Stealing has been rebranded as Sharing

Copyright is dead. I accept it. We live in a digital age where any form of online media can be download in a few minutes. It seems like a force of nature that you can’t question. The sky is blue because it’s blue. You never wonder why the sky is blue. Everyone just accepts it and that’s it. Digital Copyright will always be a few steps behind everyone’s ability to copy, paste and download digital media. When we used to buy things, the things we bought came in a box. It was an object that you had to pay money for. Now that digital media no longer comes in a package, it is much easier for people to think it is something that you don’t have to pay for. In someways it is a generational issue. If you are over thirty you are more likely to have a blue ray or DVD collection. You might even still buy CD’s. When you buy a movie you are interested in having a box and owning an object. There are generations of people who have never had a collection of CD’s or DVDs. It’s much easier for you to disassociated value with a movie or album if it only exists in digital form. Years ago the music industry went though the growing pains of digital locks and legal actions against illegal downloads. Eventually everyone basically gave up on digital locks and legal action because it meant that the content producers were suing the consumers of their products. Surprisingly that didn’t go over so well. The movie industry is now going through the same revolution. Early this year, the Producers of the Oscar-winning film “The Hurt Locker” filed copyright lawsuits against people who illegally shared the movie on peer-to-peer networks. http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20006314-261.html It seems that no one in the Movie Industry was watching what happened in Music digital file sharing over the last decade. Digital file sharing and any type of illegal downloading is stealing. As a filmmaker it is hard to accept that anyone can just download a film that took you several years of your life to finish. Especially when you really haven’t made much money for it yet. I did few searches and two of the films I’ve made in the last few years can be download illegally on a few different file sharing networks. A film I made last year called ‘A Day in the Life’ has a distributor and it is for sale: http://www.ouatmedia.com//film.php?filmid=9815 If you can download the film for free, then who’s going to pay for it? At the same time, I accept that this is way the world works. After a few days of being upset, I now consider it to be part of the marketing process for the films I make. In the music industry full albums seem to always be put online just weeks before the official release date. Is this due to the demand for the new product or is it a good way to market the release of your new album? Eminem’s ‘Recovery’ album was leaked to the internet two weeks before it’s release date. http://tinyurl.com/2bkhtmv Drake’s new album was leaked online, just before it’s release. http://tinyurl.com/3859c6h Coincidence? I’ve tracked back my “leaks” to some small international festivals. You never really know what film festivals do with the film screeners you send them. I’m not saying any specific film festival did something wrong but one of them must of lost track of some films and then whoever “found” those films, puts them online. I don’t think I’m in a position where I should leak my new film ‘Measuring Tape Girl’ to the Internet. Eventually I can see major film studios leaking blockbuster online a few days before the film is released, for marketing purposes, just as the music industry is doing now. The huge difference is that I’m not Eminem or Drake or a major film studio. I make tiny Canadian short films that are considered successful if you can come close to breaking even. These short films are forms of marketing and having them show up online in file sharing sites is a sign that the marketing is working. It still does not feel right. I accept it and will call it marketing. As a small Canadian Filmmaker you juggle with bankruptcy after most productions until you see a return on your investment. It is very difficult to make any money on any form of digital media when everyone can just share it with each other and not pay. We are sharing movies, music and digital media with our friends. Sharing has become a new political correct term that makes everyone believe stealing digital media is okay. There are generations of people stealing digital media and there are generations of people to come who will never consider peer to peer sharing of digital files to be stealing. Stealing has been re-branded as sharing. All we can do is adapt and continue to make films. All we can do is accept simple truths. The sky is blue because light tend to bend towards the blue spectrum as it travels through water vapor in the sky. We steal movies, music and digital media because we don’t consider to be stealing.

Magazine Articles and Self-Esteem Workshops


An article on our adventure at Cannes appeared in View Magazine and Goodlife magazine this month. Special thanks to Heather Brissenden and Steve Uhraney for making me look good. Please go and check out some of Steve's photographs at: http://www.stephen-uhraney.com.temp.livebooks.com/
I had forgotten about this article because the interview was done at the beginning of May. Someone emailed me about the article and I got scared and a little nervous. The press from the Cannes Festival has died down and I was not really ready to see pictures of myself again. It's strange how these self-image issues never leave you. I've been pretending that someone else was in those photographs and that it was someone else was in the video clips. Measuring Tape Girl is about self-esteem issues, coming to terms with who you are and accepting yourself. I think I've accepted myself and come to terms with images of me existing but it's easy to fall back into old habits. It's easy to become uncomfortable with yourself again. The main reason for all these crazy publicity stunts was to force myself out of hiding and to move beyond my self-images issues. I'm not to sure it worked.
We're starting a new project called the Self-Esteem Workshops. Measuring Tape Girl will be going to local schools and performing for 10 or 15 minutes. After the performance we talk to the students about self-esteem issues and about accepting yourself for who you are. Hopefully this process will help students start a dialogue with their teachers and with themselves about self-images issues. Maybe I'll learn something too.

