brettsing

How to make your commercial suck.

These rules are definitely NOT stuck to Mid-MO. 90% of the local commercials here suck JUST as much, they’re just usually shot using more expensive cameras.

Important Rules for Local Commercials:

10. MAKE YOUR LOGO REALLY BIG. You paid your sister’s boyfriend $50 for that snappy JPEG logo, make sure you really make your brand stand out by making sure everyone can see it!

9. DO NOT HIRE A POST-PRODUCTION TEAM. The professionals are fancy people with fancy computers, running fancy software. What does all that mean for you = $. You can do this yourself, or better yet you can have your cousin’s step-brother do it for you for free. He owes you one anyway, from that time you bailed him out of jail and didn’t tell your cousin’s parents.

8. DO NOT CREATE STORYBOARDS OR A SHOT LIST. You’ll figure it out as you go, and then your commercial will feel more “real.” Anything that is mistakenly missing or accidentally included, can be easily and realistically added or removed in post-production.

7. DO NOT HIRE ACTORS, you don’t know them, they have to be taught about your company, and will want to be paid. You can use your own staff, or even better, the head of the company. He REALLY knows what you’re all about. For extras, use friends, family members, and especially your children… they’ll be excited because they get to be on TV. If filming in your business, and it is a store, make sure to fill it up with people so it looks really busy.

6. POINT & USE VISUAL AIDS WHENEVER POSSIBLE remember that you really need to make people understand who you are and what you are trying to say. Do you think they just listen to their TVs because they are watching them? No. You need to point at or show some sort of example for every single thing you talk about. Hint 1: A great way to achieve this is to have words appear on the screen and then point at them.

5. DO NOT RENT A LOCATION. Do it outside of your business. This will save money AND give you a chance to showcase the building logos, and signs you’ve paid so much money for.

4. TALK AS QUICKLY AS YOU CAN. Ad space is expensive and you have to fit a lot in your commercial. It is not important to showcase one thing you do really well. Rather you should try to say as many things, or sell as many products and services as you can. Remember: this is your chance to come into peoples homes and tell them what you’re about.

3. DO NOT RENT A CAMERA, MICS, OR HIRE A FILM CREW. Tapes from a HandyCam can just as easily be imported into a computer as the fancy ones the professionals use, and anyone with eyes can take a picture. Making a video is just taking a bunch of pictures over and over. You’re making a commercial here, not producing a cinematic masterpiece.

2. DO NOT HIRE SOUND PEOPLE. Local commercials should sound fuzzy and be barely audible. It is part of their charm. That buzzing sound when people get really loud is normal, and even a plus for you as it will make people pay attention to their TVs.

1. ABOVE ALL, SPEND AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE. Remember, the number one goal of a commercial is to get your name out into the world as quickly as possible. Don’t worry, it doesn’t represent your brand or have the ability to change the perception of your companies image in any way.

Thank you,
Brett Patrick Casey :o)

My house is a mess!

We’re quite deep into the process of getting rid of things so we can begin packing for the move. Actually, Harold has already packed a few boxes on his own.

We’ve uprooted most of the furniture that we are selling, cleaned, and photographed it. We’re not getting a lot of bites on craigslist yet though.

In addition to the pieces we are selling, we’ve already given away three full carloads of stuff… and we’ve only gone through two rooms! (The two worst rooms) We definitely did have a closet in the office that looked more like a room from clean-house than anything else. Two entire carloads of stuff came out of it and were donated. We also went through all of the furniture and the built-ins in the dining room. (another car load)

The next step in the process of streamlining, sloughing and organizing—basically condensing, is the DVDs and CDs. Harold is making the jump and getting rid of all the CD and DVD cases. They are going the way of my DVD collection and being placed into flip-books.

At the moment the house is a huge mess, and it probably will be for a while, and while that is very difficult for me to live in, I’m having to deal with it. However, in the end, it will be worth it. We’re definitely on our way to fitting our current apartment, into our new apartment. I’m glad we were able to get started so soon.

We are actually getting rid of 10 pieces of furniture. We are adding 5 back in, but smaller and/or better suited to the use of the space we will have. We purchased four of those already, and the store is holding delivery until we move to our new place.

Exhausted & excited,
Brett Patrick Casey :o)

+ i saw

A new design blog, focusing on design culture as well design itself.

Visit at http://www.plusisaw.com

Movin’ On Up.

Wow, I haven’t blogged in a long time… and I haven’t written a real entry in almost a year.

