 808 songs, everything.



Izzo comes on and they talk about how that was Kanye's first Rocafella record. Kanye always mentions the fact that he used to be a Jay-Z fan - he went to the Hard Knock Life tour in '98 in Chicago as a fan. When you see where he's at now - that's just so unbelievable to think about.





Really cool atmosphere. Both Jay and Kanye seemed to be in really chill moods. Near the end of the show, a fan handed Jay a vinyl album cover from The Blueprint and he and Kanye both signed it while onstage.



And then of course, the encore. Ni**as in Paris. 10x in a row. Seriously. Back to back to back. The song will probably be stuck in my head for the rest of year. Not mad about it.

ORLANDO I

Quick peak at our trip down to the Magic Kingdom.






Very cool couple days down south. Shut down Disney World Speedway and shot some stuff with our boy Tayler Malsam.


More details soon. I need some sleep. We're filming in Chino tomorrow morning and the call time is at dawn. The shoot actually conflicts with the Lakers ticket presale so I'm typing up a list of games and seating preferences to send to Spellman right now. #priorities #firstthingsfirst

WHAT'S NEXT?

For this, the 300th NoBizPlan entry, a preview of something new that we recently started.

It's been about a year since we started getting serious about producing videos for the web. Last November we flew out to Charlotte and Miami and shot a profile of TaylerMalsam, a young up and coming NASCAR driver. In the past 12 months we've shot a ton of different types of videos focusing on varying subjects and events.

For the past 6 months or so, we've been kicking around ideas of shooting a series of videos solely for ourselves. Something self initiated and not commissioned by any client or sponsor. A project that would allow us to tell stories in our own way and cover stuff which we find interesting.

Finally, recently, everything just sort of came together and we got the ball rolling. Matt and Ryan and I shot the first of these videos this week in LA along with our boy DJ Hapa. There are a long list of people whom I had in mind for this video series but Hapa was our first choice to kick this off. I'm thankful for how gracious he was in giving us his time and attention for this.

Anyway, really don't want to say too much more about it at the moment, but we're hoping to launch the whole thing sometime next month and I'm excited about it.

In the meantime, tomorrow morning Matt and I fly to Orlando to shoot new stuff with Tayler as he prepares for the 2012 Nationwide Series. Stay tuned.

DRIVES ON DRIVES ON DRIVES

Ryan dropped these off with us while he was out of town.

It's about 19TB (that's terabytes) of footage nestled in a little custom fit waterproof, shockproof Pelican case. And 19TB is a lot - there are dozens and dozens of projects in here.

One of the things I never really thought about before we got too deep into this video production game was how you store, backup and transport all of the footage in a way that's safe and somewhat organized. It can be a major headache.



The data on these hard drives means everything. Without them, there can be no projects, no videos, etc. Bottom line, there'd be a lot of frowning people around if something happened to all of this stuff. We go through great lengths to be extra careful about handling it and backing it all up. And then consider this, the bigger the project, the more elaborate the production, the more valuable the footage becomes - the more nervous I get about the whole situation.

For example, when we were in Mexico for 10 days, we downloaded all of the footage - audio, video and GoPro stuff - to a portable 1TB drive that we named 'DUCATI MEXICO 1'. Each day we backed up all of that footage to a larger powered 3TB drive aptly named 'DUCATI MEXICO BIG DOG'. During the days, we kept the 2 drives in separate suitcases and in separate cars whenever possible. By the time we got to the last couple days of the trip we made yet a third copy of everything - hundreds of GB of data by that time. When we left the hotel, we would hide the third copy in a separate hotel room on a separate floor than the others - just in case.

We even brought extra blank hard drives with us - just as standby substitutes in the event of a hard drive emergency. That's usually not necessary, because there's a Best Buy around every corner, but it was Mexico so we had to be way over prepared.



It's weird. It seems paranoid, I know, but you sort of have to be that way in order to be safe. You don't want to lose the data. Trust me.

Back your stuff up everybody. And hide the copy safely. You'll thank me later.