Creatives Building a Business and Community

It seems appropriate that I got ahold of both of these works of art around the same time. They both go into creativity and building a business along with a community.

First off, thank goodness for Gregory Kolsto's book The Art of Oddly Correct.

"...Oddly Correct is a coffee roasting company located in sunny Kansas City, MO. We've been roasting and serving coffee in our neighborhood for over ten years as of writing these words."

I'd come across Oddly Correct over the last couple of years in the course of my rubber stamp hunts. I'd had a job in Kansas City and made sure to stop by. They don't use rubber stamps, but Kolsto does run their coffee bags through a linocut process using an early 1900s block printing press and hand-carved blocks. There's a 2014 spruge.com article that goes into more detail about his block printing process if you're interested.

The book itself is full of some of the art that's come out of Kolsto's experience running the Kansas City coffee shop over the years. For more about Oddly Correct and a peek at his printing process, check out the video below.

My obsession with rubber stamps and coffee shop art had me instantly nerding out with his block printing process, but in addition to the prints, the book itself was chocked full of inspiration for other art kids interested in furthering their work while also building a business and a community.

"You don't need the best gear to get started. You just need to start."

"When we started, we never had the best brewing gear or the finest building materials. We endeavored to be as honest as we could with what we had... We wanted to be a small but mighty company."

 

Second, it's worth your time to go watch the new Jim Henson documentary over at Disney Plus.

There was quite a bit I didn't know about Jim Henson, specifically his advertising background and how he took advantage of those paychecks to make his experimental films. Good grief I'm glad to have benefited from his creativity via shows like Sesame Street, The Muppets, Fraggle Rock, Dark Crystal, etc. Thanks to David Bizzaro for the heads up about the film.

So, Marketing huh?

It's been slow AF the last few weeks. The last few months. The last few years. It's been a rough few years thanks to covid interruptions, entertainment industry strikes, global economic uncertainly, etc., but just knowing that doesn't make it feel any better. If you're reading this and I've worked with you before or you're looking my direction as a potential vendor or crew member, know I'm crazy grateful for those I've been able to work with and look forward to more opportunities with you down the road.

This past week I've been thinking quite a bit about marketing. My Instagram feed has been flooded lately with sponsored ads from photographers, cinematographers, and production companies. While I'm not here to dump on other creatives trying to claw their way into our attention, I'm certainly not the target audience for what I've been getting – unless it's a Machiavellian attempt by Meta to get me to spend my own money to advertise on their platform.

The professor my Strategic Management class this past week mentioned that "You can have the best product [or service] in the market, but if you're not spending any money on marketing, there's a direct correlation to not selling any products [or services].” As a small business, I don't have a set percentage of my revenue I'm spending on marketing, but there's no reason I shouldn't be considering it.

Right now my obvious marketing efforts include my website which I can put an actual dollar amount to, as well as the networking events I attend and my public facing social media accounts, both of which are much harder to account for. Those social media accounts are free to have, but I do go through financial resources in producing some of the content. There is some strategy involved with what, how, and when I post, but not to the extent of an actual marketing plan. There's also these blog posts, but considering my website traffic, let's just admit they're more of a welcomed distraction from doing actual work that'd advance my professional life and increase my revenues.

Back when I first got started as a cinematographer, demo reels were where it's at. I've still got a handful of my 2006 demo reels on burned DVDs. Pretty sure the only one of those demos that actually got sent out was when I applied for a video producer job at Life.Church at the time. Never got that job BTW. My current demo is the same one I've had since 2018 and made up primarily of personal work. There's footage from a couple paid gigs buried in there, but it's just over 10% of the total edit. I do a great deal of "talking head" type shoots, but that kind of footage doesn't seem to add anything to a demo. For that kind of nonsense, I've got a dedicated page of screen grabs and details that I send out to clients. I know my demo reel should be updated with more recent content, but it's hard to look at the last few year's worth of work without being impossibly critical knowing how slow things have been due circumstances out of my control.

You'd need to speak to someone who's regularly hiring new DPs and cam ops, but I couldn't tell you the last time I seriously paid attention to someone's demo reel let alone sit through the entire thing, especially if it's longer than 60 seconds. I've hired DPs and cam ops over the years for different projects, but it's mostly via connections I already have as well as referrals from the network I've developed. Those connections lead me to that individual's website and at least their Instagram account if I'm not already aware of their work.

