RRCSA Video

I mentioned a few blog posts ago that I was involved in a marketing campaign with the Red River College Students' Association, to try and get better nominee and voter turnout for this year's election. I posted a radio spot that I wrote and produced (around a week ago), which is now in rotation on KICK FM. I also mentioned that I was producing a video for the campaign, and that I would post it here.

Now, I'm not very proud of this video, mainly because I find it to be boring and drab (even though those things might be the same thing, it's worth mentioning twice).

I'm glad I did the video, because it was good writing and on-air experience, even though I have no delusions about being an on-air personality. My friend Doug from Tripwire Media Group thinks that I hate the video because I don't like seeing myself on video. He's right, but I also can't stand the sound of my own voice (at least when I can't put it in Pro Tools and work it with my magic). Also, it was the first time I’ve used Final Cut Pro, which is much more different from Adobe Premiere Pro than I was lead on to believe.

Thanks to Tripwire for donating their time to shoot the video, which took all of 20 minutes to capture. Thanks to their intern from ABC who was much nicer to work with than Doug or Dave (JK, I love you two so very much).

Here's the video, in all of it's not-so-glorious state. Please let me know what you think, even if you hate it (especially if you hate it):

RRCSA Nominations Video from Chris Gaudry on Vimeo.

Have you Googled yourself lately?

From time to time, I like to Google myself just to see what kind of cyber-trail I have created.

The good news is, for me at least, that I can't find myself on Facebook. I am one of the thousands of people that have fake names on Facebook. Why? For the same reason that I wouldn't buy a house in Linden Woods with a back yard that practically encroaches on three other backyards: I really enjoy my sense of privacy.

There is a bit more to it. When I joined Facebook, it was probably within the first 3 weeks that it came about. I really had no idea what I was getting myself into when I joined. As it turned out, after a while, Facebook turned in to this crazy information sharing site, one where people that you barely know can now get intimate information about you.

There is a bit of a misconception, I think, about the amount of control you actually have over your Facebook existence. Consider this: You go out one night and you have a tremendously good time. Throughout the evening, somebody has unintentionally taken a picture of you telling a joke. You know, the joke where the punch line involves you making some sort of questionable face. In context, the face is harmless, it's actually a very funny joke, but taken out of context (someone creeping on your Facebook page) it might seem like you're misbehaving.

After the party, said camera person went home and decided to post all of their photos to a new Facebook group they just created, called "Tammy's Crazy Sexy Going Away Party". And there you are, in picture number two, in the background, doing the punch line to that hilarious joke, with a beverage in your hand. How stoopid did you look? You didn't do anything wrong. You were in an adult environment, enjoying adult conversation and you told a joke to a selective group of people... I use the word selective very loosely of course, because in this case, selective isn't what you thought it was.

So the picture is up on Facebook, for everyone to see. And I am convinced that their are some people that spend WAY too much time on Facebook. People that probably look at every picture that has ever been posted, anywhere on Facebook. CREEPY!

Even if you ask the person to take the photo down, or you complain to Facebook, the picture has already been out in "interland" for a while. Long enough, possibly, for someone to take the photo out of context and, ultimately, it changes your relationship, whether you know it or not, with that person forever.

So the moral of the rant is that you should never go out and have fun, or let yourself get a little crazy from time to time. Or no, wait, the moral is that if anybody takes pictures at a party, they should either be paying tremendous amounts for your photos, or they should be beaten to within an inch of their lives. Ok, so these solutions are terrible.

How is it safe to have a profile on Facebook if you can't LITERALLY control every piece of media that goes out there?

It sucks too, cause Facebook is a fun way to stay in touch with people. And it's fun to look at party pictures too. But I can certainly think of a few ways that it would be easy for me to get photos that could tarnish people's reputations. So how hard would it be for a stranger to get that info? We've all seen the police use Facebook photos to link criminals together; and there they are, on the six o'clock news.

Twitter isn't really like that. There's no medium, really, for people to post stoopid drunk pictures of you. I mean, if somebody is trying to sabotage your reputation, the internet would be a pretty easy place to start. But Twitter wouldn't be the first place to look.

There's just as many ways to get caught being stoopid on Twitter, but most of them involve defamation.The police can't really use Twitter to make links between actual friends, that may be involved in some criminal activity.

