The one thing I didn’t do during this whole time is properly brand my own company and produce a proper website for Hotcakes New Media. Over the course of the year, I’ve had time to think about where I’d like to take Hotcakes, considering the market in Ottawa and my competition. As a result, I’ve rebranded Hotcakes as a Creative Company, first and foremost, with a production division. Part of the new branding was trying to come up with a company image that I felt reflected my personality as well as the type of work we produce. The result is a funky, brightly coloured, young and fresh company image that stands out in the dull Ottawa marketplace.

The reason for the rebranding is two-fold: First, because I just wasn’t getting the work I needed to sustain a livable income with my current branding (which was all about promoting production, yet didn’t have the work to back it up), and second, because I saw a gap in the market between marketing companies and production companies. There are NO creative agencies in Ottawa! (or none that I could find) That means searching for “Ottawa creative company” in Google puts my website on page one.

So what exactly did I do? I’ve completely redesigned the looks and the content of the main Hotcakes website (found at http://www.hotcakesnewmedia.com). The new Hotcakes site is simple, and clearly showcases us as a creative company. It’s about giving people confidence in who we are, what we’ve done, and what we can do for them. I’ve also developed a new site specific for production (found at http://www.hotcakesproduction.com). The new production website follows the same structure and looks as the main site, but clearly shows exactly what kind of production work we do, and goes into more detail on those individual work items. It’s designed mostly to catch Google keywords, optimize my ranking, and link people back to the main site. Finally, I created the Ottawa Video Production Blog (found at http://www.ottawavideoproduction.ca/blog). The blog, again, is a technique used to increase visibility within the community, as well as within Google. Search engine ranks go up dramatically when fresh content is posted on a regular basis, and a blog allows us to do that. It also adds specific keywords that might not normally show up, and increases content dramatically. It IS good to toot your own horn.

I’ve also been hard at work building a physical and electronic booklet to mail and email to potential clients. I need to spread the word about Hotcakes, and not rely entirely on people seeking me out. I will soon be actively seeking new clients, sending promotional materials, and advertising as much as possible to maximize the way people find me.

Yes, Hotcakes may have turned one… but without a BIG push and some important new clients, Hotcakes will not see year two. So I better get back to work now.

A7

The second shooting weekend for To The Rescue’s new music video being produced by Hotcakes New Media can now officially be considered a successful shoot. It was, however, a rocky shoot. Want to know why? Keep reading.

Doing night shoots are tricky. Unless you are able to properly block the windows to simulate nighttime, you have to wait until it’s really dark to get your lighting set up correctly. In this case, shooting this scene at Anne and Dave’s house, it was crucial to wait until it was fully dark out before starting (past 9:30pm!) because of the HUGE windows in the space. This led to a very slow start, but ultimately, not really a issue as I had informed people that the shoot would run until midnight (which it did, almost to the minute). Instead, the main issues we faced were due to the small space we were working with, and the performance of our lead female.

First, the small space; Small spaces are always difficult to shoot in. It makes it difficult to set up lighting far enough away to avoid hot spots on the skin (completely white areas due to too much light) while providing a decent fill light to make the lighting look natural. In this case, we had to soften our lights with frosted gels because they were too harsh, and place lights in precarious positions in the stairs. For the entrance, we had to literally hang a light with a softbox over the stair railing. The good news is, Dave and I are getting better (faster?) at lighting, so everything turned out very nice. The only issue is one shot where the light is a little too bright (at the entrance, directly below the light), but I was able to fix it in post.

Second, the acting; Jay, our lead male, is a natural. His performance was very consistent and very well acted. Our female lead, Kandisse, was not as natural. It was a little more difficult to get the performance the way we wanted. In all fairness, after looking back at the original script (before the editing), the dialogue was not 100% believable to begin with, so it made matters worse than they should have been. The issue was that she was not conveying the emotion we wanted for the scene, which was hurt feelings driving to anger. Instead, she was portraying it more as self-pity and despair, with long drawn out sentences that felt completely manufactured. After taking a break from shooting and Dave going over the inflection we were looking for with the actors, we on a roll, and the performance was becoming more honest.

With all the issues we had in shooting, we were afraid we wouldn’t be able to put together a believable scene with the footage we had. But it turns out we have more than enough footage to put together a great intro scene with nice pacing and flow. The editing is now done, and it’s official; The scene works very well and Dave and I are both happy with it. I should also mention that Lorelei, the producer for Moonrise Productions, was on set to help, and provided the scene saving gels for our lighting. She has a great eye, and noticed a few glitches I didn’t catch while looking at my monitor.

So you want more pictures? Of course you do! (but crafty people will find the video on YouTube if they know how to search well enough)

Here you go:

On to July 4th for the big accident scene shoot.

A7

I have a few other ideas I might incorporate, but so far, I like the simplicity and light-hearted nature of it.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Thoughts?

A7

As many of you know, I make a very clear separation when it comes to art and design. I strongly believe art is created by the artist, based on the artist’s concept with no outside influences or pressure, and fully developed with no financial gain as motivation. Design on the other hand, as artistic as it may be, is always created with another person’s motivation and objective in mind, often, but not exclusively for, financial gain. So why is this post Art News?

It seems upon further reflection that OCAD has provided me with the perfect set of skills to become an Interaction Designer. I hadn’t thought about it until my new manager at Artez, Peter, had asked me if I wanted to be the new Interaction Designer for Artez. Yes, as of last Friday it is official… my job title now lists me as Interaction Designer. Since I now have “design” in my job title, I feel I have reached the goal I set out to achieve several years ago.

