Where in the world am I today?: YVR to Toronto…
Spent a good chunk of the day checking and re-checking contract details for the performers who will be involved in the corner of the upcoming Winter Olympics that I was brought in to consult on… Can’t really talk too much about who was selected and intentionally blurred the image to make the names next to impossible to read, but it was one of those days where I just stared at my computer screen, copying, pasting and assembling information that I’ve been slowly acquiring over the past few months into one master document which was requested the powers that be that hired me for the consulting gig…
I seem to be collecting information in various software packages and ended up copying and pasting things out of Scrivener files, Microsoft Excel Files and Microsoft Word Files and in the end assembled everything in one Word Document as it seemed like the file-format that was going to be most compatible on the other end of the connection…
I think I’m still figuring out the best possible work-flow for this sort of work, but in the end, even if you figure out the work-flow that works best for you there’s always the other end of the equation to consider as well… What will work for the client you’re working for? I’m not a huge fan of Microsoft per se, but they do have the de facto word processor, so when preparing a document for general consumption Word seemed like a pretty safe bet in terms of a file format. Especially if you save it in a legacy file format that’s compatible with earlier versions of the software.
This idea of ease of access to information creeps in to a lot of other aspects of the entertainment industry as well… I think part of the reason that I’ve had the degree of success that I’ve had is because the content of my show is easily accessible to a pretty broad spectrum of demographics…
I remember a story I heard from a Festival Producer a few years back. The producer had received some complaints about one of the performers that had been invited to participate in the event and instead of telling the performer that they had to change the content of their show, the following question was posed…
“Did you come here to expose the audience to your form of ‘Art’ or did you come here to make Money? If you came here for your Art then I’m happy to back you up in your artistic choices, if you came here to make money, I have a few suggestions for you…”
I’m well aware that some of my ‘artistic’ decisions are actually ‘financially driven’ but what’cha gonna do? Wife and kids need to eat, bills need to be paid.
Gee… I seemed to have strayed a fair bit from my original thought of staring at a my computer screen checking contract details, but I think that’s to be expected – especially after staring at a computer screen all day.
