the really useful media company

Last week I spent a lot of time writing a proposal for a new client. At the end of the day — after I’d sent it to the client, had a good phone conversation with them to clarify a couple points, and signed off — Emily sent me a link to this 37signals blog post: A reminder of how simple business can be when you don’t make it complicated. Excerpt:

Yesterday I found a [landscaping company] flyer on my front door.

I’ve been staring at a project in my backyard for a few weeks. Staring hasn’t gotten it done. So I figured I’d see what it would cost to have these guys do it.

I called them. 10 minutes later the guy came by. He was down the street on another job. We walked out back. I told him what I needed done. He looked around for 20 seconds and said $300. I said “deal.”

That’s it. No proposal. No “I’ll get back to you tomorrow”. No “Let me see how much the materials will cost and I’ll drop an estimate in your mailbox next week.”

Just $300. Deal. When can you start? Wednesday. How long will it take? A few hours for a few guys.

He knows his business. I know what my time is worth. End of transaction. It was so damn refreshing.

I know everything can’t be done like this, but often it seems like we’ve slid down a path of formality with so many things that really don’t need it. Extensive contracts, delays, red tape, precise cost estimates based on precise amounts of materials, “let me think about it and I’ll get back to you,” etc. Essential? Sometimes yes, but most of the time probably not. [...]

The whole post and quite a few of the comments are well worth reading — funny how it came along at just the right time. I’d sweated over certain parts of the proposal, gotten feedback from several more experienced freelancer friends, contract advice from a lawyer in my family and thought through the implications of each piece in the pie very carefully. In the end, I think the proposal was the right length: it had the details the client had asked for and the information I thought they needed to know.

Of course, not all proposals can be short. Very large corporate sites may need a more precise definition of scope. Responses to open RFPs (request for proposals) have to show that you understand the clients’ needs since they don’t know you from Adam. It’s all about context: if you’ve worked with the client before and/or you’ve covered all the bases in a conversation, your proposal can be a one paragraph email. These two comments to the 37signals post summed it up well:

Know your craft, and you can communicate what you need to the client with a minimum of effort, and everyone is happy.

A short chat about the basic terms (time, cost, and scope); mutual trust; and, communication – that’s about all that is needed in most cases.

One service we really love to provide is designing networked performances, where performers in geographically separated locations perform together live via streaming media. This month, I’m consulting with Hunter Reynolds, a multimedia artist who needed help setting up a performance between him at his studio and visitors to his gallery show at Momenta Art. Hunter wanted to tell the stories behind his artwork — he makes gorgeous “photo-weavings”, tapestry-size grids of photo prints sewn together at the edges — and talk with visitors in realtime.

Since Hunter had done it before (using Skype video chat), he knew what was needed (cameras, mics, a good Internet connection at each location) but not if what was available could provide a stable platform for the performance. He asked his friend Wayne Ashley for help — Wayne is a noted new media curator and arts director — which led to my involvement (via another helpful recommend). After determining Hunter’s needs, visiting the sites and testing, I was able to recommend a stable setup, including hardware, software, bandwidth upgrades and purchases, and guide Hunter and Momenta through the setup at the studio and gallery.

The first performance last Sunday was a success, despite limited holiday weekend attendance, and Hunter will be telling stories to gallery visitors for the next three Sundays from 12 to 6pm. If you’ll be in New York between now and June 15th, I highly recommend seeing his artwork and, if you can make it on a Sunday, hearing Hunter’s stories.

Here’s the exhibit description:

Momenta Art is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by Hunter Reynolds, his first solo exhibition in New York in five years. Since 2001 Reynolds has experienced a series of life-altering events: 9/11, substance abuse, surviving AIDS, Hurricane Wilma, a close friend’s suicide, the collapse of his immune system, and four HIV-related strokes that left his right hand partially paralyzed. These events are the raw material out of which this exhibition was born. Viewers who enter the gallery will be surrounded by a series of large-format works called “photo-weavings” formed by physically sewing together hundreds of smaller photographs. Though stunningly beautiful, the photographs that make up these pieces document a cathartic meltdown during which Reynolds, together with Hurricane Wilma, destroyed his Florida studio in the fall of 2005.

