The New York City Dispatch

I use Google Adwords to generate leads for my NYC video editing business. 90% of the leads are unable to become my customer and, therefore, are a total waste of my money. Some people click on my ads and then call me asking for a job or they ask for free training on how to become an editor. I even get people calling me asking for tech support with their editing software! Others call with a “quick” edit and they expect to pay less then $100, and I can’t afford to help people with that sort of budget (plus, almost any editor will tell you that there is almost no such thing as a “quick” edit.) Still others will call with a ridiculously quick turn around, ie, “can you have it to me this afternoon?” Here’s an example of a crazy lead from Adwords…she want’s it “today” and when I called, she wanted to pay no more than $50.

So I now pre-qualify the leads by stating a minimum of $500 for any editing job and I post that information both on the Google Adwords copy AND on the landing page. That helps a bit. Still, some people are in such a hurry that they don’t read and just call. As for Adwords, I keep it up because some of the leads pay out big. They say “Half of my advertising is wasted, I just don’t know which half.” I think it’s more like 90% of my Adwords spend is a waste, I just don’t know which 90%.

In no particular order, these are some of the movies that I’d gladdly see again (and again and again.)

1. Cinema Paradiso — The themes of the thread that attaches us to the past, moving from home, moving on — mortality. The opening image says it all…the long long thread back to mom. This film gets me every time.
2. Blow Up — how did Michelangelo Antonioni so perfectly capture ‘mod’ right in the middle of it happening in England? It’s beyond me. But more importantly, it’s the wandering absence of narrative — an image maker in search of something and finding death. The Felliniesque ending with the mimes — brilliant. Plus, Jane Burken appears nude at 18 years old — what more do you need?
3. Raging Bull — Robert De Niro chomped down on this role like a pit bull. One of Martin Scorsese’s best films. Nothing against Robert Redford or Ordinary People but — boy — did the Academy get it wrong that year.
4. Gattaca - The inner struggle for perfection. The triumph of will. The beautiful images. “I never saved anything for the way back”. This movie teaches you to reach beyond your grasp, to give it all, and to not leave an excuse for failing.
5. Dead Man - The dichotomy of Native American culture with the zany view of the white wild west - machine - is so interesting and compelling. The great performance by Mr. Depp, the music of Niel Young and the Jim Jarmusch style blended perfectly.
6. Sense and Sensibility - this is not just a ‘chick flick’ — not at all. It’s a very great movie — stunning Cinematography and art direction. Great costuming. Great writing, of course, by Jane Austin. This film takes you back to a gentile, yet still imperfect, time.
7. La Strada - one of Fillini’s more ‘normal’ films, and for me, one of his best. Not only does Giulietta Masina vaguely remind me of my own mother, she is absolutely innocent in this film. This is a tragic film. “I don’t know for what this pebble is useful but it must be useful. For if its useless, everything is useless.” Ahhh, there is hope in this film too.
8. Strictly Ballroom - I was a professional dancer when I saw this film and I thought it spoke to me directly. Almost everything in the film related to my current life. I caught every insight into the dance world — every pun, every sarcasm, every irony. I laughed so hard that when the film was over, people in the audience looked at me like I was an insane manic.
9. Deconstructing Harry - I like plenty of Woody Allen’s Films — maybe all of them — but there are a few that really stand out. This one brilliantly shows how a writer’s real life merges with his fiction.
10. Everyone Says I Love You - Drew Barrymore, Allen Alda, Goldie Hawn — all in a musical about mortality and love. Thank you Mr. Allen, for this one. You truly are one of the great ones
11. Gummo — The first time I saw this film, I hated it. I didn’t get it. I had to learn to love the brilliance of eating spaghetti in a bubble bath with a chocolate chaser. I had to get over my repulsion to appreciate the body slam of a folding chair. Such great performances from the slap fighters — scenes worth seeing again.
12. Pickpocket - I saw a screening of this 1959 film by Robert Bressonat the Film Forum in New York City one raining October afternoon. I became interested in the film after hearing a radio program with writer Paul Schrader, who said that Pickpocket influenced him in writing Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. I quickly became involved in the pickpocket character and totally forgot that I was in 2005 New York. The theater was half packed with eccentric film buffs and various film lovers. The cinematographic grammar of Bresson is truly ahead of his time. He is able to place the viewer into the head of the pickpocket, strangely, by not showing the action you would expect a film maker to show. Schrader talked about Pickpocket as the first example he had seen of a film that is about the soul of the hero instead of about the actions. How do you film someones soul? Watch Pickpocket to see…
13. Ladri di biciclette — Maybe Schrader got it wrong. This one seams to also be about the soul and it’s from 1948. I didn’t want this list to get all “film schooly” but it’s hard to leave this one off the list. The story is so simple, so fundamental, so universal…I’d watch it any day…I’d stand in line.

