Mike Cohen's Blog

In this entry I'll take you on my daily walk around the office. Maybe you'll pick up some business advice along the way.

8am - finish breakfast, feed the cats, make some ham sandwiches and make my wife a hot cocoa. Hey, it's getting chilly. Managing the home is just as important as managing my work responsibilities. Looking after my family is the most important task of all.

8:30am - Knowing Waterbury, CT I'm stuck in traffic. In the 1960's a huge interchange between I84 and Rt 8, colloquially known as the Mixmaster, was built. Almost instantly, gridlock was the result. A 100 million dollar highway widening project a few years ago appears to have done nothing to ease congestion - in fact it may have made it worse. A big local scandal emerged after they completed the work. It seems the contractor bought after market storm drains and did not actually attach the drains to underground concrete pipes in some cases. So the work had to be redone at great expense to the state.

8:45am - arrive in the office. Boot up the laptop. Since I am a blackberry-addict, there are few surprises in the inbox anymore - actually more efficient because I spend exactly no time doing e-mail in the morning. Check voice mail. I don't get too much voicemail anymore, but occasionally. Maybe I will add my e-mail address to my outgoing message. Anything to help customers get in contact seems like a good move. Next stop the coffee machine. Those little plastic cup single portions are a great invention. I keep a fresh half and half carton in the fridge. It has become a nice routine, and it gets me out of the office early in the day. The only good line from Indiana Jones IV was when Indy said to a student, "If you wanna be a good archaeologist, you've gotta get out of the library."

So after the coffee brews I take my morning walk around. Say hello to everyone you know - you never know who might need help with something.

Customer Service - a chat with our customer service person updates me as to any concerns or requests of our customers. That is, people who buy our products. Unlike a traditional production company, we have a catalog of nearly 2,000 products. Direct mail, e-marketing and website e-commerce generate a dozen or more unique product orders each day. Sometimes the requests are for particular new topics, sometimes a request to host a video on an intranet. Other requests are tech support related or requests for a free trial of the video library. In other words, find out what customers are asking about, and try to respond with a solution. In other words, customer service!

Marketing - Next door down, we discuss marketing plans that may be afoot. We have been managing e-mail lists for our different product lines, made up of past customers and folks who sign up via our website or at events or tradeshows. The best part about a new e-mail campaign is viewing the open and click results. We can actually see who clicked a link, and then check that against the orders database to see who made a purchase. A qualified lead who actually completes a transaction is a beautiful thing. While there perhaps I can contribute some copy to a new catalog, postcard or website description, identify stock photos for an ad or get in touch with a publication about advertising. Think the Creative COW Magazine would run an ad for surgical videos? Probably should stick with medical publications.

Speaking of publications, next on to Publications - I have a couple of book projects on the fire, but our in-house expert always has some good advice concerning workflow and the press schedule, paper choices and pricing. Our designers work very well independently, but constant communication and attention to detail are vital. All work in progress is posted to various secure servers. In summary, seek advice and input from people who have a different set of skills and knowledge than you do. Teamwork is not only about like minded people working together, but it is also people with different backgrounds helping one another accomplish their goals.

Operations - Here I can check if my vendors' invoices have been paid or more importantly if our invoices have gotten paid! Submitting timely expense reports helps keep records orderly. And when it comes time for employee performance reviews, make sure a copy goes in the file.

Administrative Assistant - I try to have a fresh list of tasks every week. Writing letters, managing mailing lists, transcription of videos and even some basic html layout work are all great tasks for a good admin. Train your assistant to do many of the tasks which keep you from doing what you do best - creating. It is also a good idea to share your travel schedule, as this person may be answering the phone and taking messages. Finally, if you are expecting a call from someone important and you tend to not be at your desk much, make sure someone is on the lookout for you.

Meeting Planning - This is an aspect of our business that often comes as a surprise to people who only know of us as a publisher or production company. But planning and accreditation of medical meetings is a lot of work and we like to think we do it well. Each meeting has a registration website. There is reporting and detailed record keeping. The meeting location needs to be secured, blocks of hotel rooms reserved and catering to order. Participants in the meeting may sometimes be given continuing education credits - there is a whole system of record keeping for this as well. My role in these efforts may range from helping to design a website, basic database maintenance, to serving as AV support during the meeting itself and sometimes even shooting video of the proceedings, or editing a DVD after the fact.

