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The Holidays.

Hey there, adkateers. I hope you’ll forgive me for being a few days late on this Holiday Edition of Channel Surfing. It’s been a whirlwind of get-togethers and new business pitches this month. I’ve been trying my best to use the season to my advantage, getting in the door to more than a few Christmas parties of potential clients to get the word out there that I’ve hung the shingle and have been officially open for business.

[check out my holiday video production after the jump!]

The consulting gig has been a little slow to take off, but I know that all great businesses didn’t become successful overnight. But when the holiday noose begins to tighten, you start to realize now’s not the time to be too picky about the work and clients you take on. So I’ve been freelancing a bit, I’ve got a connection (through my dear old mother) over at Heldstrom Floral in Highland Park that I’ve been knocking together some local cable TV spots for. I had this great idea to do some nice piano Christmas music over poinsettia plant and holiday stills with a local female VO that I know from way back.

A little hokey? Maybe, maybe not. With such a traditional holiday image and music, there’s safety in warming hearts with fond holiday memories. The real challenge to me was bringing it all home with killer delivery and writing.

Now, I’m no Jerry Bruckheimer, but I can do a lot with the transitions and editing in PowerPoint – it’s pretty amazing software that those Microsoft guys come up with! And I figure hey, instead of giving those guys over at VideoMagic the $750, I could tackle it myself and not be at the mercy of those bigwig editor guys.

I think that it came out pretty darn well, actually. I hit a few snags along the way.

My voiceover wound up not being very good – she’s actually a receptionist at my dentist’s office that had a great voice I just had to use. But I guess something’s not quite right in the boyfriend department and she showed up an hour late and more than a little tipsy.

Also, I was having problems getting my microphone to sound as good as I’d hoped. It’s not the best one Best Buy had, but it did have the right plug connection for my iMac, so I had to go with it. And for $30 it stands up pretty well to the big money studios if you close the windows and don’t move it too much. Well, after a few minutes too many of trying to get her to not slur her words and the microphone to not make popping noises every time she said “Bring the holidays home” she muttered something about being late for something and stumbled back out. With 24 hours to get this on the air I, Dreighton Pickner, would have to be the Voiceover talent too! Well, at least I know
how to take my own direction!

By 4 am I was on my third cup of coffee but was finally ready to send off the spot. I collected everything together and emailed the PowerPoint presentation to the local TV station that was airing it, hoping that they’d be able to add some fades and it would be fine. But of course, there’re tons of things that can go wrong in any ad campaign and this one was no different. I got an email at 9:02 the next day asking, rather rudely I thought “What the hell is this?” I guess maybe there are a few tricks those guys over at VideoMagic must know that I didn’t – I incorrectly assumed that they could make a tape of the PowerPoint presentation and that would be the commercial. But they started in on me about slates and iskies and all this “not broadcast size or quality” yadda yadda.

So even after all that, I STILL wound up forking over the money to VideoMagic to “fix it up” in a few places. Even worse, it wound up costing me almost two hundred dollars more for all these hidden “archive” and “traffic” costs (Hope the ex can wait on alimony for a couple weeks or Santa may not have much room in his sleigh!) I guess broadcast production isn’t really my calling, but I still am proud of rolling up my sleeves and giving it the old Pickner try!

So, as my gift to you, dear viewers, you can see the Dreighton Pickner “Director’s Cut” right here! Happy Holidays and see you in 2008, Year Of The Pickner! [dp]

P.S. If anyone’s looking for any last minute gifts for me, I sure am eyeing that new iPhone! Sigh.