Everyone is a Media Channel

We all broadcast our lives to the internet. We all do it to varying degrees but everyone does it. Our lives are sent out to the world with tweets, blogs, facebook posts, youtube videos and the list goes on and on. At this point privacy is dead. I don’t know if we should blame Paris Hilton or the creator of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg. This new openness is wonderful in some ways but confusing in others. It’s wonderful to connect and share information and videos but at what point does personal branding cross the line and become corporate? When do we fall into the same corporate traps of trying to stay on message. When personal anecdotes sound more like talking points you memorize for interviews; it may be time to give your head a good shaking. Warhol’s prediction that we would all be famous for 15 minutes has come true but in a warped way. 15 minutes has become 1 to 15 seconds. This pseudo fame has been transformed into an online whisper that others can choose to listen to or they can tune out in an instant. The biggest issue with online pseudo fame is that most young people don’t understand the difference between their real life and their online life. We have become our own online avatars. My current marketing bible ‘Six Pixels of Separation’ by Mitch Joel simples tells us that ‘You are Media’. You provide the content for the internet, you are the media. I’ve avoided a Youtube channel for sometime because I didn’t want to have people go to Youtube and not visit my webpage but at the same time I’ve been uploading things to a youtube channel that has no name or direct connection to me. Mr. Marketing, Mitch Joel, tells us to ‘Embrace your digital footprint’. Over the next few months I will make an effort to embrace my digital footprint and take ownership of all my digital channels. There is no privacy in Personal Branding. You are transparent and there is no where to hide. I’ve stop hiding but I’m not as transparent as I should be. Channel after channel of online content must connect back and forth to all other channels. These online channels loop back and forth, allowing people to follow the trail in any direction they choose. Broadcasting your life over the internet and trying to retain some privacy can be a bit like walking a tight rope. At this point I give up my privacy. I surrender. I’m not going to start posting my PIN Numbers and passwords just yet but I now accept the simple truth that Everyone is a media channel.

Viral Expansion Loops?

In my continuing attempt to understand marketing I came across a new term - Viral Expansion Loops.....? A Viral Expansion Loop is “a type of engineering alchemy that, done right, almost guarantees a self-replicating, borglike growth: One user becomes two, then four, eight, to a million and beyond.” Examples of Viral Expansion Loops are Youtube, Facebook, Linkedin, twitter..... the list goes on. It is also possible to create your own social nextwork using Ning. A company that lets you create a Viral Expansion Loop is one of the best example of a Viral Expansion Loop. Using Ning you can create your own social network? You can create your very own Facebook. Pick a topic that interests you, then create some content and begin propagating your own Social Network using Ning Nets. Who needs a web page anymore when you can become your own social networking site: http://about.ning.com/product/index.php

This makes my experiments with mini-viral events seem like child’s play. Here I go again, becoming amazed by how much I don’t know. Why you would want to be your own facebook is the real question? Or maybe the question is why not? If you have the time and a specific interest in a topic, build a social network using Ning Nets and the people will come. Think of a camera club, a hockey pool or an internal company social network that can help you work on virtual team building and communication? I was lead down this rabbit hole by pages 71 to 76 of Mitch Joel’s book - Six Pixels of Separation. All this from one paragraph at the bottom of page 71. I’ll have to stick with ripples and mini-viral events. As crazy and interesting as Viral Expansion Loops are, I know when I’m swimming in waters that run a little too deep.


