Yeah I know, it's usually "Inspiration Tuesdays", but this was so good I couldn't wait 'til next week to share.
Introducing Nick Bertke, some guy I discovered off YouTube. It appears our friend Nick is a natural talent at producing genius music and films, and if he keeps going at it, might make a decent living being a superstar. Scrounging inside some old Walt Disney animations, Nick came up with delicately crafted, otherworldy mellow tunes. Something Björk-like, with a hint of sweetened Chemical Brothers but with its own smooth flavour. Being a musician myself, I'm no music critic but I know talent when I hear it.
I first got blasted off by this page I stumbled upon, moving on to YouTube where I discovered his other productions. Homemade sights and sounds copyright Nick Bertke. Here are some of my favorites (keep reading after the break):
Nick also has excellent flair for storytelling and film photography. Take your eyes on a ride with Out With It (see at end of post), a short movie about a guy, a girl, and something real bad happening. M. Night Shyamalan could be red with envy on this one, if it was only pursued into a 2-hour flick. I know I was sucked into it instantly.
I don't know of Nick's other talents, but I truly hope he gets discovered by big cheeses - something great might happen. Check out Nick's work on YouTube: search for Fagottron (interesting choice of nickname), and look him up on Last.Fm as well. Google him, for all it's worth, things are getting interesting for our friend. I do expect this guy to get his 15 minutes of fame sometime soon.
Being creative is about generating new opportunities for yourself, and for others.
Every day should be a new, empty slate allowing you to make use of your own creativity: Whether it is as about finding a new or better way to do your work, daring to go someplace you never would have in other times, inventing something you think could generally changeyour status quo.
It can be big, it can be small, but you never know how far an idea could go in creating some "new" in your life, generating new goals for yourself, and making you feel in charge.
Creation is change. And in the words of Winston Churchill: "Change is the essence of life. Be ready to surrender what you are, for what you could become."
If you've been followingmarketing circles on Twitter recently, you're likely to admit there's a lot of talk about social media in business communications. I can't count all the "10 tips for this", "Tools for that" tweets, or various miracle uses of tweet-related 2.0 apps that abound in the worldwide nest.
It seems like the discussion around using social media in business has garnered more attention and spilled more digital ink than its actual use. Influent marketing Tweeters have taken upon themselves the responsibility of evangelizing their followers; said followers are on a del.icio.us bookmark craze on the subject; Bloggers flourish in profound studies and in-depth analytics on the phenomenon, and one doesn't have to look far to find a plethora of so-called social media experts on LinkedIn -- fighting to deliver the next great piece of insight.
Everyone's on the hunt for the great Social Media marketing ElDorado. And it's particularly true within marketing circles on Twitter.
What is behind this social media information-sharing craze in the Tweetosphere? Is it truly driven by the noble search to better serve one's clients, or rather by the need to build a personal brand? I guess the latter is the hidden truth. Twitter is about the need for one individual or corporation to stand out. Talking to a mass of followers. For marketers, Twitter is social media's social media.
Twitter is composed of thousands of individual mass mediums (the Tweeps) adressing their own communities of thousands, who most often are passive listeners. There's nothing truly "social" on Twitter - it's actually more like a cable TV of people selling their personal brand on their own channel. A lot of TV shows. By creating or hunting for information, these "show hosts", are trying to generate critical bits of information to use them as perceived advantage, contributing to building their own individual mass media potential, their own personal brand. The success of their daily show.
Which is to say that the current social media tweeting trend among professionals seems to be biased. It isn't really about "Social Media And How It Does Miracles For Your Company's Marketing". It's about "Social Media And How Talking About It Empowers Your Professional Credibility".
When Marshall McLuhan said the "medium is the message", he probably didn't realise how social this notion would become.
Tolkien fans, you will go crazy on this one. The Hunt For Gollum is an entirely independent movie created by (very technically adept) fans and directed by writer-director Chris Bouchard. And this one will keep your stomachs full until (unafilliated) Peter Jackson goes crimson with envy and creates three more.
Production began in early 2007 when Chris started adapting the script from the Appendices of The Lord of the Rings, and was released on May 3rd for public viewing *entirely free* (most probably with the hope that some huge distributor will notice and buy the distribution rights).
I've watched it. It's surprisingly well done. All along you wonder, for every element that comes on scene, "will they get it right?". Well for an indepedent short that, as for every indepedent short, usually deals with limited budget and rests on the talent and passion of its makers, trust me, "they get it right". It hits the spot much more that anything George Lucas recently made, if I have to make the sorry comparison.
I'm a freelancer and free thinker in the field of marketing and communications, trying to continually expand the known universe in my little mind -- and yours.