Lately I have been more interested in other types of marketing material. One idea is putting out a printed promo of some kind. Possibly something like a photo zine of my still photos and frame grabs from my motion work that'd get sent out to select agencies and creatives. I've been following aPhotoEditor for years and love seeing the photographer promos that get sent in and shared. Can't say I've seen a ton of cinematographers do something like that, but it could be an option. Honestly I'd never heard of zines till I got started on my rubber stamp project a few years back. If you're interested, I've started a YouTube playlist with some references in putting one together.

There's also the idea of a YouTube series that's been bouncing around in my head now for weeks. There's still quite a bit I'd want to flesh out before doing a show, so that's certainly a long ways out if it were to ever happen. I do already have bits and pieces that I'd include in something like that, so it's not completely out of reach. It'd be partly a marketing effort seeing as how it'd showcase the kinds of work I do, but I'm hesitant to be the center of attention like so much of the YouTube content out there; surely there's ways around that.

Things Other than Business School

Got to make and do some stuff that wasn't directly related to business school over the last few weeks, so that was great. I had some time off following the second module of the fall semester and I ripped through something like nine rolls of medium format film both here in Oklahoma City as well as a few days in New York. I got to sneak up to NYC for the Cinematography Salon Holiday Party and then back a couple days later with St. Anne the Wife and the two housefires for a holiday trip. Crazy, crazy thanks to Jeremy McDaniel for letting me crash at his place in Brooklyn for a couple days.

UPDATE
The good folks at Cinematography Salon released a recap video from the December Holiday party in Brooklyn. If you look closely, you'll see me in my nonsense along with with Jeremy – well, our backs at least – checking out the motion control and Phantom camera setup at about 0:02 into the video.

 

BOOKS I'M INTO AT THE MOMENT

I also plowed through a few books the last few weeks. Know I'm trying to dodge talking about school stuff, but in addition to a load of solid Harvard Business Review articles, I got to read Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek for my Advanced Leadership class. There's a few solid takeaways in the book, but the stickiest one to me was the idea of how abundance destroys value.

It’s not when things come easily that we appreciate them, but when we have to work hard for them or when they are hard to get that those things have greater value to us._

…it’s the struggle it takes to make it work that helps give that thing its value._

The two non-business related books I worked through were Poor Things by Alasdair Gray and Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. I wanted to read through the book before seeing the film version of Poor Things by director Yorgos Lanthimos. Honestly I'm glad I did considering all the changes they made from the source material. I enjoyed the book and the film was WILD. I'd seen David Fincher's film version of Fight Club years ago like just about everyone else in the western world but never read the original book. I'd read Palahniuk's Make Something Up: Stories You Can't Unread in late 2021 and it's wild. Looking forward to the next Palahniuk book I get to read.

I've also started reading Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert. Dune: Part Two by director Denis Villeneuve is coming out this March and I'd finished reading the original Dune book before the 2021 movie came out. I've heard the third movie is already in the works, hence me making sure I'm ready for that glorious nonsense.

I swear I'm still a Cinematographer

Already starting week three of this first MBA summer module. That's shorthand for "good lord I'm antsy to get back to focusing on being a professional creative again."

I've been flirting with the monthly issues of American Cinematographer magazine that just keep coming with my subscription. I've also started back to reading the American Cinematographer Manual I'd bought back in early 2022. The physical book itself does remind me of my younger days and the well worn and highlighted Bible I'd spent so much time with.

This ASC manual is basically the cinematographer's bible. I'd been wanting to buy a copy and dig into it for years. It's not a textbook per se, but it's easily an authoritative work.

"Producers hire a cinematographer to create art, to be the guardian of the image, and to press for quality and beauty at every turn, but remember, they hire a cinematographer to do that on a budget... Never convince yourself that money is no object – money is the main object. Remember, it's call the movie business. Cinematographers must be concerned about saving money, or at least concerned about spending it wisely." - David Stump, ASC. “Criteria for Evaluating Digital-Cinematography Cameras.” American Cinematographer Manual, 2021

...bit of a hat tip to me still being eyeballs deep in the world of business school...

Another solid find this past week was David Kruta's guest appearance on the Cinematography Salon podcast. He's a good dude and one that I'd consider as a friend. I've been part of the Cinematography Salon for a few years now and met Dave at one of the group's NYC holiday parties. I've also been in a private Instagram DP/Foodie group with him and a handful of others that's helped us all get through these last few years of Covid.