For more on Viral Expansion loops:


http://www.twistimage.com/blog/archives/the-viral-expansion-loop


http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/125/nings-infinite-ambition.html?page=0%2C0


http://about.ning.com/index.php

Lost in Paris

Sometimes when you get lost, you’re lost because you need to be. There’s a reason for it. After a few weeks of riding on a crazy film festival roller coaster, I think I need a few days to be lost. And if you have to be lost, being lost in Paris isn’t really all that bad. As distracting as cobble stone streets and 200 year old buildings can be, I’m still lost in thought. I’ve learned a lot in the last few weeks but it may take years for what I’ve learned to sink in. The main lesson for me is how much more there is to do. I can take two or three days to get lost in Paris but then it’s back to work. I need to work about one thousand time harder than I have in the past. Everyone in the world is a Filmmaker. Everyone in the world has a film to sell. I know this and accept this now, but I must move past it and focus on what’s next. Taking baby steps over the last ten years has lead me here. To a screening in a thematic program in the Cannes festival. But what does that really mean. The main lesson to take away from the last few weeks for me is that the short film market is beyond super-saturated. One thousand, seven hundred and twenty films were in this years short film market. Those films are just the ones that made it to the film market at Cannes. Out of those 1720 films, some are selected to get screenings in the thematic programs. Thousands and thousands of films compete for attention at other festivals around the world. If you think about the amount of films out there you can lose your mind. In the end you can only compete with yourself and with your last project. I can only improve on my last film and move forward. This time, the way forward my not involve another short film. I’ll have to find a way to make something longer. The next baby step is a big one, but there’s no other direction to go in unless I take a step backwards. The puzzle pieces are slowly coming together, but the only issue is that I still don’t know what image all these pieces come together to form. Building a puzzle, piece by piece, leads to an ever changing image that never really comes into focus. I’m sure that I’ll have this all figured out in next ten to twenty to thirty years. For now all I can do is walk around these cobblestone streets and be lost for as long as I’m allowed to be.

The Train to Paris

Sleeping on a train has never been an option for me. Too many things to think about. Too many questions. Every time I’m almost asleep the sun hits my eyes again and I get lost in the blurry green vineyards as they fly by. This roller coaster keeps moving but it might be time to get off and figure some things out. Everything has been so busy that there’s never anytime to think. When you can’t sleep on a six hour train ride to Paris, all you can do is think. A few days ago I posted a thank you to everyone who’s ever help me.


“Today and every day of my life, I stand on the shoulders of everyone who has ever helped me. I stand on the shoulders of every member of my family and of all of my friends. Without you, I am nothing.”


I’ve always felt that. I’ve always know that. In a different life, five or six years ago, I had a job that my brain forced me to leave. On the last day of work I went into the supervisors office and told him we had to talk about something serious. Something very important. He went into business mode and prepared his best politically correct response. I looked at him with a straight face and said “It’s a beautiful day, the sun is shining and we’re all lucky to be alive”. To which his response was: “I’ll make a note of that.”

I know that this train travels from Cannes to Paris, but I’m still lost. The next direction to go in is a little more than unclear. The main lesson that I have always kept with me is that I am only at the beginning of understanding how much I do not know. I am always amazed by the amount of things I don’t know. All we can do is keep learning and growing. As I sit on this train and it moves me to Paris, I can only be sure of one thing: It’s a beautiful day, the sun is shining and we’re all lucky to be alive.

Marché du Film

Measuring Tape Girl screened today at 11:30am in the Marché du Film at the Cannes Film Festival. It screened in a thematic program of short films selected by a Danny Lennon of the National Film board of Canada. There are so many different levels to the Film Festival that it’s hard to explain or understand how they organize everything but here’s what I’ve figured out. There are the 20 or so Feature films that are in Competition, that’s the easy part. They get the red carpet and most of the hype that goes with the festival. An out of competition section allows for a certain amount of films to have screenings. Everything from big Hollywood blockbusters to short films. Underneath all this glitz and glamour is a film market. Sales agents, distributors and everyone else pushing, selling and buying films. There are over 900 feature films in the market and about 1720 in the market for short films which is called the short film corner. There are a series of small screening booths in the short film corner and in the feature film market. Filmmakers can book these screening rooms ahead of time and arrange for sales agents or distributors or whoever to see their films and maybe buy rights to them. It wouldn’t be possible for anyone to watch all 1720 films in the short film market so these thematic programs are selected by film programers to narrow things down for festival programers and film buyers. These programs of short films are screened in the Marché du Film. Measuring Tape Girl was selected into a Thematic Program called ‘Most People Live in China’. I forgot to ask Danny what he exactly meant by that. There are a lot of parities in Cannes. A lot of films and a lot of parties. You really have to pick and choose where you go because it would be very easy to never sleep in Cannes.