Order Fulfillment - I started in this position right out of college. At the time we basically sold VHS tapes and the occasional monograph. Today, the previously mentioned catalog of DVD and CD-ROM products, along with over 15 textbooks and numerous specialty packages need to be processed each day. Digitizing and rendering along with DVD authoring and package design also happens here. While most of the library is already digitized, one can also find the DVCPRO tapes, or in another undisclosed location, the original 1", Betacam or 3/4" master tapes. Really, order fulfillment is one of the key roles - get the customers what they have purchased in a timely manner, and ensure quality every step of the way.

Back to the Production Department - since I know what each person is working on, my job here is to review works in progress, make suggestions, record temp voice tracks and troubleshoot as requested. But a tenet of lean project teams is "hire good people and let them do their jobs." This frees me up to go back to my office and do my job, which is a lot of coordination, project management, planning and helping others to do their jobs even better.

Summary

In other words, customer service. I am not so much managing all of the people with whom I interact. Rather, I am managing my own workflow, and managing to help others with theirs.

11:15am - I don't know about you, but I could go for another cup of Fair Trade Organic Decaf with a splash of cream and some cocoa powder sprinkled on top. You never know who you're going to run into in the break room.

Thanks for walking around.

Mike Cohen

No clever title this time. As we have been editing HD projects over the past year we have been collecting sample clips showing surgical and non-surgical training footage. This is just a sample.

The Sony HVR-V1U has proven to be a great camera for use in the sensitive operating room environment. It is lightweight enough to hang over an open incision, the battery life is long and the images are astounding. Given the potential negatives of HDV, we have found it to be a robust format with good color reproduction and ease of editing using Premiere. It is a processor hog and Premiere seems to want to re-index HDV on a regular basis, but the end result is what matters.

As we investigate tapeless ways to capture video including interfacing with new HD medical systems, we are developing some nice material.

But technology aside, as elucidated in this article:

http://magazine.creativecow.net/article/surgical-video-the-cutting-edge

getting great images is as much about knowing what you are looking at as it is knowing how to control your equipment.

For now, enjoy the show. Viewer discretion is advised.

Mike Cohen

I know, not as clever as some of my headlines. Today was a day to unwind, and take advantage of perhaps the last perfect Fall day of the season. Mid-60's, sunny, leaves at peak color.



Woke up to a typical Sunday. Hearty Breakfast. No shaving on the weekend, thank you.


Meet the Press makes breakfast a bit less appetizing.



Leaves are changing...and falling.



It's a beautiful day. Don't let it get away.
Thanks for the advice Mr Hewson.

Destination: Meriden, CT - just a few miles away. Hubbard Park, designed by none other than Frederick Law Olmstead, has miles of trails, part of the extensive Metacomet Trail over some beautiful terrain.



As with most of my outings, I set off intending to relax, explore, get some much needed exercise and perhaps get some memorable images, both in my mind's eye and in my trusty camera.

From the top you can see the Long Island Sound to the South and Mt. Tom in Massachusetts to the North.



On all accounts, mission accomplished. If you're ever in central CT check out our miles of trails, greenways and parks.

Before I sink my life savings into a Canon 5D Mark II, I thought I'd do a dry run on the cheap. Still a nice memory of a nice day out.



Thanks for reading.

Mike Cohen


Fresh air is a beautiful thing. I'm gonna sleep like a baby...

We creative types work hard. We should play hard, but sometimes that takes a back seat. This past Summer, a great way to unwind from 8 hours in the office chair would have been to hop on the mountain bike and ride. Maybe it was the humidity or the seemingly constant rain we had here in New England, but this year my couch potato genes took over. Actually that would be "chair potato" because most of my downtime was spent in front of my home computer, either watching Hulu, or working on my own pet projects. And no, emptying Rusty's litter box is not a pet project.

So what are my pet projects? Funny you should ask.

1. Editing silly videos.
Aside from the lifetime project of organizing and editing family videos, home movies and the like, the occasional idea springs to mind, usually right around bedtime. By the time the videos are uploaded I sometimes realize that the moment of inspiration has passed. But alas, it is fun, passes the time, and keeps my television in the off position.

