saulrosenbaum.com / 2008 / August

I really like TV, it’s often simultaneously entertaining, informative and appalling, what’s not to love? But here we find ourselves on the precipice of 2010 - and aside from the advent of American Idolesque programming U.S. TV hasn’t changed since it’s inception - advertisers buy time to peddle their wares - how much they spend is based on viewership and demographic data of a show or block of shows - of course there is no guarantee people will but an advertisers product - but they’re playing a numbers game - casting the largest possible net by advertising on the most popular shows. It’s all very logical, and old-school.

Let’s think a bit differently, what if there was a way to guarantee ad viewership and potentially sales, while increasing the quality and availability of top notch entertainment? I enjoy ‘Project Runway’ (seriously) I’d be willing to watch a 10 minutes Tressimé infomercial and provide some type of feedback (internet, phone etc.) in realtime in exchange for commercial-free on-demand viewing of Heidi and Tim, now think about that - No more weekly shows, no more seasons, no-more reruns - unless of course you want to watch it again - a constant stream of first-run, always ready when you are entertainment at your fingers. I know what you’re saying, Saul, that’s just not possible, I’ll cut you off, it’s already is - via bit torrent.

Imagine you didn’t watch TV for a year, then you downloaded everything produced in that year, you’d have a massive catalog to view from - TV studios can do exactly the same thing, it requires big changes - but if the ‘cost’ for Project Runway was me completing a shampoo purchase, I would do it - advertisers would be happy - because their profits would be directly related to the popularity of a given show, TV studios would be happy because competition to advertise would be high, Viewers would be happy because not only would their always be something worth watching, we’d be essentially watching it commercial free.

Obviously this idea is rough, flawed, and pretty unlikely… but that doesn’t mean their isn’t a seed of a good idea in there somewhere.

Usually by 4 o’clock every afternoon I’m fairly certain that everyone in the free world is taking fifteen minutes to either email me or call me on the phone - seriously, it’s cricket quiet in my studio till 4ish most days, but busybusybusy from 4 to 6pm - In the last year or so I’ve started planning my day around the phenomenon - which I’ve named ‘saul-bombing’ - the challenge of surviving a ‘saul-bombing’ is how quickly you can sort, and flag the stuff that actually must get done overnight from the stuff that although it looks important - actually doesn’t require any action on my part. My usual approach is to quickly flag the do’sand take note of and then archive the not-do’s. I then take the flagged items and fold them into my list of work to be done - hopefully without causing a epic ripple that fills my week with late nights - it takes some resolve to watch your week deteriorate before your very eyes, but with a few simple goals - you can at least make the process mentally easier.

• Don’t leave any unflagged email in your inbox, get the info out, get the email archived, if you’re ballsy you could delete it, I’m not, I’ve never regretted having 10 years of emails to refer back to.
• Don’t go to bed without figuring out your hit-list for tomorrow, you’ll sleep better.
• If it isn’t an emergency, no all-nighters, they seem like a good idea at the time, but in the long run your taking longer to accomplish less work.
• In the morning avoid your email, and all social networking (twitter, facebook, etc) till you knock a few items off your list, that will help minimize the ripple caused by tomorrows ‘saul-bombing’.

Tagged: email

I enjoy magic, hmm, let me be more specific, I enjoy sleight of hand, I don’t enjoy the new kind of magic where David Blaine starves himself for 31 days and calls it an illusion, or Criss Angel swallows radioactive waste and calls it a ‘mind-freak’, I like the kind of magic where a skilled and practice individual produces deck after deck of cards from thin air 3 inches from your face, while you stare yourself cross-eyed trying to figure it out - truth be told I never want to know how it’s done.

When I saw that this weeks Illustration Friday word was Poof!, I couldn’t help myself - I illustrated the first trick I ever learned, a store bought illusion where you produce a card from thin air and then you vanish it by having it engulf itself in flames, it was a neat trick and I hurt myself EVERY TIME I DID IT, but the trick impressed the girl I was interested in at the time, so I look at it as $45 well spent.

I’ve been fooling with some styles that are a bit quicker start to finish than my normal rendered approach, I really like this segmented approach, it’s fun to do, and I like the results, but I absolutely want to explore it further.

Tagged: illustration friday