Every country has a pavilion which provides a home base for filmmakers from that country. It’s where they have meetings, parties and it’s safe haven from all the craziness. These international pavilions line the beach area near the Palais de Festival and you can walk out to the beach from each Pavilion. On the other side of the docks are the party yachts with production company names and logos. You can get lost in the casino maze like design of the whole area. I really haven’t figured it all out just yet. I’m still a little dizzy from all this new information. For now I’m just going to find a place in the shade and hide for a bit. It can really get hot in this Measuring Tape Blazer.



Lost in a sea of Filmmakers

Lost in a sea of Filmmakers, I tread water and refuse to swim to shore. The Cannes Film Festival is the epicenter of hype and publicity for film. I’ve never seen so many cameras and so many salesmen. Every filmmaker becomes a salesmen at Film Festivals. Everything is hyped, everyone has an angle and everyone has a film. My film ‘Measuring Tape Girl’ screens on Friday, May 21st in Marché du Film. Palais F at 11:30am.

Walking around in a Blazer made of Measuring Tape at the Cannes Film Festival changes your perspective on the world around you. I’ve spent most of my life hiding behind a camera. Using a camera to tell stories and record images. I’m still a little uncomfortable being in front of the camera. The first hour was a little rough. I didn’t know what to except or even where to go. The Cannes Film Festival is a little bit of a maze. The core of the Cannes Film Festival occurs in a few interconnecting buildings that send you up and down escalators as you walk from Film Market to Film Market. As a filmmaker the world is your market and the world doesn’t always go to you. So what’s an introverted film geek to do? I didn’t know at first but then eventually came up with the idea of becoming a visual metaphor for my film. A visual representation of what was for sale. It allowed me to make an impact on people without saying a word. Some people smiled, some people were too cool to react and some people got excited and talked to me about my film. It was a great way of finding people who were actually interested in talking to you. People from all over the world came up to me and talked to me about my Measuring Tape Blazer. From a distance I was a story to tell your friend. At closer inspection you got a story, a marketing DVD, a business card and links to all things Measuring Tape online. I really didn’t know where to go or who to talk to. We just went because we had a screening. There where thousands of filmmakers all pushing their latest film, all reaching out to find an audience. The Cannes Film Festival is like a giant tidal wave of Filmmakers from every country in the world, all marketing their newest projects, all asking to be measured. Asking to be Judged. I’m not sure how much of an impact the Measuring Tape Blazer is making and I am completely making this up as I go along, but I am learning how to swim.


Measuring Tape Marco


This years marketing push involves something a little crazier than normal. I wanted to find a way to become a visual metaphor that represented my new film. For the next year I’ll be using the image above for promotional purposes. Over the years I’ve been a little too shy and quiet about my films. I feel that in some ways I’ve had to become a new person to promote my work properly. Having a costume to put on really helps you become someone new. I’ve created a marketing superhero and his name is Measuring Tape Marco. He’s going to do all the interviews and go to all the film festivals wearing his superhero outfit so that I don’t have to. Measuring Tape Marco will have to perform and act out all talking points that tell people what the film is about. At first it was a bit of a struggle to find a way to promote my new film but in the end the answer was hiding in the meaning of film. In ‘Measuring Tape Girl’ a young woman approaching her thirties turns to online video blogging as a means of expressing her doubts and fears. She creates an alter ego named ‘Measuring Tape Girl’, which she uses as a self-defense mechanism to measure herself against others. A Measuring Tape Blazer will be what I use to become a new person. Someone who stands up and tells everyone about his new film. ‘Measuring Tape Girl’ wishes to create a new mental image of herself by looking within and transferring all of her hopes, dreams and mental anguish from her internal world to an online form where they can take on a life of their own. Maybe I can find a way to do the same thing. I feel awkward and a little out of place when I wear the Measuring Tape Blazer but I’ll get used to it, I hope. Hopefully Measuring Tape Marco can become a part of who I am and when I take the blazer off I can stand up and talk about my films with more confidence and strength than I have in the past. This is a little bit of a crazy experiment in performance art/marketing but in a world where everyone is a filmmaker, you have to do something different. You have to become a visual metaphor, the visual embodiment of your work and of your hopes and dreams.