First, in case some of you are wondering, what is interaction design? According to Wikipedia:

As new technologies are often overly complex for their intended target audience, interaction design aims to minimize the learning curve and to increase accuracy and efficiency of a task without diminishing usefulness. The objective is to reduce frustration and increase user productivity and satisfaction.

Interaction design attempts to improve the usability and experience of the product, by first researching and understanding certain users’ needs and then designing to meet and exceed them. (Figuring out who needs to use it, and how those people would like to use it.)

Interaction design is about creating design that allows for a simple and effective use of the application or product. If a product is ugly and clumsy, but functions really well, then it is not a good product. Likewise, if a product is really pretty, but doesn’t function well, it is not a good product either. The goal of interaction design is to bridge the gap between aesthetics and usability, function and form, to make a product that is pleasing to use and look at.

Back to my original topic… why is this art news? Quite simply, OCAD turned me into an interaction designer. Well, not quite… actually, my combination of technology education and experience from my “past life”, combined with my recent interactive “new media” art education, as well as my knowledge of design, makes me an ideal interaction designer. Furthermore, it’s something I really enjoy doing! It allows me to explore technology with a design and art view; I can be creative and technological.

I think this is quite an interesting and promising field of work to get into. Not only is it very cutting edge (interaction design, as an area of study and work, has only become prominent in the past 5 years or so), but it is also extremely difficult to find a good interaction designers. I’m sure you’ve all heard of “right-brain” vs “left-brain”, and the different schools of thought surrounding creativity and technology. Simply put, they don’t usually mesh very well. People who are naturally artistic are not generally analytical, and vice versa. Somehow, I have managed to escape this “rule” and I am equally blessed with equal parts creativity and analytical skills (a fact that has cursed me and torn me in two very different directions all my life… until now).

While I would never call my interaction design work “art”, it is comforting to know that my art education was able to be applied to a real world skillset. Let’s just hope I have enough free time to actually create some works of art somewhere in between all this design and technology.

A7

I’m not sure if I mentioned this before, but my 1 month contract was yet again extended for another 3 months, until the end of April. Originally, I was asked to continue working a dual-role as IT admin (to help with generic IT requests like installing software and setting up servers) and E2 Support (supporting Artez’s main application called E2RM). Although I made it clear on a number of occasions that I did not want to continue doing IT and Support, I decided to continue the 3 month extension to help chip away at more debt, in the hopes that they would transition me into another role. Well, they unofficially transitioned me into another role.

I recently attended some quick training sessions on customizing the E2RM application with custom designs and templates for some of Artez’s bigger clients. As it turns out, a couple of days later both of their current designers decided to go on vacation for several weeks at the same time, leaving people scrambling to get some design work done in a hurry. That’s where I came in to save the day.

For the past week I’ve been working with an Australian charity to design a fancy template, graphics, and plug-ins for their custom designed site. The bad news is they had insanely tight deadlines, and working with Australia means I’m always one day late (they are a day ahead of us!). Due to the time difference, I’ve been working really weird hours. I even pulled a 16 hour day this week. Yikes! That would explain why I’m a little brain-dead this week. The good news is I haven’t felt this comfortable in a job in… well… ever. I really enjoy what I am doing, and I am having a blast creating great looking designs and tools for major sites. It’s very rewarding and everyone seems to love my work (despite it being only a fraction of what I can do… just wait until they give me more to work with…).

I wrapped up the main site design today, and just found out that they are so pleased that they’ve asked me to work on their main portal landing page as well, which will include a clickable map of Australia to select the charity events across the country. I’m booked until the end of next week with more design work, and I’m hoping it continues indefinitely!

So… while it may not be officially official yet, it looks like I’ll be doing web design and coding from now on. If I continue to impress them with my design, I’m sure I’ll have another contract extension, or better yet a permanent position, at the end of April. Wish me luck!

P.S. In case you didn’t read between the lines, doing design work affords me the option to work from home, which means I can work from Ottawa. And yes, we have contacted people about homes and mortgages already. More on that as we get further info in a few days.

A7

I know I’m guilty of not posting in months :-$  So here is my attempt at redeeming myself…

What’s new and exciting in MC & A7 land (and Angel of course)? I’m glad you asked 

Since Andy is only posting frivolous entries now someone had to share the news that his contract at work was extended for another 3 months (until April 30, 2008). I’m sure you are all wondering how this impacts our plans to move back to Ottawa right? Well, Andy did ‘negotiate’ the option of giving 2 weeks notice at anytime, so if an opportunity comes my way, we will certainly re-evaluate. In the mean time, the extra income is helping us chip away at credit card debts (AMEN lol) and for the first time in 4+ years, I am happy with our financial position  There’s still work to be done, but we’re making really really good progress! My bonus money and over-time pay (150 hours accumulated in 3 months – yes it was a crazy time before Christmas!) helped us along tremendously in that department.

While I’m on the work topic, I will be travelling to Quebec City in early March for the Bank’s Annual Meeting of Shareholders.  My flight is booked! The exposure will allow me to build-up my resume, which in itself is a huge plus and I’m hoping that following the meeting, I can negotiate, at the very least, a promotion or change of title! Wish me luck. After months of stepping up to the plate and working crazy hours, I believe I’ve earned it and if our VP doesn’t agree, well the writing on the wall will be very clear, and I will begin searching and applying for jobs in Ottawa, agressively!

So a bit of mixed news from our camp. I look forward to hearing all your thoughts in regards to these developments and find out how each of you are doing.

Cheers!

MC