Harold got a new job (which he starts in July or August) so we are leaving Irving Park and moving to the South Loop. We’re really excited about our new place! It is on the 17th floor of a high rise at 900 S. Clark.s

We’ve really liked living in our current apartment, but faced with the prospect of NOT having to deal with its little inconveniences I am becoming acutely aware of how annoying they actually are.

I think while I’ve lived here I’ve tried really hard not to think about them too much, and to just focus on fixing the problems I can… making the place as livable as possible.

I have done a lot to this apartment and it has served us pretty well. I installed custom curtains in the Living Room, Bedrooms, and Dining room. I installed custom wood blinds in the Master Bedroom and Kitchen. I replaced all of the drawer and door pulls in the kitchen. Replaced 4 ugly light fixtures. Replaced a broken closet-system. Replaced a broken kitchen sink faucet. Installed several shelves. Installed a permanent shower rod (there was no shower rod when we moved in) Replaced all of the (really ugly) yellow brass towel bars, tp bars, etc in the bathroom with clean brushed nickel ones. Custom paint colors and job. Installed a programmable thermostat. Fixed broken window locks. This list goes on and on…

As much as I have done to this place, there are just so many things that I absolutely will not be missing. Little things that if you owned a place you could fix, but in a rental are just beyond what is practical to replace. (though I’m guessing many would say that several of the improvements I made already are beyond what is practical)

So here we go, things I will NOT miss about this apartment (in paragraph form, thankyouverymuch) Wires running the entire length because the cable isn’t installed into the walls. Hardwood floors that are impossible to keep clean. Years and years of layered paint causing much of the trim to always look dingy. Damaged finish of the doors. Bathtub that is up too high combined with showerhead that is too low. Hooking the dishwasher up to the sink to do dishes. A dryer that vents into the house (this is only really bad during the warm months). Broken closet door in the guest bedroom. A back gate with a chain lock that is almost impossible to open. Back stairs that don’t get cleaned off when it is snowing causing us to accumulate garbage and recycling during the winter months. A kitchen with little cabinet space and only one tiny drawer, causing us to have to store many of our kitchen things in the small amount of cabinet space we have. A back porch with no light. A living room light fixture that sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. The unfinished trim in the bedrooms. The creeeeeepy dual-key-sided deadbolt locks on the guest bedroom which has no windows. Hallway and closet doors that don’t open, don’t close, don’t lock, or stick. Hallway closet not deep enough for hangers and with a rod that is very crooked. Windows that don’t open. Windows that don’t close. Windows with no screens. And then of course there are the projects I wasn’t ever able to finish… for example the curtains I never hemmed… that’s the only one of those I can think of right now.

*stuff I’ve thought of and added since this was originally posted: Front door to building has to be manually locked. Buzzer to let people in does not work. Have to park on street around corner and either a. park far away or b. move car by 9am every day (even the weekends) Sidewalks in this neighborhood do not get shoveled well. Graffiti. Living in-between two bars. Stove w/o vent hood which constantly causes fire alarm to go off. Kitchen Sink drain leaks in the right sink, bathtub drains slowly, mailbox lock is broken*

Yes I can’t wait to move… and hopefully this business that could potentially require us to not be able to get out of our lease early will be resolved and we can move downtown sooner rather than later. Keep your fingers crossed!

In the meantime, dreaming of the new time will get me through the rest of the old time.

Brett Patrick Casey :o)

New type love. Naturally it’s from HF&J.

I want tungsten. I want it now. I also want Sentinel, but that is old news. I nabbed these pictures from the website for it at HF&J. Look it up at typography.com

Brett Patrick Casey :o)

New table!

New table from Crate&Barrel Outlet (a CB2 table) for VERY cheap. Now I just need to buy new chairs, which will likely end up costing more than the table.

New Glasses!

The other day, I realized that I have had my current glasses since 2005. I high-tailed it to LensCrafters in the Jefferson City mall to check out frames, only to find out that it had closed.

I went to Columbia, found some frames, and made an appointment. Now, a few days later they are all ordered. They look like this:

Only mine don’t include a bizarre looking Photoshop outer glow.

Looking through Dolce’s creative but ridiculous to navigate website to find this picture of these radioactive spectacles, I found another pair in the same style that I like even more! And I found them for cheaper too. Maybe I’ll the frames and buy them and save up for a second pair. These are more fun, while the others are a little more businessy.

I really like the mixed materials here. I think they are really fun. I think I shall have to procure them. Perhaps I’ll get cheaper lenses in this pair though, I added all these damned options to them which made the ones I got awfully pricey.

I love new glasses time!