Special thanks to Sarah Skinner who put in a lot of long hours of hard work to make this measuring tape blazer. It fits perfectly. And a big thank you to Brad Clarke for making the time to take this photograph for me. http://clarkeimages.com/


Ripples and Mini-Viral Events


Going viral is like a tidal wave crashing against the rocks. It flashes quickly and then disappears. Everyone wants to create something that goes viral but where is the value in that? How do you gain anything from going viral? Mr. Marketing Wizard, Mitch Joel of Twist media, says that you have to be your own brand. Everything you do is part of who you are and you are your brand. In this new strange world where privacy has died off and has been replaced by digital transparency, it's hard to know the difference between your real life and your online life. Personal branding creates a transparent life. Depending on your age, your online life is possibly more important to you then your real life. Or more specifically, there is no separation. You are alive and you are online. The issue with this is that you need a story to tell. Everyone is online and everyone is sharing their lives. Without a slightly different story or spin on what you're doing, you'll get lost in the noise. Mitch Joel suggests that we need to create ripples. "Ripples are the powerful conversations that are generated when you share your content....." Sharing content, sharing your life, finding a unique way to share your stories will create ripples across the internet. I don't want to create a tidal wave the goes viral and then disappears, but I am fascinated by the idea of creating ripples. I think I'm going to start referring to them as mini-viral events, small pockets of online movement that spread stories from one place to other. Stand by: the ripples are coming.

Public Speaking


The last time I spoke to more than 20 people in a room was in Grade 3. I gave a speech in the auditorium about the solar system and I described each planet. I have no memory of that day but I do have the bronze medal I won for my speech. I decided to wait over twenty years to speak to a gym full of people again......

For a while, five or six years ago, I had to do some marketing workshops and there were 10 to 20 people in each group. The first couple workshops I gave involved me mumbling and looking at the ground as my hands shook a little. By the fifth or six workshop my hands almost stopped shaking. I had a flashback to those days of looking at the floor and mumbling at the beginning of the presentation I gave last week.


Here’s the introduction to the speech:


“I used to think who ever told the most stories, took the most pictures before they died would win. It was a race to see how many images could be captured. How many stories could you tell in one lifetime? Every image we take is part of us and tells the world something about who we are. But What is an image? What are we trying to do with our films and with our photographs. We are showing the world where we were looking, what we were doing. We are documenting our way of looking at the world. If you look back at all the images you’ve ever created and put them together, you would be able to piece together the stories of your life. If a picture is an experience. If a picture is moment in time captured. If it is a reflection of who we were when we took the photograph. Then the images we create define us. They are your stories. They are your friends. They are your family.”


It ‘s strange how you can overcome shyness yet still carry it with you. Due to the world of social marketing we live in my recent speech was shot on video and will be online in a few weeks. Hopefully I wasn’t staring at the floor and mumbling too much. I do openly admit my hands were shaking just a little bit.....



Follow the Pixel Brick Road

Last December I came across a book on marketing called “Six Pixels of Separation” by Mitch Joel. I flipped through the chapters and was amazed to discover I was doing about 60% of what the book recommends. It wasn’t until last month that I finally picked up a copy. I plan to use the book as a marketing bible that I will follow for the rest of the year and we’ll see what happens. Like ‘Julie and Julia’, I’ll be using Mitch Joel’s cookbook on marketing to decipher the secrets of “integrated digital marketing, social media, personal branding and entrepreneurship”. Chapter by chapter, I plan to follow Mitch Joel’s Pixel Brick Road and see where it leads.

The book is based on the premise that “we no longer live in a world with six degrees of separation. In fact we’re down to only six pixels of separation...” How many pixels separate me from everyone else is still to be determined. I used to believe that all you had to do was make a film and send it to film festivals. Then, you wait.... I’ve done a full 360 degree turn on that type of thinking in the last few years. I have now come to accept that every film I make is a product that I have to market in any way possible. That in fact I am not marketing a film, I am marketing myself. I am my own product and I must promote myself so that I can continue to produce more work. (At this time I would like to apologize to my family and friends for some of the silliness that is to follow in the coming months....but you have to do what you have to do.)

Last years experiments in blatant self-promotion lead to my film finding a distributor and to my films actually being invited to festivals. In this radical shift towards marketing I’ve had to leave behind some of my shyness, though I always carry a part of it with me. In many ways my new film ‘Measuring Tape Girl’ is about overcoming an inability to communicate due to shyness and finding self-acceptance. Even though I’m not on Oprah I’d like to let everyone know that I accept myself as I am and that I am working to overcome the last fragments of shyness I have left in me. Exactly where the thoughts and words of this marketing wizard will take me is difficult to predict. I’m not sure where this pixel brick road will lead me. The only thing I do know is that it is leading me in a new direction: Forward.

