Yay! I finally finished the FINAL final draft and have submitted my play. I was so worried about somehow not submitting it before the deadline that it's been appearing in my dreams. Along with a donkey, that's random.
Here is the official synopsis of the play: iFamily is the story of a modern-day family facing modern-day problems. Sam’s on the warpath because someone sucked up all the broadband - how are he and his best mate Kat supposed to socialize? Older sister Molly’s too busy plotting world domination with her girl gang to give two hoots, and getting through to older brother Bain is nigh on impossible when all he cares about is Lady Gaga. Luckily Gran has everything under control. She may be off her face - but she sure can make a mean cupcake. iFamily takes the play beyond the theatre and into the online environment. It features interactive elements within the play and as an extension of the characters that the audience can access before or afterwards. This includes the ability to connect with the characters via social media platforms. Become Molly’s friend on Facebook (if she deems you worthy), follow her 140 character rants on Twitter, or brush up with Bain’s research into women and empowerment in pop music by watching his YouTube montages. And when Sam, Kat and Gran get their "Can’t Cakes" business up and running, you can order your own online. Viral video publicity for the play gives us even more insight into the characters, for instance, you might just come across Gran on Chat Roulette! Never before have you had the chance to become so entangled in the lives of fictional characters. iFamily takes audience participation into the modern day, and to a whole new level. A playlist of the songs featured in ’iFamily’ can be listened to here.
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Its working title is 'iFamily: One house, three kids, no broadband'. Brief synopsis: Its core target is 17-22 year olds, but it will appeal to anyone. It's set in a family home over one day. The basic rundown is Sam, a 15year old boy and his mate, Kat, are trying to figure out who used up all the broadband allowance, which drives them through the house where we meet all the other characters: Molly, 17, and her gang of girls. Riot girls. Molly is a passionate feminist who rants about how no one does anything for the cause these days. Then Bain, 19, the older bro who is researching female empowerment in pop music. He's a sensitive lad. Then Gran, who the kids think is senile but is a actually a stoner. Did I mention that it rhymes? Parts of it anyway. I've never quite gotten over my love for things that rhyme, I love the rhythm of language. There are very strong themes in the play around technology, social media and the impact on family and today's teenagers. Also around gender roles and the accessibility of feminism to young people in the modern day. And a big wallop of popular culture critique with a smattering of talk around marketing. What can I say - it's everything I'm interested in rolled into one. The play has some interactive elements - seeing how pivotal technology is to the play it wouldn't make sense not to. But it's the publicity and the additional media elements that I'm really excited about. I want the public to be able to add Molly as a friend on Facebook, subscribe to Bain's YouTube channel, and order product from Kat and Sam's online business. Taking it out of the theatre and into the online environment. Really letting people interact with the characters. I'm entering it into a competition soon. I don't expect to win but hey - I wrote a play, now I gotta to do something with it. I'd love to get it produced. I think that as the writer you have to be able to imagine how it would actually work in real life, so I'm itching to get it to that point. The characters feel like real people to me, I can hear them speaking as I read the words on the page and I want everyone else to see them too. The hardest part is putting yourself up for critique, especially when you have that little doubting voice in your head going "What makes you think you can write a good play anyway, dummy?". Shut up voice. I've pasted a scene below, from my favourite character: Molly. I kinda wish I was her. And think that I might be a little bit, don't they say that a writer's characters are just versions of herself? I'd love to post it here, but the site won't allow for the correct formatting. So I guess you'll have to wait to see it for real ;) Holla! Creative Director in da house! Yes, well. Apparently being made the Creative Director of an advertising agency doesn't mean you grow adult sensibility overnight. But I think a little youthful enthusiasm never goes astray - in fact in this case I think it probably got me the job! But I digress... This October, my friend Rob Lewis asked me to become the Creative Director of his ad agency, Soda. Yay! It's an interesting one, this role. There are only two of us running the agency you see. Rob looks after the money side of things, keeps the clients happy and talks on the phone a lot. I look after the creative side of things, farming out the work to freelancers when I can't manage it myself. A job that we share, and that I'm looking forward to getting into, is pitching for new business. So far, in the first two weeks, we've had three new business pitches. Finally, a chance to get a business ladies' power suit! More shoulder pad, please. In a way this is the ideal role for me, because I get to do the creative work as I like, I get to manage other people, and I get back into pitching, presenting and generally talking the talk. Presenting work to clients was always my favourite part of the job when I worked in big ad agencies. I'm really looking forward to expanding my skill set. There's no guarantee it will work and we'll earn the dosh to keep us going. Soda is a real Kiwi battler, and Rob's fought every step of the way in the last two years to gain clients, deliver hardworking concepts (and earn money). I admire him a lot for that. But I think we're on the way up. Soda recently took the Fintel Insurance business off of a large global ad agency. I'm not naming names, but it was Aim Proximity, part of Colenso BBDO. LOL. Many of our other clients you never will have heard of. A large percentage of them have never used an ad agency before. Some people we present to probably think we're a just bunch of