Want more engery? Watch what you eat very carefully. I recently cut all sugar, coffee & alcohol out of my diet and completely separate my foods these days. I eat veggies and unprocessed organic foods only. It’s been surprisingly yummy and easy to do this time. I don’t feel tempted. I have ample energy after only about 5 or 6 hours sleep.

Remember: A stomach is not some mystical sack that can take whatever is stuffed into it and magically create boundless energy. It’s actually part of a very sensitive biological system. Some say that most ailments and disease start with the stomach and what’s put in it…including chronic fatigue.

Here’s what I ate today:

8am - grapes

9am - bananna

10am - apple & orange juice

11 am - Carrot & Beet Juice (notice, I’ve already had 4 fruits and 1 veggie by 11am)

12 pm - Lots of rye & 7 grain bread with olive oil, tomato & salt & pepper - yum. Organic corn chips. Hummus. Carrots.

3pm - orange juice

6pm - Free range chicken breast fried in oil. Raw spinich salad w/purple onion & tomato. Corn on the cob. Brochelee w/olive oil. Yum!

9pm - some nuts

11pm - orange juice or banana (it’s not quite 11 yet)

I’ve been eating like this for the past month. I lost some weight and I feel great. It’s pretty easy after you commit to it. Plus, I’ve noticed that our grocery bill is less because we’re eating less processed (read more expensive) food.

More and more weather channels report a “feels like” temperature with the real temperature. It drives me crazy because it makes absolutely no sense. I guess it’s a combination of wind chill and humidity? Who the
heck knows what it means? Does it “feel like” that temperature even if you’re wearing a coat or a sweater — or what about if you’re shoveling snow? Or is it just something to boost ratings (of course, more people will watch the weather channels in extreem situations — so if it’s only 30 degrees outside, you get MUCH better ratings if you say it “feels like” 15 degrees?) In any case, the real abserdity happens when they say the temperature is 72 degrees and it “feels like” 72 degrees — Really? It’s 72? And it feels like 72? Who would have thought, eh? If you really want to know what the temperature ‘feels like’ — go outside and walk around.

I just finished editing a video for the Wall Street Green Trading Summit. Something like this takes about a day to edit. Check it out.

This is pretty standard fare for convention, events and promotional video. Here’s the formula for editing a promotional video of an event.

1. Take a few MTV shots (slam zooms, tilts, quick pans, slam wide — stuff like that) of all signage.
2. Get some crowd shots (not very much needed)
3. Get shots of people smiling or shaking hands (bonus points if you catch somebody handing somebody else a business card!)
4. Animate their logo
5. Cut some SOTs (sots are video sound bites) from the conference or speakers.
6. Lay it all down on a techno or electro (modern) track of music to make it all seem uber-hip.
7. Keep it under a 2 minutes.
8. Don’t have any shot last more then a second without panning, zooming, jump cutting, pushing in or changing shots…except maybe the SOTS…still, add some movement to the sots…slow push in or something.
9. Add some transitions between the shots to keep things moving.
10. Color correct and oversaturate or de-saturate a bit or boost the contrast a bit, add a slight sharpen filter or glow — basically, effect the heck out of every shot.

So there you go…you’ve made your first promotional video!

Eric

I don’t think I’m the only one who has noticed the that Jason Castro looks like John Travolta.

Digg it. Bookmark it. Pass it on…

A big part of sales is qualifying — asking questions or evaluating THEM to make sure that they are capible of becoming your customer. Qualify early so you don’t waste time trying to close a prospect who can never close. That craigslist post is not likely to pass the mustard, obviously, don’t waste your time…

I get requests for services almost every day because of these sorts of listings on google:

http://www.google.com/search?q=higher+google
http://www.google.com/search?q=new+york+video+services

One of my main criteria for qualifying an email lead is: How much did they write — how well did they describe their project. I get very short emails like these:

How much does it cost to make a music video

or

What are your rates?

It’s gotten to the point where I don’t even reply to emails this short. I don’t have the time to reply (Occasionally, the question is written in the subject line and the actual email is blank!) I know from experience that 99% or more of these requests are from people who are unable to become my customer and the remaining 1% are barely worth the trouble anyway.

Requests for services from short emails are not usually not worth the bytes they are written on.

http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/glengarry.html

LEVENE
I can’t close these leads, John.
No one can. It’s a joke. John,
look, just give me a hot lead.
Just give me two of the premium
leads. As a “test,” alright? As a
“test” and I promise you…

WILLIAMSON
I can’t do it, Shel.

Pause.

LEVENE
I’ll give you ten percent.

Pause.

WILLIAMSON
Of what?

LEVENE
And what if you don’t close.

LEVENE
I will close.

WILLIAMSON
What if you don’t close…?

