Ratings...

Oh man, it could have been ugly.

Getting the ratings for the first episode of this new TV series I'm producing.  The moment when reality hits--do you suck or don't you?  Is anybody watching or not?  Are you going to be successful or a failure?

But it wasn't.

Ugly.

It was great.

We got the ratings for the first episode and right around 60,000 people were watching.  That's how many people there are in the photo up there.  Sixty thousand...

Pretty neat.

And our highest rated demographic group was men, 18-34 (which is me) and that's something nobody was expecting.  Talk shows typically skew heavier to the female side of things.  But there you go.  Our first show actually showed up on the chart (and they didn't think we would for a couple months at best...) and there is an audience out there for the show.

Our entire team gets the 'props' on this one.  Word up team.

Also, I'm very mindful of the importance of real feedback.  No matter what you do--preach, write movies, direct films, build Churches, or any version of those in whatever field you live/work in...it's so very important to get real, actual, objective feedback on the work you do.

I know that it's hard to do.  We get defensive, we react, we don't really want to know if the work we're doing is finding a way through to people.  

But we've got to know.  Are there people being impacted by what we do?  Who are they?  What impact is the work I'm doing having on them?  How could it be better?  What's great?  What's bad?  How would they change things if they were us?

Of course, they're not, and probably could never do the same thing as us...

(math teaching anyone?)

But they are the reason we do what we do.  There is no point to creative expression without an audience, I mean unless you're painting or writing poetry for yourself.  But for the 'popular arts'--which for me would include TV, film, publishing, preaching--you've got to know if anyone's listening.

'Cause if they're not, you're out of business.

T

O.K, sometimes it is cool...

Right?

Isn't that cool?

I mean, I freaked when I saw it.  My Director on the series hadn't said 'boo' to me about it, he'd just been quietly implementing the idea he and I had had together a month back while we were trying to figure out how to build a set that we could afford while still making it cool and full of possibility.

We had a 'eureka' moment on the phone call, he ran with it, and that was the last I heard of it.

Until yesterday.

We were at 64 Steps, the production design firm (and it's a real honor to be working with them, they're a bunch of serious dudes...) having a meeting on our two shows and at the end he took me to his workstation and dropped THAT on me.

Holy frickin' smokes.

It's a wonderful thing to work with talented people.

First I punched my director, then I punched my production designer, then I called my wife, then I called my 'other wife' (aka: my executive producer), then I sat at home and stared at it for a bit.

I do realize it's just a set.

But the thing is, it's not.

It's the beginning of the fruition of an idea, the realization of a dream, the fulfillment of a decade's worth of work getting to this point and then (DV) moving beyond.  And the lesson I continue to learn from this biz is the lesson I've been learning this week as my contractor has built us a second bathroom (yes, we've been living for years with four kids and one toilet...pretty awesome...) and a workspace for me that's something other than an IKEA desk next to the water heater.

Every time I made a suggestion he said one of two things.

"That would be better..." (insert Polish accent please)

Or...

"That would not be better..."

And I realized that that's how I need to continue to embrace criticism and comment from the people I work with.  I don't have to take it personally (which is hard for me, I'm a 'personal' kind of guy...) I just have to take it, then throw on my best Polish accent and hardened construction worker attitude and figure out if implementing the idea would be a "that would be better..." scenario or a "that would not be better..." scenario.

Simple as a bathroom in a basement or a smokin' set in a studio.

Simple as better is better and sometimes even awesome.

Like that set!

T

The uncommon magic...

I've been away a while.

Suffering mostly.  

"Suffering through what?"

Through learning how to edit.

I mean, I know how to edit.  I've supervised more hours in an edit suite than I care to remember.  And to all the editors reading this who are thinking, "You don't know how to edit..." may I submit that I was supervising edits back in the day when analog suites where considered cutting edge. 

Analog.

Like, I walk in with twenty pages of timecode notes (a 'paper edit'- yes, we used to do those) and once the system copies from tape to tape we start to put it together in realtime.  Like an 'online' except without the leeway.  And before you go and start speculating on how old I am ("Analog?  This guy must be a dinosaur...") may I also submit that I started my career at age 19.  And the whole "19 year old supervising a 38 year old editor..." thing is another story altogether...

But my Executive Producer and I have decided it's time for me to (as I like to put it) learn how to 'ride the machine' myself.  It's just time.  So I spent all of last week commuting three hours a day to sit in a class with a bunch of computer geeks (SUPER geeks...) doing my best to not have my brain explode while wave after wave of nonlinear digital editing software info rolled over me.

It was truly a humbling, mostly awful, experience.

Now that I've finished I have to get my own system up,  (you don't even want to ask how much it costs...) read the textbook, and start cutting stuff.  It's a very strange to feel like a complete idiot again.