do-nothing wankers, and we have to work really hard to show them that advertising their business should actually lead to them making money in return. That's something I think most big agencies have lost sight of, too caught up in winning the next award or getting to go on a TV shoot and eat pastries all day. They just don't care as much. I know this is a long post, really not ideal for the internet at all, but I wanted to share a case study from one of the jobs we're currently pitching for. Last week we found ourselves out in Takanini. For those of you not from here, that's South Auckland, bro'. Rough as guts. We met with Annan, who called us up because his fruit and vege business, 'Orchard & Fields', was on the verge of going under. Over the last few years he'd tried everything to make a profit. Radio, flyer box-drops, newspaper ads, loyalty cards. Nothing worked. Their store is beautiful, their produce is premium AND it's the cheapest out there. You'd think they'd be bringing it in hand over fist, but not so. Their problem is in gaining new customers - no one can see the store from the road. Or, people are lazy and just go to the supermarket to get everything-in-one. Whatever the reason is, he can't sustain the business as it is, and he doesn't know what to do to change it. This is the story of so many small Kiwi businesses, and while talking to Annan my heart went out to him. He wanted one huge last-ditch effort before shutting shop. We are it. If we can't lift his sales, he's going under. We have to come up with an ultra cheap solution to get new customers in the store, and to get them coming back. Now that is a creative challenge. That's what advertising should be about – gaining real return on investment for our clients. So can we do it? Well, we have an idea. It will cost him less than what a big agency would charge just for altering one line on a print ad, and if it works will continue to gain him more customers for an indeterminate amount of time into the future. IF it works. Come back to here in a couple of months, and I'll let you know if it does. See what I did there? ;-) *UPDATE* Annan loved our concept. It was two simple letters, designed to create a snowball effect of gaining new customers that would carry on indefinitely. Dirt cheap - he could do it himself if he wanted to. Letter 1: To loyal customers - come into the store, sign up a friend who you think would love Orchards & Fields, and get <offer>. Letter 2: To the new sign-ups - "Your friend <name> thinks you'd love Orchards & Fields. Come in and check out the store and get <offer>". We reckon that just coming into the store would convert some people. But here's the clever bit. Two months later, we take Letter 1, and send that to the people who were new sign ups. They are now the loyal customers, and they give us the name of another friend. And so Annan's database grows and grows. Now he can do targeted communications, more likely to drive customers in-store. Clever, huh? Unfortunately Annan had an offer on his business and has now decided to sell it instead. And that's life.
Hi all!
If you're a teenager aged 15-19, I seriously need your help. I'm writing a play for people your age, you see, and as a 26 year old I'm starting feel like I'm losing touch with what you guys are all about. So help me out by filling in this questionnaire as thoroughly as you can, and then my play will (hopefully) be awesome and funny instead of lame and clichéd. When you email this through to me, let me know if you’d like to be informed if the play ever gets produced so you can come along!You can either cut and past the questions below into an email back to me at lilcameronwrites@gmail.com. Or, click on the file at the top of this page to download the questions, then fill them out and send them back to me. Cheers! Firstly, how old are you and what gender are you? Online Do you spend much time on the internet during the weekend? How much? Do you sometimes prefer going on the internet than hanging out with friends? What’s the main way you communicate with friends e.g txt, phone call, Facebook? Around about how many Facebook friends do you have? Do you use MySpace at all? Bebo? Tumblr? Flickr? If you use any of these sites, why do you? Do you feel like having access to the internet all the time, and social media sites like Facebook, bring you closer to your friends, or makes you see your friends not as much in real life? What’s the main reason you use social media websites like Facebook? What’s the main thing you do on Facebook e.g. posting on friends’ walls, or status updates, or photo sharing? Is there any part of Facebook you don’t like? Do your parents understand why you like Facebook/whatever site you use? Do they give you a hard time about how much time you spend online? Have you seen much online bullying? If so, how? Do you access the internet off your phone? If so, what sites do you go to using your phone? Do you think being on sites like Facebook connects you to your friends more, or less? Being a teenager What issues do you as a teenager face that you think is unique to people around your age? Things like text/online bullying, peer pressure to do stuff, adults not taking you seriously… Have you noticed any funny quirks about being a teenager, or teenage behaviour? Eg. like how when someone has a dress-up party the girls often want a good costume that ALSO makes them look sexy. What is some teenage lingo or acronyms that you use with your friends eg. BRB, skank, random, OMG Who are some of your role models, or just people that you like and admire ie. pop stars, actors, writers? Do you think there are any TV programmes/websites/books/movies out there that really ‘get’ what it’s like to be a teenager? Which ones? What are the main ways you entertain yourself when you get home from school/in the weekends? What are your favourite TV programmes? Favourite websites? Thanks! And if there's anything else you think I should know about teenagers, please add it to the bottom of your email. Lil :) I'm not usually one for print magazines. The targeted ones on design, photography, writing, technology... too specific to spend my $10 on when I can read it online for free. And don't even get me started on "women's magazines". Condescending, repetitive things designed to feed off and breed female insecurities. But I do remember, specifically, the day I picked up my first Bitch.
