Benefits to Staying Busy

Good grief... My bad for all the whining and moping I've done the last few incredibly slow months. Freelancing is feast or famine and I'm now neck-deep in multiple client projects.

That being said, I'm diggin' some of the benefits of staying busy while things were so slow. The creative treatments I'm writing now for client projects are better thanks to the the effort I put into my slow-season personal projects. In working those creative muscles on my own time, I feel somewhat more confident now that I'm putting client names and logos on them.

Writing has always been important to me and I'm intentional about being overly prepared and having a clear direction for projects. Still, I've never been overly confident in putting together a creative treatment. I'm like 90% certain there's a book or something out there on the topic that all the cool kids have read and I've somehow missed.

What I've somewhat put together about treatments comes from Google searches and a solid collection of "look-at-how-busy-I-am-writing-treatments" screenshots from various directors' Instagram Stories. I still remember seeing Spike Jonze's single-page treatment for Pharcyde's “Drop” video years ago. That and the Filmsupply fam had a solid post with Diego Contreras on creative treatments not too long ago.

I'm crazy thankful for the treatments I've found online and the friends who've shared theirs with me over the years. I still feel that writing a good treatment is like spotting a unicorn, but now it's like I know the Unicorn's name is Steve and somehow he's a couple people in front of me ordering at my regular coffee shop. If you need me, I'll be silently fanboying from my place in line and absolutely trying not to bother him – no promises though.

Punching Financial Anxiety in the Face

I nerd out about spreadsheets. It started in college while I was tracking money as the financial manager for a handful of touring music groups. As an undergrad, I carried around a spreadsheet breaking down each day into 15-minute increments to keep track of how I spent my time: class, music rehearsals, eating, studying, sleep, etc.

Fast forward to today, there are jillions of tiny little digital boxes with personal and business records going back further than I care to admit. My spreadsheets don't hold a candle to the actual financial software I use for business and personal use, but when it came time to apply for a small business loan the bankers complimented how detailed my Profit and Loss statements were.

Something else to know is that I'm an anxious little monster, especially when money is tight which is not helpful in the least.

More than anything – and this should be obvious – the main business spreadsheet I keep records a running total of project money in and out as well as profits. There's a good deal of other information riding shotgun, but my point for this post is keeping track of the money, specifically the profits, and having at least an idea of what's ahead. In times past, I thought I had an idea of the timing for my busy and slow seasons. "The winters are always slow" would've made for an appropriate face tattoo considering how many times I've said it. Turns out I was only partly right.

Last week had me Googling spreadsheet formulas – as one does – because I was looking to try and visualize some of the financial data I'd recorded over the years. I'd found some nonsense formulas, plugged in my data, checked/re-checked, and set up a graph to visualize the info I now had. The graph below visually represents my small business's year-to-date monthly profits, beginning in 2014, as columns with the purple line as an average of each month.

Sharing my financial specifics isn't relevant or helpful, but having been at this for a bit, the records I've kept are somewhat of a yearly road map to help me understand my cash flow, get a grip on my slow and busy seasons, and anticipate the associated anxiety. There'll always be outliers – June 2017 was awesome – so that's why I'm so interested in the averages.

Turns out my "Winter is Coming" fears aren't as scary as I've made them out to be while June can go straight to hell. July is getting started and with it comes the upswing of early fall numbers; Early winter just looks like a drunk toddler with a blowtorch.

Again, I'm an anxious little monster and I know tons of other freelance creatives who fight these same demons. This colorful little roadmap brings me back to the reality that some months are better than others and my fears of "I'll never get any more work so I should get a real job" are just dumb. This June was slow – as usual – but I intentionally used that free time to punch my anxiety in the face by working on personal creative projects and adding to my stock footage portfolio. Staying physically active is also crazy helpful in dealing with my – at times – crippling anxiety issues. Thank goodness the training for the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon always starts in early January and helps keep my winter slow season demons at bay.

ESPN's Draft Academy 2018

I always trip out seeing something I shot end up seeing the light of day. Back in February, I was contacted by Evolve Studio about filming with one of the players featured in ESPN's Draft Academy 2018 season while he was in Oklahoma City.

Alabama defensive back Minkah Fitzpatrick was in town to accept the Jim Thorpe Award for the 2017 season and we ended up filming with him for two and a half days. I honestly couldn't say enough nice things about Minkah, the on-site ESPN producer Kristen Lappas, and Evolve Studio. There were some strict "no social media" guidelines and Evolve owned all the footage so I don't have any fancy framegrabs to show short of what is shown in the episode.

ESPN series Draft Academy follows six of the top NFL prospects as they prepare for Draft Day and is exclusively on ESPN+. I've not seen all the episodes at this point, but it looks like the footage from my time with Minkah is in Episode 2: Body & Mind.

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G-Zero World Puppet Regime

Behind the scenes from the November 2017 G-Zero World Puppet Regime shoot in New York. I'd never filmed with puppets in this capacity, so there was a bit of a learning curve. The pros I worked with on this one had done quite a bit of big-league TV puppet work already, so they were kind enough to keep me from looking like a fool. Thanks again to Lead Puppeteer David Bizzaro and Director Alex Kliment from Eurasia Group for having me.

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2017 Reel

Updating demo reels is like digging through mountains of old journals looking for an ounce or two of something precious. The hope is you find a gem or two allowing you to keep making new piles to dig through later on. I simultaneously curse at and thank all the live event coverage and interview footage I pass on the way to anything even remotely interesting looking.

Demos are also about the edit and music. In times past (here and here) I was looking for something moody and hoping to show how cool I am. Turns out once you hit your mid-thirties it’s a little easier to care less. Who would you rather hang out with, the moody kid in the corner concerned with how cool he is or the one who’s both smiling and giving you an opportunity to dance as you walk through the door? Don’t worry, they’re both secretly on the cusp of throwing up out of nervousness when someone sees the work they’ve done.