What's The Deal With Comedy!?

The other night I got to go see Jerry Seinfeld do stand up. It's been a while since I got to see him do stand up and I forgot how great it was. But why is it that people like watching Jerry Seinfeld do stand up? I think it's because his jokes are about stuff people can relate to and have truth to them. They're all about things or situations that happen to you in everyday life. And they aren't mean spirited like some comics, you won't ever hear him making fun of people like calling people fat or ugly. He picks out truths in our everyday habits and makes them the focal points, drawing focus to things we don't usually focus on or view or actions as. This is very important to take notice of. With such a plethora of comedy shows on television, especially ones focused on family life, it is an important tool to be able to use to have a successful show.

What Commercial Will You Make?

So advertising is everywhere you go someone is going to try to sell you something. It could be a car, some food, an experience of some sorts but no matter what advertising is the name of the game. Billboards, radio spots, commercials they're all around you. What exactly is it that separates your local car dealer commercials from that of a company like Pepsi? It's that they're able to hit important points in there advertisements. While a place like a local sandwich shop will do more to tell you about their business while a company like Pepsi will instead target your heart strings or make something exciting. and why is this? Because they're already a big established company, you already know who Pepsi is so instead of telling you more about their company they start relating their company and products to the kinds of feelings they want you to have when you think of them or their products. And this is why you see more artistic or entertaining commercials from them. They the artistic commercial does better then an informative commercial because it sticks in your mind more usually, but for business that are new or trying to grow it's better to be informative. If a commercial sticks in someone's mind about a place or thing they know nothing about, then you haven't accomplished anything. So always decide when you're about to make a commercial what is it you need to accomplish, inform the public or keep them in your mind.

Success Is How You See It

When somebody makes a TV show or a movie they want to know they have made a great product, but how do you determine greatness? There are many different ways to determine this is critics. You can always read about what people think in the news paper, on the internet or even watch critics on TV. However this mite not be the best way to get a feel for how good of a job you've done. You can obviously take a look at it from a numbers perspective, whether that is ticket sales, box office rankings, or amount of time spent in the box office. Some people determine the success of what they made off the impact it had. It may not have made as much money as other shows or movies but it had such a great influence on people or has a really great following. And others would base it off of awards they've received. Obviously every year you have lots of award shows that recognize shows that did really great in their nominated categories. In this case they value the opinion of the members of the academy or who ever is apart of the voting/judging pool. So what do you look at to determine success? Think about that next time you start a project.

Effective Super Bowl Advertising

As most of you know, unless of course you've been living under a rock, this Sunday was The Super Bowl. Of course this is known for two things, football and commercials. After watching many of these commercials I figured out there are three main approaches to making a successful and memorable Super Bowl commercial. The first is the animal approach. This is using animal talent to be as cute or comical as possible. It's best to make it reference to current culture, like the ostrich in the Doritos commercial referencing the surprised ostrich. The next of course is cute kids. Anytime you have a kid doing something funny, adorable, innocent or even mean, it doesn't just seem to be funny but also pulls at your heartstrings. Finally there is doing the unthinkable. This is usually using a concept or having an ending that wouldn't have been thought of because it seems to stupid but you give it the pay off to be fantastic. This is probably the hardest thing to pull off but still achievable. So what do you guys think of the commercials this year, let me know. Anyway see you all next week.

Scheduling, The First Step To Successes

This week I won't be talking about the entertainment industry specifically but something that pertains to every aspect of life and that is scheduling. Scheduling is always and important part of completely any set of tasks. After receiving my show assignment for tech I had to go and do massive scheduling for the month of February. Between my show, Greenfields project, musical rehearsal and tournaments, I knew I needed to plan ahead extensively. So first thing I had to do was pull together all my schedules and calenders. Then I had to compile all the dates that I had already filled and deduce when I had time to shoot for my show and for Greenfields. Then I had to double check with other people involved to make sure they were available for those dates too and what dates they wouldn't be available for. By scheduling I can make sure I have everything I need to do planned out and leave extra time in case something unexpected happens. With scheduling I prevent myself from worrying about due dates and when I will fit in stuff. Plus if I do need to reschedule or squeeze something in, a quick peak at my schedule will allow me to figure out if and when I have the time to do so. So to wrap up I suggest everyone practices scheduling in their life. It may be annoying at times but the more you do it, the easier it becomes. Also the more stuff you naturally schedule when receiving assignments or make plans, the easier it is to compile everything together into one big schedule.