AnnieG@the Movies - Measuring Tape Girl Behind the Scenes

AnnieG @ the Movies was kind enough to show up to our Measuring Tape Girl shoot and write a Story on the film. Here's a Link: http://anniegmovies.com/2010/02/18/measuring-tape-girl-behind-the-scenes/

Measuring Tape Girl Behind The Scenes
Thursday, February 18, 2010
By AnnieG
Measuring Tape Girl is the latest cinematic endeavour by Canadian filmmaker P.M. Veltri. The film deals with a milieu of issues packed into a short format centred around what is essentially a monologue. How is that possible many of you may be asking? Well, at first glance and after trying to say that fast five times you may be at a loss, but, if you’ve ever seen a P.M. Veltri film you would know that he takes that which is seemingly impossible and transforms it into a very plausible cinematic work. But of course…it all starts with a script…and what a script it is indeed. This picture is going to be like nothing else he’s ever done as it will truly bring the audience to a place where they are watching a performance based piece. This is exceptionally challenging given that people are so used to fast cuts and lots of action these days but I am confident that folks will enjoy this as much as I did watching it live.
That’s right folks AnnieG was conducting behind the scenes interviews for this film. I got to hang out a while with the crew and watch the fine oiled machine that is a P.M. Veltri production. I have to say it’s really nice to see people who are organized, actually know what they want, and are able to execute that vision. In my experience with indie films nothing ever goes to plan but this shoot totally did and everyone was right on the money and extremely professional. The wonderful Jessica Embro plays Measuring Tape Girl (the 30 something v-logger) in this film and is just amazing. I will confess now that there’s one line I got to watch her say at the shoot that literally had me teary. She was able to take me on an emotional journey take after take which makes me anxious to see her in the film when it’s all cut together. A very talented actress that I am so glad I got a chance to spend some time with as one day in the near future it’s not going to be so easy…trust me…my inner geek can sense these things.
The behind the scenes will give you a taste of what this film will look like. I must say that getting to talk to both P.M. and Jessica I really got a new perspective on a project I had already fallen in love with. The film deals with the communication breakdown that is happening on account of there being way too many means of communication. It touches upon how the digital self is creating an increasingly alienated society that relies on screens in order to emote. It’s a very vast subject matter but it’s conveyed in such a way that it would appear to be practically seamless. It would only make sense that while talking about the digital self Veltri would incorporate themes of body image and self esteem which I believe men and women will be able to relate to on respective levels. The performance based piece enables Veltri to delve into a tangled web of subject matter while entertaining the audience in a unique and challenging way. I really look forward to the final product and will keep you all posted on when and where you will be able to see it.
To learn more about P.M. Veltri check out his website www.pmveltri.com where all your cyber stalking needs will be satisfied. FYI, that was a joke…cyber stalking is not cool and neither is real life stalking for that matter!

RADIO INTERVIEW

Laura Hollick of Souldartstudios interviewed me recently as part of a series of interviews she is doing with people she has collabrated with in the past. It feels very strange to hear your own voice in a recording. The interview covers my film work and a series of photographs we worked on a few years ago. The photographs were a series of blurry images where I was 'Dollying' with a still camera to get some unique images. The goal was to capture the essence of movement using ‘blurry images’.
Here's the link to the interview:

http://www.soulartstudio.com/wordpress/?tag=pasquale-marco-veltri

Omni Cannes Interview 2009


Back in April Omni interviewed me and they finally aired it last week. I'm still not very comfortable seeing myself on camera. I'd like to think I've overcome all my self-image issues but I'm still not quite ready to see myself on Television. Marketing and promoting yourself is very important and I know I have to do as many interviews as possible but I'm still struggling with this part of filmmaking. Whenever I see myself in Television interviews I feel like I'm in an episode of the Twilight Zone. I'm still unsure if I'm ready to do the marketing and promotional events we have planned for next year. If I was ready for it, then maybe I wouldn't have to do it. Sometimes you need to become someone else to get where you want to go. I hope that I'm changing and growing in a positive direction.

Playback Magazine


Somehow a picture of me ended up being published in Playback Magazine. In the on scene section of the July 20th issue there's a picture of me with super star dancer Elizabeth Kmiec. To our right is a picture of John Cleese and just above and to the left is a picture of Martin Short. I blame Chrissy at Vocab communications and the Campagna brothers. Maybe Blatant self-promotion actually works sometimes?