In this episode they cover a handful of topics, but they dug into how artificial intelligence (AI) is making its way into our creative industry like everything else. I know I'm already behind the ball in terms of Midjourney (sad day for the end of free accounts) and other AI image generators, but I've been using ChatGPT more and more since early April. After listing to this podcast, I started thinking about how I could use AI in terms of the interview transcripts I have from my rubber stamp documentary project (yes, it's still in the works but somewhat gathering dust). I fed ChatGPT one of those transcripts and asked it to provide some of the themes we'd covered in the interview. Hot dang, seconds later it spit out what would've taken me days to do on my own. I'll for sure be using it more down the road.

I've been hoarding money lately due to this wild economic season we're all in right now instead of following my typical "I should buy more gear" impulses. Some of that fiscal responsibility can be blamed on a group I've followed for awhile, A Photo Editor. Lately they've been on a tear with their Instagram account in posting some real-life examples of photographers and what their business revenue looks like. One post in particular hit hard with the dude saying "stop buying gear; just stop."

No question as professionals we need to stay on top of our nonsense, but – in another hat tip to business school – buying more gear just because you can is a terribly short-sided business move. There's some legit purchases I could be making right now with some potential projects coming up. I've done the math and worked out the details using my newly minted business school super powers, but I'm not convinced it's time to melt my credit card just yet.

That said, I'm pretty sure it's way past time I sprung for some new C41 developing chemicals. I'm way past tempting fate with the crusty chemistry and the 20-30+ year expired film I've been using in my RB67 lately.

Finishing Out the Winter Break

The spring semester starts up this week and I'm hoping this blog doesn't go dark again for months at a time. I've already printed out my 15 minute schedule breakdown for next week, but as I'm writing this I'm keeping it under my laptop thinking that'll somehow let me squeeze out the last bit of my winter break.

This past Saturday night St. Anne the Wife and I ditched the kiddos and snuck out to Stillwater, OK, for a screening of the Relentless Ride documentary. The film follows a group of ultra-endurance athletes competing in the 2021 Arkansas High Country Race, a self-supported 1,037-mile bike-packing event in northwest Arkansas.

Back in December 2021 I got to go out to Connecticut with Adam Harbottle from KOMBI Creative to film some interviews and pick-ups with one of the riders in the film, Spencer Ralston. Adam and I got to spend a few days with Spencer and his family and we stayed at their home out in southeast Connecticut. For sure one of the more interesting documentary projects I got to work on that year. Crazy excited for the team behind this film and I wish them the best of luck with the project.

This week I'll be out in Michigan filming a project with an MBA cohort of mine. In addtion to this project, we both start our spring semester this week: Tuesday night I've got a Managerial Accounting class and on Wednesday night she and I both have an Investment class. With it being our first week of the semester, we don't have much due, but I'll for sure be lugging around two big finance textbooks in addition to my production equipment.

This morning I joked with Anne about how I felt like I was with my tribe last night at that documentary screening. I'd assume most of the people there were cyclists, but the film kids fit right in. At the same time, I'm stoked to be getting back to my grad work and nerding out over finance and business related topics. Still no clue as to how all this nonsense will mix together, but I'm here for it.

Besides all this nonsense, I got to read a handful of books over the break that'd been piling up on my nightstand over the fall semester:

I'd started with what I'd thought would be the antidote to a crazy busy semester with Jenny Odell's How to Do Nothing. I'd heard about it awhile back, finally got to read it, but can't say I'd read it again.

Easily my favorite book over the break was Jenny Slate's Little Weirds. It's a collection of essays she's written that convinced me we'd be friends. The opening essay is about how she'd love to be thought of as French – a French woman – but more specifically a Parisian Croissant.

"Let me be your morning treat with your coffee. Disregard the fear that I am too rich to be an ordinary meal... Treasury me for my layers and layers of fragility and richness. Name me after a shape the moon makes. Have me in a hotel while you are on vacation. Look at me and say, "Oh, I really shouldn't," just because you want to have me so very much." - Jenny Slate

Then came The Coddling of the American Mind by Lukianoff and Haidt. A classmate of mine recommended it a few months ago and I'd for sure recommend it myself.