Opening the pages and reading the first paragraphs, was one of those moments. In the movies there would have appeared an angelic halo of yellow light, the choir singing its single note. Since then, Bitch has never failed to delight, enrage and empower me every time it arrives in my letterbox. It's that good. This issue is no different. I haven't even gotten past the editors note and I love it. So much so that I wanted to post it online. Slightly ironic, considering the content of what I'm about to post: largely, the effect of the internet and social media on discussions of feminism. But hey. From Bitch No. 48: The Make-Believe Issue, Sept 2010:Letter from the editor It seems fitting to be publishing the Make-Believe issue of Bitch in a year when feminism has been at the center of a whole host of revisionist histories, fantasy makeovers, and Bizarro World co-options. That's also the reason that sitting down to write this editor's letter was kind of exhausting. Simply put: Too often these days, it feels that nothing can be argued with any nuance or lasting effect. Lively, reasoned articles about feminism and public policy are lambasted as liberal twaddle in comment threads that quickly descend into ungrammatical, all-caps ranting. Perfectly reasonable questions about, say, sexism in the entertainment industry are greeted with defensive rapid-fire tweets hinting that critics are just fat, jealous, or both. And backassward public figures whose sudden claiming of a feminist stance is completely at odds with their stated beliefs and political platforms are hailed as...well, I think you know where this one's going. Not that nuance is itself a pie in the sky, but lately it seems to belong with the Great Pumpkin, eternal youth, and a passable substitute for butter as concepts that we occasionally entertain only to eventually dismiss. Some have submitted that this is the fault of a 24-hour media circus that baits readers and viewers with sensationalism and then quickly backs away from actual discussion. Others have argued that the world – with its bigger-than-ever gaps between haves and have-nots, more extreme highs and more dismal lows – is literally growing out of nuance. Still others shrug that with more people than ever able to interact with their fellow humans via technology, the numbers just ensure that more of the are inevitable going to be assholes. At Bitch, in the small space we've staked out to discuss and debate the intersections of feminism (no matter how it's defined) and popular culture (which redefines itself yearly, at least), we strive for nuance, because without it we're just living in a noise machine. We print what we print knowing that people will disagree s often as they agree. Progressive discourse doesn't have to b a utopia of polite exchanges and mutual backrubs. But it also doesn't have to be the opposite. At least, that's what we'd like to think . But I'm sure you'll let us know if we're dreaming. - Andi Zeisler Politics as comedy: the lecture
Auckland University runs this really cool, free lecture series that I only managed to catch the end of, attending Lecture 5: Politics as Comedy. I was delighted to hear that they were going to focus on The Daily Show as a reference. And I must confess that part of my glee came from the fact that TV Studies papers were my favourites back at university, and I spend rather a lot of time watching TV (albeit usually online) and rambling on about my analyses of TV shows to anyone who will have the grace to pretend to listen. I often think that if I went back to uni to do my Masters thesis in anything it would be some kind of intersection between pop culture, tv and psychology - perhaps something like the cultural impact on group behaviour in reality tv shows. Or how female talk show hosts like Ellen and Oprah use humour to ingratiate themselves with their audiences. Yes, this is the kind of stuff I think about in my spare time. Perhaps one day I'll manage to extricate myself from advertising fully, and get these things written! Anyway, having gone on a tangent, I'll now come back round to the intended topic of this post, which is, of course, the lecture I attended. As the full lecture is posted online I didn't take many notes, but something that was said in the introduction I found interesting: A simple breakdown that tells us how comedy is created by politics in 3 key ways: 1) Politicians who unwittingly create comedy through their actions eg Chris Carter making a fool of himself recently with his 'anonymous' letter. 