Who is my audience? Family and friends on Facebook and probably the same bored guy many times on YouTube. Wanna join him? Here you go:

This is my fave YouTube creation. And the most hits.






This next one I actually shot with a proper video camera, not my usual stills camera that now documents our vacations. There are actually about 2 more hours of raw footage covering the whole outer Cape. Maybe one day I'll do more.






Most recently, after being awed by the Balloon Boy, I made this little gem. Again, not quite as funny as I thought it was going to be. Might have been better with audio, but Nancy Grace wouldn't return my emails:






Speaking of politics, back in '08 after watching one of the debates I thought maybe we should be looking at the candidates from a more comedic point of view, since whoever wins we will be making fun of them for four years.







I think Obama was the natural choice, if only because of the Abe Lincoln connection. Sorry about the music.

Other times, inspiration happens by accident. I am always snapping photos and video clips when on vacation. Many of them never see the light of day. Here are a few that did, in various forms:

Cape Cod






Vegas - aside from NAB, the Bellagio fountains were one of the only interesting things about this crazy town.






Finally there are the family videos - the most interesting of all. No need to be clever or funny, the memories speak for themselves.

I'm the cute one in the overalls:






As for upcoming pet projects for the coming cold season...I need to finally re-edit my wedding from the raw footage. I recently got around to the first edit of the honeymoon. I also have two half-finished screenplays. They may stay that way. Late night inspiration does not work for that project.

Thanks for watching.

Mike Cohen

After a week of travel, which was more like 3 weeks due to the preparation and focus on nothing but the end goal, it is like returning from a long journey. Amazingly, the voicemail was empty and there were no packages piled on my chair. Why? Because nearly everyone I work with on a regular basis was in the same place as I was, many of them at the same hotel. So it was like I was at a high school reunion, assuming that I was part of a class that took 20 years to graduate.

So here I am back in the saddle (squeaky office chair) with a full plate of communication tasks, aka, new business development.

1. Followup with people I saw last week. Last week, for those keeping score at home, was a medical convention. There are occasional threads in the business and marketing forum about the benefit of attending trade shows.
http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/17/863662#863662
http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/17/862223#862223

It depends upon the trade and the show.

2. Followup with people I did not see, but hoped to.

This is an important part of acquiring new business. That is, developing relationships with people, even and especially those people with whom you have not yet done business. Remind people you are there, out here in the ether. When they need you they'll remember you if you remember yourself to them periodically.

3. Contact people I neither saw nor planned to see but with whom I'd like to meet at some future date.

4. Followup on outstanding proposals.

Writing clear proposals, SOW's or contracts is a vital part of work for hire. If you are a vendor, get good at describing what you do, what you charge, and what they get for what you charge for what you do.

5. Send out new proposals.

See above.

6. Chat with co-workers about ongoing projects, shoots that happened while I was away and future projects and goals.

MBWA - Managing by walking around.

6a. Followup regarding ongoing milestone chasing (another future blog post right there).

7. Create some plans for new products, the ideas for which we gathered from customer requests during our big event. Free market research is a beautiful thing. Well maybe not free, given travel and exhibit costs, but gravy over an already generous helping of mashed potatoes.

Always be thinking of the next sliced loaf of bread.

8. Organize notes - that is - post-its and scrap paper - in a book labeled, cleverly, "The Book." More on this in a future post on getting shtuff done.

So while I say back in the saddle" one should always be IN the saddle, riding on the range, tending the flock helping other ranchers get their cattle to market. Rather than a six-shooter on my belt, a blackberry will have to do.

Giddy-up partner.

Thanks for riding.

Mike Cohen

It has been previously established that I travel a good deal for work. I find myself in some exotic location like Cleveland, but almost always after dark is the first free time I have. It breaks my heart to see folks taking flash pictures at night of beautiful architecture or scenery, knowing that they will get home and just have pictures of nothing, or blown out faces surrounded by shadow. In the case of architecture, you get highlights and uneven contrast.