At the moment I'm nearly through reading In the Dust of this Planet by Eugene Thacker. Another one that's been buried in my list of books to read after I'd heard about it on an old Radiolab episode. Kinda surprised how long it took to find, but I snagged a copy from the basement of Strand on a trip to NYC in December. For sure not the typical book I'd read, but dang it's been a wild ride so far.

Another One from Patti Smith

"How wonderful the worlds we enter through the words of others." - Patti Smith

In a complete 180° from what I've been reading the past 16 weeks, I finished A Book of Days by Patti Smith over the weekend.

New York Times writer Elisabeth Egan wrote "Think of it as a tear-off daily calendar, minus the stress of keeping up with page disposal; in fact, with her homages to bygone moments, Smith seems more concerned with reflection and preservation than she is with the rote ticking away of time."

Sounds about right.

At first glance, her newest book basically seems like a printed version of a year's worth of her Instagram feed. Somehow though it's much larger than that. I'd read someone talking about how it's intimate glimpse into her creative workflow. It's not like she's out to argue a point or teach you something, but more a meditation on the people and events that've shaped her life.

I'd become a Patti Smith fan through her 2010 memoir Just Kids and nerded out about it back in a 2019 blog post. I'm a fan of her music, but much more so of her writing. I'd not be upset if we somehow became friends and hung out every now and then. I'd freakin' lap up her stories of Robert Mapplethorpe, life in NYC during the '60s and '70s, and her time on the road.

I'd mentioned the book to St. Anne the Wife and she joked about how it's become my daily devotional. It may not carry quite that much weight, but it'll be something I go back to soon enough.

Fun Haircuts and Superpowers

Bit of a grab bag this week as things are staying incredibly fast-paced 'round these parts (school, work, family, etc.).

St. Anne the Wife and I hit 13 years still married recently and Josh Thomas – second greatest person in the world (behind Anne obviously) – reminded me of this gem he'd made from Anne and my wedding weekend. Good grief that seems equally forever ago and last month at the same time.

Not only did it remind me that I once had a fun haircut and an ill-fitting white suit, but there's also a young wedding photog in there named Andrew Ryan Shepherd. That same Dallas-based still photographer I'd been absolutely enamored with basically blew up into the creative and directing powerhouse he is today. That dude, who's now making commercial and film magic in Austin with Camp Lucky, turned out to be much more distantly braided into my life than I could've imagined.

In other news, I'm still machete-ing my way through managerial accounting principles and random probability distributions because this creative must have some kind of underlying punishment kink. I figured I could "lighten things up" and picked up another book I'd been eyeing from afar called Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers by Chip Heath and Karla Starr.

"This book is based on a simple observation: we lose information when we don't translate numbers into instinctive human experience."

"When experts are asked to communicate something they understand intimately...they wildly overestimate how much of their mental model of the world is shared by their audience."

"Math can reveal truths about the world that the human mind was never built to intuitively grasp. If you can use math, you have a valuable skill. If you can use it and make it clear, bringing what is obscure and distant into the range where others where others can see it and feel it-well, then you have a superpower."

It's not a terribly long book and it's a nice change from the incredibly dense (to me) grad school books I'm hacking through. I'm only about 20 pages in and I'm sure I'll have more to say about it later, but seems like being able to effectively communicate complex ideas is a superpower we'd all be better having.

Rubber Stamps, Work, and Books

Short and sweet this week. It's another busy one and I'm on the road in the Tulsa area for a bit with some wild call times. Thankfully I got a later call this morning and was able to sneak over to a coffeeshop in Broken Arrow, OK. Big fan of the dude behind West of Death and the work they've done for Rattlesnake Cafe and Lioness Coffee Roasters, plus their sister shop Chimera in Tulsa.

More to come later, but I'm like 20 mins from being strapped into an EasyRig and full-kitted out Sony FX9 for the next 12 hours. Trying to get some reading in beforehand. I'd finished Ernest Cline's Ready Player One last week (and was beyond disappointed by Steven Spielberg's dumpster fire film adaptation). I'm now into David Graeber's Debt: The First 5,000 Years and dang that dude has come out swinging.

Professional Juggler and Knot Tyer

It's the first Monday of summer break for St. Anne the Wife and our boys. Try as I might, that woman will always be the better of us. Along with the rest of the year, she runs the summer circus at our house and we both know the lions and tigers are getting stronger and smarter. Surely they'll figure out they need us at some point, but I'm not holding my breath.