The documented wreckage includes Reynolds’ own paint-splattered and water-damaged work from earlier series, artwork by other artists, CD covers, paper fragments, and shards of broken glass that were thrown and bonded by the forces of wind and rain. Bits of this detritus will be on view in the gallery along with the photo weavings. In addition, Reynolds will present several remote story-telling/conversation performances via Skype and a mini-documentary covering the hurricane and Reynolds’ salvage efforts in his studio, efforts that transform the wreckage and personal history into testaments of survival. All of these elements come together in a complete context; but even as they encompass, they break free. For almost thirty years, Reynolds’ work has engaged with gender identity, body politics, and personal histories. But it is the broad generosity of his work, and this installation in particular, that reveals the artist’s particular strength at forging hope and beauty out of the sometimes dark totality of life.

“Art has always been one of the tools I have used to heal myself and others and to find order in the chaos of my life, by not only telling the story through art, but by transforming myself in the process of making it, using it to rebuild my life, finding hope and beauty and a desire to be alive.”

– Hunter Reynolds

All of a sudden, two months have gone by since South by Southwest 2009, and my grand plans for a series of posts about what we learned there have gone poof. That being said, I’d like to share the one session I attended that’s stuck with me the most: From Freelance to Agency: Start Small, Stay Small, which featured a group of top-notch freelancers talking about their lessons learned as they grew their businesses, whether they ended up hiring employees or stayed solo. If you listen to the podcast all the way to the Q & A, you’ll hear yours truly asking a question. Here’s the panel description to give you a taste:

The web has always attracted mavericks and entrepreneurs, and a rocky economy makes the freelance life more desirable (or at least more inevitable) than ever. So what happens when your freelance business starts to grow? How big can you get without getting bad? How can freelancers and small teams compete with traditional agencies? Hip freelancers and cool agency heads will answer questions, compare experiences, and tell their stories.

So what stuck with me? Be yourself. Whether your website speaks in a “we’re a company” voice or an “it’s just me” voice, be honest about the scale of your business, who you are, and what you do. You can have it both ways, as Jeffrey Zeldman pointed out: present yourself as a business on the Home page, introduce yourself as a person on your About page.

Some of our favorite events we have shot this year for our biggest client, The New School, were Sandra Day O’Connor at the Games 4 Change Festival, Jeffrey Toobin on the Supreme Court, and a panel of food writers remembering Julia Child. Here’s a funny excerpt from the last one, Molly O’Neill’s dead-on impression of Julia Child responding to criticism from PETA.

We have a number of clients at The New School, including the India China Institute, the Graduate Program in International Affairs, The New School for General Studies, the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, and the Wolfson Center for National Affairs. The New School makes most of their filmed events available online through Fora.tv, an interactive video sharing site that presents thought and discourse from some of the world’s foremost think tanks, conferences and institutions. Follow the last link for many hours of fascinating debates, lectures and interviews.

In July and August, we wrote and edited a promo trailer for I Dig Tanzania, a novel summer camp organized by Global Kids, the Field Museum of Chicago, and the Encyclopedia of Life. In collaboration with Global Kids and the other funders, we collaboratively scripted the trailer based on footage and photos shot by the teachers, students and researchers in the field in Tanzania. The footage and photos were of varying quality and size, from Flip cameras to consumer HD cameras, with on-board microphones, and all handheld. We had to massage and sweeten some of the audio and video considerably to make them easy on the eyes and ears, and the clients were happy with the results.

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In May, the really useful media company’s Dan Winckler joined Global Kids’ Virtual Video Project, an after-school program, to replace a departing instructor. In the VVP, the GK Leaders (all high school and college age students) choose an issue of global significance to research and create a film to promote awareness of it. This year the students wrote their film about the effects of racism on youth access to education. And did we mention it was entirely shot as machinima in Second Life? In addition to guiding the students through final scripting, shooting, and editing with co-teacher Tabitha Tsai, Dan assembled the students’ iMovie edits in Final Cut Pro, adding niceties like audio cleanup/sweetening, lipsync tightening, background sounds, color correction, and some custom graphics of the students’ happy faces for the end credits. You can watch their film Race to Equality below and read more about the process on the Global Kids blog.

On March 15th, 2008 the Really Useful Media Company did a live, two-camera, high-definition shoot of the operas Bastianello and Lucrezia, presented by the New York Festival of Song at Caramoor, a performing arts center in Katonah, New York. After intensive post-production (editing, color correction, DVD authoring), the operas are now up for all to enjoy the performers’ world-class musicianship. Here below is a custom player we made for NYFOS to put on their site, showcasing the two operas. The videos have yet to be released by NYFOS. Many thanks to Benton-C, whose experience, expertise and all-around-nice-guy-ness shines through in the videography (wide shots) and color correction. Thanks also to Adam Abeshouse, the audio engineer and recordist who mixed the superb recording you can hear in these videos. The full credits are after the jump.

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