A recent episode of 30 Rock featured a Google reference — Jack being called a Class A Moron on NY Post’s Page 6, and consequently, he was showing up #1 in Google for the search phrase “class A moron”. During the course of providing SEO service in NYC I’ve had the dubious challenge of dealing with negative publicity. Typically, a company or person will encounter some bad press, angry bloggers or forum posts in consumer sites like the Rippoffreport.com — and this negative publicity appears high in the search engine result pages for my client’s brands or personal names. Since we are unable to control what other people write, I advise a three pronged approach for dealing with this sort of internet publicity:

• Technical - doing things to web pages to effectively move the negative publicity off the first pages of search engines like Google.
• Business - If the problem is not a single lone angry blogger, but a pervasive problem, I advise my clients to consider altering the business practices which are generating the negative publicity.
• Direct Social or legal pressures - Contact the bloggers or people who are talking smack. Start from a point of win win — in a nice way, try to negotiate with them to take down the negative pages. If that doesn’t work, consider talking with a lawyer to see if you can put pressure on them that way.

As a search engine optimisation professional, I can only really help with the first bullet point, which I’ll discuss below a bit, and I suggest the other strategies, which fall outside my realm of expertise and within the professions of public relations, business procedures & strategy or law. The strategy of pushing negative publicity off the front page of Google involves placing positive web pages above the offending posts on the Google result pages for the predefined phrases. Presumably, your site will already appear above the negative publicity when people are searching your brand — if not…you need more SEO services and call me ASAP.

Beyond that, essentially, the strategy involves the use of publishing new content that is optimised for the target phrases. We publish the new content on sub-domains, job postings and 3rd party sites like wikipedia. Job sites are great because they often score high in Google and it’s an obvious place to publish a brand. Sub-domains are still treated as separate web sites by google. You need to publish unique content on the sub-domains because Google has at least two or three ways of filtering duplicate content out of the index. Here is an example of a client who dealt with negative publicity by this strategy. Notice how the rippoff report is way down off the first page of Google when searching their brand. This wasn’t always the case — it used to appear directly under their site, so when their potential clients were searching their brand, they saw it. Of course, the devil is in the details and this is only the basic strategies. I hope this helps people who are getting hit with negative publicity. If your firm is really under attack, however, consider contacting somebody like me to manage the process.

One of my New York SEO Service clients is Glenn Pere from PerePartnership. PerePartnership is a unique advertising and design agency in New York, located on top of Penn Station @ 1 Penn Plaza. Glenn Pere is a great creative director. He’s a guys guy and into football, baseball and boxing. You wouldn’t think he has an eye but I’ve seen him direct his staff on Photoshop. They present him with a comp — a very good poster design or flier for a big client like HBO. To me, the comp looks excellent. But Glenn will take about two seconds to tell the designer “make the sky more red. take that font size up. burn in their logo more here. make these people pop more…” Ten minutes later, the designer will be printing the new version and it’s 10 times better than the old one. I also have seen him color correct video better than his video editors — take the darks lower, boost the saturation — boom — the video pops. Anyway, Glenn is a face to face type guy — you have to meet with him. And he’d rather talk to you on the phone then send an email. Well, I’m an email kind of guy…I like sending emails. So whenever I send Glenn and email, he always calls back and says to my voicemail “Hey Eric — Glenn — I got your email. I don’t know what it means. Give me a buzz. Bye.” My wife just keeps a note @ my desk that reads “Glenn Pere Called.” We don’t take it down — no need. It’s a permanent fixture (I’m thinking about framing it.) He always calls so it will always be there. Ordinarily, I charge clients extra for this sort of service…but not Glenn. There is rarely a conversation with him where I don’t learn something new. Plus, I know what to expect from him so it’s all about expectations…quality work takes a more effort then just getting by. Glenn Pere knows how to produce quality work.

I’ve got to watch myself. I’m a sucker for features or gadgets. I like clips, zippers, pockets, holders and Velcro. The world is full of geek candy like that. But when is enough ‘enough’?

I used a vintage bike messenger bag for years — just a bag with a single inner zipperless pocket. So I was understandably excited about the new one, with two zipper pockets inside, a couple of pockets without zippers, a pocket for a cell phone, a place for some pens and two outter pockets — one zippable and one not — and a clip to hold my keys. It also had a couple of detachable reflective flaps that are intended to give me added visablity. I was excited about all this, that is, until I started using the bag.

In the old bag, I always knew exactly where to look for things. There were only two places — in the bag or in the pocket — and it was very easy to do that. In the new bag, on the other hand, I can never remember which pocket contains the thing I’m looking for and so time is wasted zipping and unzipping pockets. I end up frustrated because I don’t see what I want. And the detachable flaps are also annoying because I think I’m opening the bag and I’m really detaching a flap. No doubt about it — this bag is over designed. I may end up sewing most of the pockets shut.

Compare these two baby backpack:

While the first one might look better, I assure you, 9 times out of 10 times it’s not

Same with knives:

These classic French Opnel knives:

Are way better for cutting pears on a hike then these absurdly over designed ones:

Okay, that was a joke, but this is not:

I’ll take an Opinel any day.