Brett Patrick Casey :o)

Headaches & Frustration & Sondheim

“Look what a little Catholic rebellion will lead to… Paul would kiss me and I would think: Oh! I’ve got my very own Jew!” -from Company

I’m writing this from my old MacBook Pro that Harold now uses.

On Sunday we saw “A Little Night Music” in Evanston at Light Opera Works. Like the last Light Opera Works show we saw, this one was also fantastic. If you haven’t seen “A Little Night Music” and like clever, funny, sophisticated, and musically complex shows, I think you’ll like it.

I stayed home from work Yesterday, which I rarely do. I had (and continue to have) such a terrible sinus headache, that I can barely stand the thought of moving. I spent most of the day on the couch. Yesterday morning I was still able to sleep so I slept until about 10, then woke up and watched movies all day. He’s Just Not That Into You, then The Breakup and then switched to a couple of Sondheim musicals while slicing up the new design for this website. (Hopefully you’ll like it, I do)

I upgraded to the newest version of WordPress and got about halfway done converting the Photoshop file into HTML & CSS before stopping to quickly set up the backup disks on our new Airport Extreme to function as drives for Time Machine. I couldn’t get this to work so I decided I would run the firmware update on the router. This opened up ‘Software Update’ which kept locking up around 20% into checking for software… not downloading it… just checking for it. I noticed earlier in the day that any new files I created were not coming up as searchable in Spotlight…. I decided a restart was definitely in order, maybe it would fix all of these little issues. It didn’t. I restarted and my computer got stuck on the gray apple with the spinning spokes screen. About 20 minutes later I shut it down, cleared the PRAM, and as of yet have not been able to get it boot back into OS X.

Harold ran the firmware update on the router which then had to restart itself. He didn’t realize that I was watching something on Netflix on TiVo. Having lots its connection during internet play, TiVo locked up. Upon restart, the audio track for the movie I was watching loaded about 1 second before whatever was happening on screen. It was about then that I lost it.

I decided I must leave the house. I needed to go see the pretty lights of downtown, take in a little bit of night air, and get out of the house and away from all the non-functioning electronics. While out, I stopped by the Bad Times Burger King for a diet Coke. Naturally, they gave me regular and I had to go back through the line to exchange it. We returned home and I checked one more time to make sure my computer still wouldn’t start up, took some pills as instructed by Harold, and the moment my headache went away was finally able to go to sleep around midnight.

The medicine must have worn off around 2pm, b/c that’s when I woke up. The busy noises of Irving Park (we live on a pretty major road) which usually are my comforting friends who help me sleep, are now my enemies. Its no matter though, with my two hours of sleep I’m now wide awake.

I would work on my website some more, but I can’t get to the files. How I wish I had thrown them on a network drive. I decided to put on Stephen Sondheim’s ‘Company’ on Netflix on TiVo (which Harold was able to fix) and try some more things on my computer

I’m pretty sure the hard disk on my new computer may have failed. In addition to not booting to the hard disk, my brand new 17″ MacBook Pro also will not boot to the TechTool Deluxe CD. I was finally able to get it to boot to the Mac OS X Leopard install disc. It ran through normal setup procedures (you know, it checked the CD and everything) and when it finally tried to install the operating system to the hard disk…. I got this fantastic “Install Failed’ screen. I’ve been through this before on my old PowerBook G4. Basically these are the same events that happened when its hard drive failed.

I’m pretty sure I’ve lost all of the work I did on my website yesterday, which totally sucks. I noticed that if I hold T while starting up, it will boot into transfer mode, so I thought perhaps it might be worth a shot to see if I can pull the files off of it that way, however I don’t have a FireWire 800 cable, and the new MacBook Pro does not have a FireWire 600 cable. My guess is that it doesn’tmatter though, if the Hard Disk really has failed, I’m sure it wouldn’t actually work.

On the plus side, after trying for about 10 seconds on this computer, I was able to get it to see the network drives for Time Machine Backup. Yay! The other positive here is that I haven’t had the computer for very long. The only files I don’t have on this computer are a few Musicals I downloaded since I got that comptuer and those website files. Who knows, maybe I’ll hit an odd spur of luck and actually be able to get them!

Additionally, on Friday the blower motor for my cars A/C stopped working. I found out it I didn’t have to drive to Mid-Missouri and that it could be fixed here in Chicago so I made an appointment. It promptly started working again, and has not stopped since. I figured they probably couldn’t fix it if they couldn’t see how it was broken, so hopefully if this issue decides to manifest again, it will happen sometime during the next 6,000 miles… because after than my warranty runs out and then it would be expensive to fix.

Well, that’s all for now. Wish me luck!

