I just got back from Orlando, Florida where I attended the mid-year meeting for ACLEA. ACLEA is an organization for professionals in Continuing Legal Education. I’ve only been working in this field for 3 months, so the conference filled in a lot of the blanks for me. Since I don’t have a law school degree, I don’t even fully understand most of the products that I am no marketing. I stayed at the Loew’s Portofino Bay Resort which was kind of like Las Vegas if you took out all the sleaze and added lots of water. The photo above was taken in front of my room.
The focus of the conference was on the internet and social marketing. This part was pretty eye-opening for me, because I’ve been doing “social marketing” in some form or another for a long time. We used it to build an audience for Sex Machine in the days before Facebook and Twitter. I don’t think I was even familiar with the term social marketing yet. At that time, I was using Livejournal, Blogger and forums to build a buzz and a tiny but interested audience for our little movie. It’s always been something I’ve enjoyed doing.
So it’s kind of exciting to be able to translate all of those skills to a new industry. Now instead of using the internet to build an audience for low-budget horror movies, I’m using it to sell things like Texas Pattern Jury Charges. I’ve pretty much taken the unused marketing plan for The Spider Babies and am using it to sell law books. It may not be sexy, but it’s pretty encouraging to see that this stuff actually works. It was also a little surreal to hear all of these websites and strategies being discussed in an environment like ACLEA. I’ve been doing this so long that I sometimes forget how mainstream it has become.
And in other news, I have fallen in love…
This is a Vietnamese sandwich known as a banh mi. I’ve eaten them before, but recently, I’ve become obsessed with them. The great think about banh mi is that they only cost $3 and they are amazing. This photo doesn’t do it justice because I’ve already taken several bites. My only previous experience with banh mi was at Lee’s in OKC. This one came from Lily’s Sandwich Cafe in Austin,TX. I will definitely be going back.
2010 is going to be the year I do lots of new and different things creatively. 2009 punched me in the face, so I have decided to karate chop 2010 in the throat. First up, Hilah Cooking – a new internet cooking show starring my good friend Hilah Johnson. The fact that I’m producing a cooking show seems a little weird – even to me. But I am having more fun with this project than anything I’ve worked on in quite a while. It’s definitely a refreshing change of pace from 2009.
Now, let me give you a little back story on this project. After the big moviefail of 2009, I found myself broke, unemployed, seriously depressed and stranded in Oklahoma City. I knew I wanted to be in Austin and was applying for lots of jobs but without much luck. After a month or two, I finally started to get some interviews. During this time, Hilah and her husband Mark were awesome enough to let me stay with them for a few months until I was able to get back in action. [click to continue…]
Andrew, Hilah and me on the green screen. (photo by Liz McCormick)
I guess it’s kind of customary for people to write a year-end wrap-up. I’ll do my best, but 2009 was an incredibly strange year for me. I feel like I accumulated at least 5 years worth of life experience in the past 12 months.
Last day of the Austin shoot. (Photo by Liz McCormick)
The first few months of the year were spent on pre-production for The Spider Babies. Script polishes, storyboards, schedules, costume design, casting, production design, location scouting, etc. Regardless of how things eventually turned out, I remain incredibly proud of the team we were able to put together for this project. The cast, crew and creative team were all top-notch. It was truly my dream team.
Shooting at the Scoot Inn in Austin, TX. (Photo by Kyle Terry)
However, early in the year we began suffering a series of setbacks that started with our leading man getting hit by a car and culminated in losing the warehouse where we were going to build all the sets a few days before we were supposed to shoot. This meant we had to completely rework the shooting schedule. You can read about all of this in previous posts, so I won’t get into it again. I’m just going to give you some highlights from the rest of the year. [click to continue…]
I just got back from Orlando, Florida where I attended the mid-year meeting for ACLEA. ACLEA is an organization for professionals in Continuing Legal Education. I’ve only been working in this field for 3 months, so the conference filled in a lot of the blanks for me. Since I don’t have a law school degree, I don’t even fully understand most of the products that I am no marketing. I stayed at the Loew’s Portofino Bay Resort which was kind of like Las Vegas if you took out all the sleaze and added lots of water. The photo above was taken in front of my room.
This is a Vietnamese sandwich known as a banh mi. I’ve eaten them before, but recently, I’ve become obsessed with them. The great think about banh mi is that they only cost $3 and they are amazing. This photo doesn’t do it justice because I’ve already taken several bites. My only previous experience with banh mi was at Lee’s in OKC. This one came from Lily’s Sandwich Cafe in Austin,TX. I will definitely be going back. 
