Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Don't Be Afraid to Ask

My son Ben is a singer/songwriter. Last week, he traveled to Austin, Texas, for the South by Southwest music festival, one of the biggest gatherings of indie musicians in the country. Ben was there to make connections and learn, but he did bring a guitar. One night he went into one of the many bars in downtown Austin (all of them with a stage and sound equipment) and saw that the stage was empty. So he found the manager and asked if he could play for awhile, and the manager said yes! So Ben and his friend Jeremy played for an hour during the SXSW festival, and made some tip money. All because he had the nerve to ask. By the way, you can download Ben's CD, "Soft Watches and Altered States," on itunes, or buy the CD from Amazon.com or CDbaby.com. Just search for the CD title. When I first started in television programming, I didn't know anyone in the business outside of HBO. I knew that if I was going to learn, I needed to make connections outside of my company. I sent letters (this was in the days before e-mail) to people I admired in the business asking if they could give me 20 minutes of their time to answer some questions. I met several people in the programming business by doing this, including the VP of Programming for USA, David Kenin, and Bob Greenway, who later became my boss at Golf Channel. Again, this only happened because I asked. Creating content is a collaborative business. Even if you write, direct, and star in everything yourself, you will still need people to help you get your content distributed. Whether you're hoping a network executive will sign you, or you want frieends to forward your video so it goes viral, in every case you need to reach out to people. People will tell you "no" a lot in the entertainment business, but if you don't ask for what you want, you have no chance to get a "yes." Don't be afraid to ask for what you want and need from collaborators, distributors, agents, and even your audience. Who knows, you might get a "yes." In a recent post I talked about dealing with rejection. You must learn to deal with it, because it's a certainty that you will get rejected sometime. But don't let the fear of rejection stop you. The answer is always 'no' until you ask.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Take Time to Revise

My first job as a programming executive was with Cinemax. My boss, Luke Beermann, trained me on the process. Each schedule took one month to create, because we built time into the schedule for review and revisions. I asked Luke why we couldn't get the schedule completed in two weeks. He told me, "You never get it right the first time. Even when you're sure you wrote it perfectly, you will always find a mistake when you look at it afterwards. That doesn't mean you're not good; it just means you're human. The company depends on our schedule, so we take time to make sure it's as good as possible when it leaves our office." In these days of instant posting on the internet, Facebook, and twitter, these words ring truer than ever. Make sure that you take time during your creative process to revise and edit. It probably won't be perfect the first time. That's why movies shoot for six weeks, but edit for six months. Similar examples abound throughout the arts. Picasso took months to paint The Guernica, and throughout the process changed the way the individual figures looked, and where their eyes focused. If Picasso had to edit his work, why should you expect anything different? Great art -- great content of any kind -- isn't a news story; you don't make it better by being the first to air. Make sure you plan for revision time in your project. The best creators are the best editors. Remember, anything worth writing is worth re-writing.