Brett Patrick Casey :o)

Some drawrings.

I spent this afternoon doing some “technical” style drawings for a project. I’ve several more to go, but they’re turning out kind of cool.

Brett Patrick Casey :o)

How very tempting…

Today was day 7 of Phase 1 of the South Beach diet. Today, This morning, I noticed that it was easier to tighten my belt. Still haven’t cheated, not even once. Nate and his boyfriend Kevin were visiting this weekend, yesterday was a whirlwind of fun activities and fantastic restaurants and food. Today as well.

Let me start with yesterday. To begin, transit was a nightmare: I took the blue line downtown to meet them. (The bus from my place to the blue line was HOT as hell and by the time I got off after only 6 blocks I was feeling it.) As soon as I got to the top of the stairs, I heard the train coming behind me so I ran to catch it. We get to Belmont and the operator announced that the train would only be travelling as far as Western (which for those of you who don’t live in Chicago is 6 stops before where I needed to get off the train-Washington) We boarded a shuttle bus and drove down Milwaukee and after what seemed like an hour were finally deposited at Clark/Lake. From there, I just walked to my destination… The Art Institute.

I saw Nate, Kevin and their friend Joli, (Kevin and Joli turned out to be fun as hell btw–we love them) as in Millennium Park as I was walking past. We walked over to The Art Institute. Saturday was The Art Institute’s much anticipated opening day for “The Modern Wing.” We entered the front of the building and proceeded up the stairs where we were met by a black gospel choir (with 1 white lady) who was bringin’ the museum house down! It was loud and rockin! We loved it! We was praisin’ Jesus up to the Art Institue. Before their performance was over, my friend Lucy showed up.. we ran into each other out front… literally, and rejoined the group for the rest of the performance. The new wing is gorgeous of course and features a “Floating Staircase” we didn’t see much art since it was so crowded– upon exiting we learned that yearly membership is only $80 and includes unlimited entrance for two adults and any quantity of children.

Here’s where the food starts: Nate, Kevin and Joli decided to head to Atwood Cafe to eat calamari.  (Um… Graham cracker crusted calamari) I decided I’d better not and so Lucy and I went to Argo for green tea and a walk around Daley plaza, and the rest of the theater district. We went to Nordstrom Rack for a while and met the group after they were done eating. Lucy left and the rest of us headed to Garrett where they ate the caramel cheese mix popcorn (YUM) but I was good, and refrained. After that it was time for the Sears Tower Skydeck which by the way is closed because of a remodel and construction (of the new ledge which will be two inches of glass that hang off of the 103rd floor that if you’d like, you can walk out onto over the city… can’t WAIT for that!) so we saw the city from the 99th floor.

We walked around for a while longer, and cabbed it to Wakimono in lakeview… which btw is a Sushi place I’ve been wanting to try for over a year. Again I was good and didn’t eat sushi. I had edamame, and “Artisan Tofu in sesame and Chili oil” which was pretty spicy and REALLY REALLY REALLY good. We went to a fun candy store that has EVERY type of candy you’rve ever heard of… but I didn’t even sample. THEN we flew over to Bobtail… home of my favorite iced cream in Chicago… which is a Homemade Merlot with dark chocolate chips. Yet again, I was good and I sat ice cream out.

Today we went to Bistro 110 for brunch which is a semi-fancy French Quater kind of restaurant right off of the Magnificent Mile. This time Harold, Kevin’s friend Shila–who is also really fun, and Joli’s husband joined us. We all had delicious breakfasts. Many had crepes but had a fritatta which also turned out to be very good. (Luckily, the chef was kind enough to make it without mushrooms for me.) The service was quite nice, and they had a live new orleans style Jazz band. It wasn’t terribly expensive either… two breakfasts + coffee and soda: $50 w/ tip! Following that, we visited the Hershey botique across the street. Again… no indulgences.

After that, Shila departed and we went on a floating tour of the city. We boarded on the river, went through the locks and out to the lake where we saw the city from afar (but not very far) We headed back in toward through the locks and toured the south fork of the river but not very far shouth… down to about Jackson street. The views were beautiful and aside from the fact that it was a tad cold and I opted NOT to bring a jacket, the entire 90 minute ride was fantastic. I even learned quite a few pieces of Chicago trivia. Why Streeterville is called Streeterville, for example. Unfortunately I forgot we planned to go on the boat ride today and also forgot a camera.

We said our goodbyes, and Harold and I had dinner at Roti again. All in all, a fantastic weekend… and I stayed on my diet… only 7 more days until phase 2!

Stay good kids,
Brett Patrick Casey :o)