I kept getting ideas during 'hell week' for posts but never had the time to sit my butt down and type.  The upside is that many of the 'so-called' and otherwise flaky ideas that occurred to me percolated some and were discarded as less than worthy of my/our time, leaving me with something for today that is, I hope, actually worthwhile.

The uncommon magic.

So we watched 'Stardust' the other night and really liked it.  It took us away to another world.  Was wonderfully paced, beautifully written, acted, art directed, and directed.  A really nice film.  The thing that struck me about it after was that it was so nice a trip that I didn't spend much time nitpicking the story or plot holes.  It took me away.

Because of the magic.

There was a moment in the film where Niki exclaimed, "So that's what you were trying to do with the Oracle in your movie.  That's exactly what you would have done if you'd had the money!"  Yes my love, I would have.  And that was a nice moment friends.  To have my wife, who is both ardent fan and strident critic, recognize that I did something 'great' (emphasize 'small' "g"...) with something little.  That was cool.

So if my film and 'Stardust' shared nothing in terms of budget, quality of production, etc. what was it that caused her to trumpet their similarity?  

The magic.  A whole lot of it in 'Stardust' that reminded her of the wee little bit in mine.

That's the thing really.  Magic.  Or call it 'transportational ability' if you want.  That 'thing' that allows a storyteller to take his/her audience away.

'Cloverfield' did it to me last night.  Totally took me away.  Not for one second did I feel like I wasn't 'there', like what was happening on-screen wasn't really happening.

It had the magic.

Which leads me back to Church for a second, if I may.  Was at a Church service recently and, though the kids had a great time (for which I'm well and truly grateful and humbled) the service left me with nothing.  I might as well have not gone.  Seriously.  Nothing.  I took nothing with me.  Nothing about the worship, nothing about the preaching, nothing about the production design did anything to leave a mark on me.  It didn't take me away.  At all.

The people were really (REALLY) nice, for which I'm grateful and give them their props. Their professionalism was impeccable for which I admire (and slightly envy) them.  They did everything right.

Except.

They didn't take me anywhere.

I was reminded again recently that it's 'effects heavy' films as do the most business.  And why's that?  Because those kind of films take people away.  O.K, sometimes.  There are many effects films that fail to transport because they lack story.  Those films fail miserably and bankrupt their funders because gobs of $'s have been spent on the flash with no substance. There are, of course, those films that transport on story more than on razzle-dazzle.  The ones with truly great story cross over and become hits.  

If, however, you combine transportational story with transportational effects you get a mega-hit, a blockbuster.  Check out the top grossing films of 2007 and tell me I'm wrong.

(it's not like I can be wrong on this, I didn't make any of it up...)

So, how does this hit home to us, the producers or pastors?

Well, crap.

We have to transport.  

That's the thing.  Everything you do with your piece needs to transport.  And where that gets difficult is in the small details of the work you do.  Take one of the TV shows I'm producing this year.

"The Daily: with mark and laura-lynn" is a daily half-hour series that will be airing in Vancouver (and potentially across the country) starting this spring.  The one-liner I've been using to describe the show is "Breakfast Televsion, at night."  So how, exactly, do you make that exciting?  How does a show like that rise above 'normal' to attain 'transport'?

(and here's the price of admission for the day [if I do say so myself]...)

By finding the uncommon magic in the everyday.

What is it that is extraordinary, special, marvelous, about what happened today?  What would make a 'hook' to a song, a story, a sermon?  What thing did you observe in the world around you that is worthy of your audience's time?  What 'spin' can you put on it to help it rise to a level of inspiration so that your audience is arrested by the beauty, humor, or painful truth of what you've decided to share with them?

Finding and applying the uncommon magic is the thing that separates a 'blah' TV spot from a great one, a smokin' movie from an 'o.k' one, a brilliant sermon from a waste of time, a 'singalong' from a session of touching Heaven.

Man, oh man, we've got to find that magic.

If I don't, my show will fail.  If they don't, their pulpits will be weak.  I you don't, your efforts will be wasted.  And here's where the non-producers/preachers get something from this.

The magic is everywhere.

I truly, honestly, believe that...

You can cook it into the breakfast you make for your kids.  You can mix it into the love you make to you wife.  You can wield it in your relationships, at work, in your heart as you struggle to find the strength to do the right thing in the face of doubt.

Where's the magic?  Where's the magic?  Where's the magic.

The uncommon magic.

How can I grasp it?  How can I apply it?  

BOOM!

You find that sweet spot and, all of a sudden, your work rises to art.

"Eeez-alla-mumbo-sheem-een-dumbo!"

(watch 'Alladin' again, kids)

T