However, sometimes without a flash and without support, or even with intentional movement, you can get a truly incredible result. This shot has not been altered aside from the image size (click images for a larger view):



This is why I have gotten into the practice of taking night shots with a tripod, no flash and a timer. But since I don't carry a tripod everywhere I go and quite honestly, I wouldn't do that, you need to find a tripod, or camera support, wherever you can. A flower pot, table, railing, pylon, traffic sign or even the side of a building can not only be the first step towards a decent night shot, but lend some interesting angles that you might not otherwise consider.

Once you have found a way to lock down your camera, and sometimes you need to hold it at a slight upward angle, just using the stability of the surface, you have to set your auto timer. You see, the very act of pressing the shutter button especially on a small point and shoot camera, is enough to cause a slight movement in the camera and thus a blurry shot. If you set the timer, you just hold your breath and hold the camera in position and let the timer run out, and take the shot with the least movement possible considering that you are a human being and your body has a slight movement to it.

And of course with a digital camera, you can immediately know if the shot is good. Sometimes the focus is not perfect, but certainly better than the alternative. And sometimes, when I see a young couple posing in front of a beautiful scene, and they take a cruddy flash picture, I offer to take another shot. Actually I demand it and tell them to trust me, I'm a professional. Since all digital cameras work the same way, I turn off the flash, set the timer, find a free traffic cone or planter and have at it. They are usually impressed and thankful. I'm not looking for thanks, just doing my job making the world a beautiful place.
Enjoy.





A long exposure can make night into day - I think black and white with a contrast tweak makes this shot work even better:



And here are a few from our trip to Miami Beach:



With a flash, this shot of the Fontainebleau lobby would have lost all its allure:


Same goes for dark restaurants. If you like devil eyes and white skin, use a flash. The macro mode created an interesting effect, enhancing my wife's allure ;)


I thought this bench outside an old photo shop in Delray Beach, FL looked especially lonely, yearning for the days when we took pictures on film and didn't need technology to take pictures.



Thanks for viewing. Now go outside and get shooting.

Mike Cohen

In other words, don't try to be something you're not.

We all want to grow, and we creative professionals should always be learning new things: skills and practices. It is the practices that I will focus on in this entry.

First skills. There is an abundance on the web and in the real world of opportunities to get new skills. Training classes for Final Cut, graphic design, using the RED camera or whatever. I get the Maine Workshops catalog every year listing everything from an intro to lighting week course to a 6 month live in sabbatical where you write produce and shoot a film for the low low price of $35,000. At the local or internet level there are hundreds of tutorials, DVD products and books. Pick your software and get moving.

In other words, there is no shortage of ways to learn new skills. And we should all be honing one skill or another at a given time.

Now, practices.

Practices can mean different things depending upon your point of view. If you are a motion graphic artist, your practice is how you interact with a client to see their vision and turn out a great end product. If you are a DP, your practice is how you approach a scene, your preferences for lighting and how you achieve the desired look. Sounds like a skill, but a practice is a personal methodology for taking the skills you have perfected and doing great things with them.

For example, a resume may be packed with software titles and equipment, but the important question to ask is not "can you make a 3D animation with XYZ software," rather it is "what can you do for me?"

In business, your practice is how you meet and interact with potential customers. Your spiel.
You need to talk to potential customers in a way that makes them want to work with you. Don't immediately get in someone's face about all the wonderful things you can do for them. Learn about their business, even if you think you already know, you may be surprised. And when you do get the opportunity to bid or make a proposal, do what you do best. Don't try to be all things to all people just because you're afraid you might lose out on a bigger contract. Focus on what you know how to do.

If you are learning how to do new things, these new skills don't become part of your practice until you know how to do them. So your practice should expand over time, but focus on what you know until what you don't know becomes what you DO know!

This week I talked with several vendors of HD surgical cameras. I was interested in how they are recording HD in the OR. Up until about a year ago, you needed an XDCAM deck to record the SDI signal out of the camera control unit. But now manufacturers have realized that's not gonna happen in most places. So did Sony and Olympus come up with their own digital recording systems? Nope. At least two competing manufacturers have teamed up with the same 3rd party outfit to use the same h.264 recording. This may sound like it diminishes market advantage, but actually it levels the playing field. Since Olympus is not a software company with no expertise in digital video recording, they focused on what they know - imaging - and let someone else do the recording. Sony knows digital recording, but not necessarily proprietary software. So in reality, the two similar recording systems cancel each other out, and the consumer can focus on comparing the image quality among brands - and when you are trying to tell the difference between the cystic duct and the common bile duct, two structures the size of your fingernail on your little finger, image quality is king, recording is a bonus feature.