Somehow I've gone from gathering dust and questioning my life choices to being incredibly busy and still questioning my life choices. This past week had me busting my tail as a grip & electric on a commercial shoot here in Oklahoma City followed by a wild and memorable day of doc work behind a "camera."

If nothing else, freelancing teaches you how to do the thing while simultaneously prepping for the next thing. In between my hauling sandbags, rags, and combo stands to the next setup this week in the G&E department, I was juggling emails, texts, and Basecamp pings for the other jobs I'm in, all in various states of progress. There's the audio bid I'm submitting to a new-ish client, followed by the tech questions I'm working through with the Tennessee rental house for the shoot in Vegas, and the edits that are sorta working on that other thing. "Dang, looks like I'll need the nine inch 15mm rails instead of the six" and "Will you be needing sound effects with that audio guide too?" and "Here's my Venmo info for the first half of tomorrow's day-rate and expenses." Oh, and I also learned how to tie a clove hitch knot and that a combo stand weighs and feels just about the same as a built out Alexa Amira on my right shoulder.

This week also had me finishing out a book I'd bought about New York City while in New York City last weekend. The Colossus of New York by Colson Whitehead was a fun read with a crazy interesting writing style.

“You are a New Yorker when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now.” ― Colson Whitehead, The Colossus of New York

I'm already onto the next book I'd picked up at Books are Magic in Brooklyn last weekend. The Hard Crowd by Rachel Kushner has already taken me through her experience racing down the Baja Peninsula on a Kawasaki Ninja. Stoked to get through the rest of her book.

Becoming an Old Freelancer: Finances

Sustainability as a freelancer is something I don't think gets enough attention. It's not flashy and for sure doesn't make for a good Instagram post. Still, to stick around you've got to try and figure out what works for you and your situation.

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If you know me at all, you'll know I'm always up to talk about money. Not in the "Hey plebeian! Look what I've got!" way but more in the mindset of "You're in this hot mess too?! What are you doing?! Is it working? Is there a way we can learn from each other?"

The last few weeks have been a welcomed whirlwind. I've broken record'd the battle cry of "Oh man, I'm so busy" and I'm absolutely aware of it. What's freakin' awesome though is the fact that money is coming through the doors and for that, I'm insanely thankful. Freelance is "feast or famine" and I know the financial spigot could shut off for a season at any point.

Turns out it's expensive AF to be a freelancer, especially as you get further into your career. The amount of overhead I've accumulated over the years running this freelance operation is DUMB. Thinking back to when this whole thing started as a side hustle back in 2004-ish I'd have never imagined the amount of money it takes to keep this up plus trying to be intentional about the future.

At times it feels like I'm working just to keep up: production insurance, health insurance for me and our two boys, plus life and disability insurance. Then there's the money set aside for taxes and retirement accounts. Oh, then there's paying off bank loans, paying myself every two weeks, phone and internet bills, and on and on and on. It's dumb.

Positive side note: I paid off my car today – several months early BTW – so that's rad.

The biggest leg up I've had in terms of money management as a freelancer has come from a book I read back in 2010-11-ish – The Money Book for Freelancers, Part-Timers, and the Self-Employed.

Here are some of my biggest takeaways from the book:

"If you’re trying to create financial security as an independent worker, but you are following guidelines that are designed for traditional workers, you’re going to get yourself into trouble."

"They [percentages] are the best - and really only - way to save consistently based on what you actually earn, especially when what you earn varies widely and doesn’t arrive on a predictable schedule."

This was the biggest thing for me. As a former full-time employee, I was used to working on a very specific budget with close to exact numbers. Unlike my wife's very reliable paycheck each month, there's no way to know the specific amount that my freelance work will be bringing in each month. I've already written about using past records to help me predict my busy and slow seasons, but that's still just an educated guess. In planning ahead financially, I stick with setting aside 15% of my profits to pay my taxes as well as 10% to put towards retirement. I've been slowly and steadily stashing money into a RothIRA since I was 21 as well as another RothIRA under my wife's name as I max out the first one each year.

"If you don’t pay yourself first, you probably won’t do it at all."

"Debt is by far the biggest threat to both your career and your stability and stands between you and your success."

"Debt is sucking the money from your present to pay for your past at the expense of your future."

"If you don't save for your retirement, no one else will."

"Being an independent worker means you have to save more, plain and simple."