2) Comedy created through advertising and media reporting on politics eg the TV3 ads featuring Mike McRoberts tooling around like he's MacGyver, ducking bomb blasts as the soundtrack sings "They call me the seeker...". What... a joke. 3) A thirdly, intentional comedy created as a reaction to the news. Such as The Daily Show, and other 'fake news' shows. I won't go into this third point as it was the topic of the lecture, but I urge you all to follow this link and read the lecture in its entirety, as it was really interesting. Certainly got the rusty cogs of my brain turning: Politics as comedy http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10666816weeblylink_new_window A month or so ago I worked in at G2 advertising agency for a week (now BCG2), and came face to face with a brief I'd worked on before - the Art of the Envelopes call-for-entry. For the last two years the awards, run by Candida, had been using a concept thought up originally by my art director Matthias and I when I was fulltime at BCG. What a coincidence that I would be involved in coming up with a new approach in 2010. I was only involved at the concepting level, coming up with the core thought "Sexing up the envelope". We decided to use current DM hotshots from the ad industry in 'sexy' poses - everyone loves to laugh at people they know. Take a look at the end product, I reckon they did a great job: Here's a link to some PR on advertising blog Stoppress: http://www.stoppress.co.nz/news/2010/07/scantily-clad-marketers-get-sexy-turn-envelopes-into-mmmvelopes/weeblylink_new_window
My blog of the week: An 18 year old follows the advice of Seventeen mag for 1 month, providing critical analysis on topics such as race and sexuality representation, beauty myths and expectations, and all kinds of blimen' awesome other stuff.
Plus, she's a great writer. Like, a really great writer who makes me very jealous because she could totally kick my arse in writing and she's only 18. Link to her first post here: http://www.theseventeenmagazineproject.com/2010_05_21_archive.htmlweeblylink_new_window Link to my favourite post about the communication breakdown between teens and adults here: http://www.theseventeenmagazineproject.com/search/label/Communicationweeblylink_new_window Back in April I was interviewed for a segment on TV One's "Close Up" about how young interns are treated in advertising agencies while they're on trial placement or internships. The 10 minute piece aired on July 18th, around the time that our government is reviewing employment policies.
http://tvnz.co.nz/close-up/options-young-graduates-3649149/videoweeblylink_new_window I was lucky enough to avoid this period that many newbies go through - being paid $100 a week and kept on for up to a year with no guarantee of a job at the end. And quite frankly, I don't think I would have put up with it for more than a couple of months. The journalist who interviewed us asked a lot of leading questions and was obviously out to collect the evidence for only one angle: that is, us telling him all about the exploitation that goes on. Of course we were all a lot more diplomatic than he wanted; in fact my friend Jono who was also interviewed tells me the journalist kicked a rubbish bin in frustration because he wasn't getting the juicy gossip he expected. Media, huh. The end result wasn't as bad as I expected, but it wasn't great either. For a 10 minute piece there was a lot of repetition, and they cut out a lot of my comments that offered the other side of the story. That is, while there is definitely exploitation going on from the agencies' end, young creatives play a part too. It's their responsibility to ask for more money or to walk away when it's obvious they're being used. Instead of just bitching about it and stealing booze from the agency fridge to make up for it. That's the only way we'll change the internship system from our end - by just saying no. I'm glad the piece aired and I hope it starts the wheel turning for change. I'm not holding my breath though! Another link to the piece here: http://tvnz.co.nz/close-up/options-young-graduates-3649149/videoweeblylink_new_window June. Busiest month of the year so far, with lots of work in agencies. Plus, check out my previous post to read my latest piece of writing published in Express magazine.
So this month I've worked in at: Sugar, on BNZ DM Consortium, on Jockey Underwear (Dan Carter in his undies, such a ubiquitous image) Federation, on Farmers and Q Card DM DraftFCB, on all kinds of things Soda, on Fintel Insurance TVCs Full-time in an agency isn't my style, but I have enjoyed getting around different agencies for a week here and there to feel the different vibe in each one. I have to say, my fav so far is Draft. Everyone's really friendly even though it's a big agency, and they seem to treat their staff well and have a good culture. Sometimes I miss the big agency days. Mainly the people and the gossip and the booze on Fridays though! |
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