Focus on what you know, and your business will grow.

Thanks for reading.

Mike Cohen

The past 7 days have been spent preparing for a big convention that we participate in every year. our responsibilities include processing roughly 150 videos, mostly produced by outside entities (doctors) and about a dozen from our shop. We decided this year to finally do away with DVCAM tape and do all of the projection in about 15 half-day sessions via MPG2 files on hard drives. We created a simple html launcher and carefully organized the files by session.

The next step was to review the MPG2 files to ensure that they are appropriately representing the original quality. The original formats range from video DVD to DIVX, h.264, WMV and MPEG-1, with a handful of DV tapes, AVI or DV files. The lowest common denominator of MPEG-2 can be a good or a bad thing, depending upon the relative quality of the original. Thus, about 50% of videos did not re-compress adequately, so we decided to show the originals. Other MPEG-2 files looked ok, but needed audio or color correction, or correction of other assorted problems. The end result of this review process was a color coded excel file listing things to fix, things to know and things that are out of our control.

here's the detail:


In any project, organization is the key.

Our job is to help doctors look the best they can look before an audience of their peers. Thus the extra time spent, while invisible to the audience, makes a difference, however subtle.

With that task done, we sent a new hard drive to the venue, for cloning to about 15 computers throughout the vast convention center.

By the time Friday arrived, despite the mental exhaustion and repeated viewings of such classics as "Single Incision Colon Surgery" and "Abdominoplasty" the final step was to get the house ready for my week long absence. This is primarily cleaning the kitchen, doing some laundry, filling the litter boxes and replenishing the fridge. I despise doing the dishes, but, it can be fun if you make it into a fun activity.

While the cleaning was going on, I was rendering the final edit of the last video for one of the sessions. I had to visit the office to get some raw footage and transfer it all to my laptop (a 160 gig laptop drive holds a lot, but gets incredibly full. I had to delete my WMV of Empire Strikes Back made from the original letterbox pre-special edition VHS tape to make room - now that's self-sacrifice).

Editing in the office on a Saturday is not so bad - it was mostly rendering, which gave me time to tally up the most visited places for my job. Here are the winners by number of visits:

New York: 33
Chicago: 18
Boston: 15
Florida: 14
LA: 6
Dallas: 5
San Fran: 4

Final step of the night is to pack my bags. The rolling garment bag saves my back - usually. On this occasion I have my laptop in a backback, along with 3 terabytes of video files, drive bay, power supplies, cables, a small library book (Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell - probably won't have time to read it) and numerous DVD-R burns of various projects and demo's.



Once in bed, it seemed to be mere minutes until the pesky alarm sounded, and off I went.
While checking in for my flight, the pesky Blackberry tells me that while the video from last night is great, can I please update some other slides. Sure, no problem, I'll just do it on the plane. But first I have to work on an article for an upcoming issue of the COW Magazine. With most of that written, I opened Premiere, made the edits and set to rendering again.

Editing on a plane is not great unless you are a t-rex with tiny arms. I look for an aisle seat with a skinny person or child in the middle, giving me those few extra centimeters of elbow room.



Only problem is the flight to Chicago is relatively short, so I had to shut down while the tractor beam pulled us into docking bay 1138.

Upon arrival in Chicago Sunday AM, we headed to the convention center to setup our display. A medical convention is like NAB for doctors. The technical exhibits display the latest medical devices and in our case, our collection of surgical DVD's and medical text books. This year our booth resembles a mini Borders book and DVD store, complete with credit card reader and video kiosk. Sorry, no latte bar.

Once the shipping vendor located our crates, we setup the video racks, back-drop and book displays. I split my time between the booth and the video review stations, updating video files with last minute changes, including the previously described last minute edit once rendered.



