Updates from March, 2013

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  Andy 2:53 pm on March 4, 2013 Permalink  

  Jarring iTunes Transitions 

  I enjoy Spotify and Pandora as much as the next guy, but I’m also a fan of buying albums and continuing to grow my iTunes library. Call me old school circa 2008. Who knows? Maybe it’ll contribute in some small way to helping music return to its former glory – those not-so-heady days when furniture was glued on hotel ceilings and ballers on epic yachts emerged from epic hot tubs and got in epic helicopters to fly off into epic sunsets. Plus, I still like to shut off the shuffle and plow through an entire record, just as the artist intended. It’s the musical version of reading a book. Problem is you can get so immersed that you don’t sense the dark little monsters hiding around the corner. One minute you’re jamming out to a particularly righteous Mogwai tune when, blamo, you’re hit with Murray Head’s One Night in Bangkok. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some Murray Head. It’s just nice to get a little warning. In that spirit, I have created a list of the most jarring transitions in my iTunes library. Study it. Learn it. Build off it. It may just save your life.

  Beirut to Bell Biv DeVoe

  Ben Folds Five to Beyoncé

  Billie Holiday to Billy Idol

  The Black Angels to The Black Eyed Peas

  Bob Marley to Bobby Brown

  Bon Iver to Bone Thugs-n-Harmony

  Chuck Mangione to Chumbawamba

  Danger Mouse & Daniele Luppi to Daryl Hall & John Oates

  Dead Confederate to Dean Martin

  DeVotchKa to Dexys Midnight Runners

  Elvis Presley to Eminem

  Fang Island to Fat Joe

  Frightened Rabbit to Fu-Schnickens

  George Clinton to George Winston

  The Hold Steady to House of Pain

  Led Zeppelin to Leona Lewis

  Mogwai to Murray Head

  The National to Naughty By Nature to Neil Diamond
   
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  Andy 4:19 pm on August 21, 2012 Permalink  

  The World According to Chick Norris 

  We have a tradition at Copacino + Fujikado where new employees are presented with a curious welcome-to-the-agency statuette known as Chick Norris. They’re expected to hold onto Chick until the time comes to pass him off to the next fresh face. But what does it all mean? Nobody could really tell me. So I was forced to draw my own conclusions. What I came up with was that each newbie must attach his or her own significance to Chick. Even though you are being welcomed into a family, discovering the meaning of Chick is a personal journey.

  Mine led me to believe that if you screw up they’ll stick you in a can, seal it and hand you out as a knickknack albatross to people on their first day.

  

  But something felt off about that interpretation.

  When I asked recent newcomer Irene what meaning she gleaned from Chick, she said, “You smell like hummus,” then made a self-deprecating Asian joke.

  Interesting, I thought.

  When I asked an even more recent newcomer, Sitha, he said “Stop calling me Sade and put on some pants.” Then he made a self-deprecating Asian joke.

  Asians are wise, I thought. And love Asian jokes, I thought further.

  After these great insights, I began to change my tune. Maybe it means something more positive, something uplifting even. Maybe it means that we all come here as whole chickens without giblets, packed in broth, ready to be eaten. We’ve all had life experiences that qualified us to be here.

  Some of us became a doctor at age 14, but still clung to a sense of normalcy with our snarky best friend Vinny Delpino.

  Others of us served as a guiding hand and housemother to a group of boarding school girls who were just trying to experience the joys and the trials of adolescence. Then maybe that same person became promoted to school dietitian and four of the girls moved into new quarters right above the cafeteria.

  One of us was even a wisecracking furry alien who arrived on planet earth to live with a human family after crashing into their garage.

  And another of us became really good at using IMDB.

  The point is, we all bring something unique to this great table known as Copacino + Fujikado. Maybe all we need are giblets. Maybe Betti and Jim are the ones who will finally give them to us so we can emerge out of our cans and soar like glittering super-chickens ready to cast our shadows on the world.

  When I ran this theory by Jim, he said, “Dude, we just had a canned chicken.” Then he winked. But it wasn’t a creepy wink. It was a wink that said, “Now you’re getting it, grasshopper.”
   
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  Mike 11:17 pm on November 28, 2011 Permalink  

  Enough with the private thank yous. 

  I was leaving an audio session at Clatter & Din the other day, and our sound engineer, John Buroker, had done an incredible job on our spots. I mean he killed it. Which is what John does.

  I thanked him, shook his hand and left.

  You know what? That’s not good enough. It’s people like John who make the work what it is, yet the agency gets almost all the credit. To try to right these terrible wrongs, I’d like to publicly thank a few people and share some of their work. Starting with John.

  John Buroker is one of the nicest, coolest people you’ll meet. He’s also so easygoing it’s easy to forget how damn good he is. Like what he did with our Folksy Announcer spot.

  Then there’s Scott Wiess from Pure Audio. When Scott leans over and says, “Hey, what if we try…” you do it. First, because you like him (everyone does), and second because his suggestion is going to make your spot waaaay better. Like with Leonard & the Seattle Aquarium.

  And there’s Dave Howe at Bad Animals. Man that guy can mix. You’ll be having a great time with your client, chatting away, then Dave will say, “How about this?”, then play you the spot and blow you away. Exhibit A: Fluffy Bunny.

  I can’t forget the Vince Werner, a true audio icon. I won’t go into detail about his work on the Mariners, but it’s so far above and beyond he should charge us triple. But he won’t because he’s a fantastic human being. I give you What’s in a Name.

  But what’s sound without picture? Hmm, guess that’s radio. Anyway, the directors we work with all share common traits: they’re nice, sane people who are good at what they do.

  Life is too short to work with jerks. So in the non-jerk director category, I proudly present:

  Steve Utaski of Remedy Pictures. Terrific director who makes shoots fun and spots great. Like this Fred Willard work for Symetra Financial.

  Ron Gross of Blue Goose Productions does the impossible: shoots five to seven Mariners commercials in three days with non-actors who sometimes don’t speak English. And ta da, out comes Larry Bernandez of Encore Encore fame.

  Then there are the two greats from North by Northwest: Jeff Noble & John Eames.

  Jeff has this thing down to a science, which is how he made a desert out of Moses Lake for the WSU Arid Crops spot. While John’s directorial brilliance is helping us make boringly good surprisingly engaging for LifeWise with spots like Work It.

  Onto Jack Barrett of Wacko Films, who shot and edited our new World Vision spots. A pleasure on and off the set, he handles pressure like it’s not even there. Check out Angel By Your Side to see his handiwork.

  Speaking of editors, Kelly Vander Linda of Collective and Troy Murison of Dubs Inc. spin raw footage into gold. Here’s one of Kelly’s spots for Seattle Children’s, and Troy’s Dance Troupe spot for LifeWise of Washington.

  Need post effects? You need Kevin Adams. A former Wazzu kicker turned amazing aftereffects artist, Kevin makes things look far better on screen than they do in your head. Check out his work here.
  
  To borrow from most acceptance speeches, there are plenty of other great people I’m sure I’ve missed. So to all of you I offer up a very big, very public thank you. And you’ll probably get the private thank you handshake at some point too.