Summer Wars, A Must See For Everyone

There are millions of movies out there. Every movie is somebody's attempt to convey emotions, ideas and story to it's viewing audience. Today I would like to talk about one of my favorite films of all time and one I feel conveys everything the creator wanted, in a way that very few others have been able to. So without further ado... 

Now the first thing you'll notice is that it appears to have two different animations styles, a cartoonish one and a more serious or normal one. This is because the movie's plot takes place in a society where most people depend on the internet for there normal lives and even put most their privileges online. So when showing stuff in the online world, the director decided to use a more digital animation style to accommodate the idea of this online world and avatars people used in it. As for the movie's plot, the story is about a normal high school boy named Kenji, who after loosing his chance to represent Japan in the math olympics by a small error, thought he'd be spending his summer vacation as a code monkey for Oz, the social hub of the internet. However all that changes when a school girl friend Natsuki barges in to hire him for a summer job out in the country. Once arriving at her great grandmother's house it's revealed that she hired Kenji to pretend to be her boy friend at her great grandmother's birthday so she could be happy knowing Natsuki had someone nice to look after her, as she has been experiencing heart problems. After much resistance Kenji agrees to stay and go along with the plan. But thats all you get, you'll have to watch to see what happens. 

Anyway lets move onto why this movie is amazing. The first and biggest point is the characters and how they exemplify family. Natsuki has an extremely big family that is seen throughout the film. It is the way the characters are written and conveyed through their voice actors. When watching the movie you can feel the emotions shown between each character, whether its joy, sadness, hate or any other emotion. You also get a feel watching the movie that this is how family's these days are, its not faked like you see families in a lot of films, you can really believe the performance through the writing and acting and it doesn't feel like a performance. This also speaks to me because of the huge extended family I have and I can't help but be reminded of my entire family when watching the film.

Next is the artistic design of this film. Not only is the animation beautiful from its stunning nature shots, to its rough and touch smack downs, the animation is extremely fluent and compliments the style extremely well. Also the music for this film is great. It really wraps you up the scene and even by itself the original sound track is amazing to listen to all on its own and I listen to it regularly. 

Also the movie has won numerous awards over the years since it's release and is the perfect follow up movie for its director, Mamoru Hosoda, from his last great film "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time". So in all this movie is so moving and I would HIGHLY recommend anyone who hasn't watch summer wars to at least watch it once in your life. 

DON'T Read The Book!

As many of you may know a lot of movies and shows are based off of books. Some of the most well known movies such as the Harry Potter series is taken from the original books. For years though people always told me that you should read the book before seeing the movie. However I've found that this is not always the best course of action. This week I'll establish the times when it may or may not be best to read the book first.

Let's start with stand alone movies. These would be movies based off one book and are a single movie and not a series. Such examples are The Great Gatsby or Forrest Gump. In a movie where the plot is self contained and there are no prequels, or sequels to the book, I feel it is ok to read the book first. This gives you more insight into the characters that you may not get because of things that must be cut out for time purposes. So when a character makes a decision you have that prior supporting knowledge on why that choice was made. Now what about Harry Potter or The Chronicles Of Narnia? These are more of the opinion of the viewer. Because one book follows into the next one but doesn't leave you at a huge cliff hanger I feel reading the book first is ok. Their individual stories are always wrapped, sure you may want to know what they do next but you basically know how the next one will be or the story is wrapped so well you don't know what will happen next but its not a cliff hanger. 

Then there is a series like The Hunger Games. With this is advise NOT to read the book first. There are two qualities to a series like this. First of all the main plot is a competition. Whats the point of watching a competition if you know what's going to happen? Would you pay to go to the Super Bowl already knowing who wins and every play that will be made? Reading the book in this case takes away from the dramatics of it. Also they leave their books with cliff hangers, the end of the second book and movie specifically ends in a cliff hanger full of questions. This adds a lot more to the experience in my opinion and makes it worth watching. So those are just my opinions on when you should and shouldn't read the book before seeing the movie and of course this is all up to your personal preference this is just my advisory on it.