By this time it is 5pm, and I have yet to find 5 minutes to eat anything. A non-quick taxi ride to the Hyatt (not the Riot House, but I have stayed there), hit the business center for $21 worth of copies (18 pieces of paper - I need to open a business center!), finally check into the room, drop the bags, splash water in my face (missed the $21 worth of papers with the splash of water - whew) and back downstairs to join my colleague for a kickoff meeting with some docs for a new endeavour. The kickoff meeting is an essential step in the process of any project. Check out my appearance in the Creative COW Podcast for more on this. http://podcasts.creativecow.net/creative-cow-podcast/episode-084-july-13-20...

Finally it is 7pm and food might be in the near future. Luckily there was some Halloween candy in the biz center. For only $5 I enjoyed a roll of Smarties! Manna!

Once we got to the restaurant, the bar provided my first sustenance - beer - better than nothing but not good on an empty stomach. Finally we are seated and hot bread, stuffed mushrooms, calimari - life was going to be ok. The chianti helped my stiff neck and is sure to help me sleep off a busy day that would make Richard Scarry cringe.

Thanks for traveling with me.

Mike Cohen

Today I spent about 8 hours reviewing videos for an upcoming event. I had previously viewed all of the videos off a hard drive to be used for projection, and made a list of originals to check. If the original looks better than the MPEG2, then I copy the original to my hard drive for future re-compression. In many cases, the original is in fact MPEG2, and with adding logos and trimming heads and tails, a recompression pass is sometimes a bad thing - especially if the original was not up to MPEG-2 quality to begin with.

Thus, during the 30 or so blocks of 5-7 minutes spent copying video from DVD to hard drive, I browsed the COW. I mean, what else could I possibly do in such short chunks of time?

But I receive updates from the Business and Marketing Forum and the Film History and Appreciation Forum on my Blackberry, so I am all caught up in those forums. Thus, I took a tour of the forums that I visit less frequently or not at all.

We use exclusively Premiere, so I never really visit the FCP forum, or forums for FCP related kit such as AJA. However whether I use the gear or not, it can be educational. For example, a newer forum is for Core Melt plugins. http://forums.creativecow.net/coremelt I have never heard of this software, so I thought I'd check it out. Turns out, this is a pretty cool suite of transitions. It's like Magic Bullet for transitions. And it is CS4 compatible, so it just goes to show that you can't judge a forum by its title. Check out these demo videos: http://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/271/5

I then browsed the Audio Professionals forum, the Lighting forum and discovered a Motion Graphics forum that I did not even know about. http://forums.creativecow.net/broadcastdesign

So you see, even someone who spends much of their free time on this website can learn new things and discover new places to go.

I also make a habit of reading new blog posts as they appear on the COW. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that fellow blogger Ken Harper http://blogs.creativecow.net/blog/977/one-head-many-hats in fact worked at Cine-Med years before I did.

And did you know that Creative COW now has free video hosting, and some really entertaining reels, demo videos and trailers. It's great to see not only seasoned pros but also folks just getting into the business posting their work for all to see.

Well, looks like that strange HD file (1844x1073) has finished copying - now to figure out what to do with it.

Thanks for reading.

Mike Cohen

'Twas a week before deadline,
And all through the office,
Desk jockeys are working,
To add that last bit of polish.

Whiteboards are filled to the edges with tasks,
And hard drives are spinning fast.
From office to office computers are buzzing,
The i7 and quad core renders are mind numbing.

With K-cups dripping and snack products stocked,
The workflow is humming and may never stop.
But as time ticks past like blank discs from a spindle,
Day after day the punch list will dwindle.

A hundred and fifty mpeg2 files await,
On a hard drive destined for arrivals late.
All will be sent like the end of a race,
And projected on screens around McCormick Place.

Some videos arrived on the formats requested,
But a few were in flavors not even suggested.
Come DIVX, and Quicktime and h-264,
1080, 720 and soon many more.

But in the end the flavor matters not,
For a video is a video and it's all about plot.

The pallet it fills with boxes and crates,
New products are shipping and books that we make,
Are due from the printer in time for the truck,
To take our dear cargo on the road with some luck,
When arrived in Chicago our goods will be waiting,
For 5 days of sales, promotion and celebrating.

Yes, it is time for our annual surgical convention. Most important of all is great teamwork that makes everything come together like poetry.

Thanks for rhyming.

Mike Cohen