Twitter also seems, at least so far, to be a better source for getting news. And I find that there's less shameless self promotion on Twitter. With Facebook, every banal cause, or company has a Facebook page. So much so, that like billboards and TV commercials, you could make the argument that they are nearly ineffective. But that is certainly up for debate.

My Twitter account comes up third when I Google my name, Manitoba Music directory is first, and LinkedIn profile is second. I really should up date that profile, along with a half dozen other profiles from various sites that I've joined over the years.

Why is Conan coming out on top?

Thought I'd weigh in on the whole late night saga that's been unfolding over the past couple months.

I think Conan O'Brien will definitely come out on top through this whole ordeal. Why? Because he grew a beard during the writer's strike.

As stupid as that sounds, I'm actually serious. The beard he grew was a symbol of protest for the writers. Conan has always been "for the people".

Conan bows to talented guests that he introduces in his monologue. A gesture that puts these guests on a pedestal, sort of above him.

His trademark self deprecating humor is another good example of the point I'm trying to make.

Conan is a nice guy. And as we all know, nice guys finish last. Last or not, he's still got his pride and about 35 million bucks.

Nobody is going to remember Leno as a nice guy. Maybe a rich, greedy, self serving guy, but not a nice guy.

My hat goes off to Conan. I'm excited to see where he lands... hoping it's not on Fox :-(

Cheers to the nice guys!

The Election Campaign

It was a fluke, actually...



About a month ago I attended a meeting, organized by Jeff Long of the RRCSA, which was essentially a brainstorming/motivational session on how we can improve nominee and voter turnout for this year's election.



I didn't actually know about the meeting, because the email was sent to class reps last semester and I wasn't on the email list at the time. Ashton (from my class) told me about it, and she and I (and Jason Booth from 2nd year) attended the meeting. I figured what the heck; there was free pizza too.



Jeff and Carla from the SA were trying to leverage (word of the week) the resources of the students from various Creative Arts departments, in order to help improve the nominee and voter turn-out for this year's election. Part of that initiative meant producing a video, a radio spot (and getting it played), some posters, some literature etc, to increase awareness about the jobs and the election.



When I heard that two elected and paid positions went uncontested in last year's election, it sort of bothered me. I mean, the jobs pay over $16/hour, you have a flexible schedule where you're required to work 20 hours a week (for the VP posts) and 30 hours a week (for the pres. post), and the jobs are located right at the college. It occurred to me that more people ought to run.



Here's where things get dicey... The vast majority of the students at the Princess campus are enrolled in full time programs that require roughly 27 hours of class time, per week. The guidelines for the VP and Pres jobs require that the hours are served from Monday to Friday, 8:30am to 4:30pm, which provides a window of exactly 40 hours. So technically, it's impossible for a full time student to work those jobs; seven hours impossible to be exact.



I propose that the work window be extended. If it was from 8am to 6pm, that would provide an additional 10 hours per week for the time to be served. That solves the problem of the vice president positions, but not the 30 hour requirement for the President's job.



I think CreComm students could really benefit from working a job with the SA, but I doubt very many would do an extra year of the program just to be able take the job.



Poor nominee turn-out might not be a result of students not knowing about it (so not a messaging issue), but that so few people can actually fulfill the requirements under the current guidelines.



I decided to help with the campaign anyway, because it's a noble cause, and I thought it would be good experience for me to help with the media production side of it. So, I produced a radio spot, which I will post to my blog right after I post this message, and I plan to post the video next week.

Adam, the news director from KICK, and I have been talking about doing a live on-air debate, but that would obviously require more than one person to run...

RRCSA Elections Campaign

In addition to being crazy busy with school work this past two weeks, I've also been working on a marketing initiative with the RRCSA.



The SA needed some people to help produce some media that will get the message out about the upcoming nomination period for the RRC elections in April. The need to inform students about how to nominate, or run for an elected post is very big, considering two of the VP positions were awarded uncontested last year.



The first part that I was able to help with was writing and producing a radio spot. I have to say, Rick @ KICK was a huge part of making this aspect of the initiative work. I didn't have to sell him on the idea of running the spot, he was willing to help out with the cause, I didn't even have to take out my groveling hat.

The biggest challenge in producing this spot was getting an angle on "the sell", while ensuring that there is a ton of information, all packed into a 30 second spot. I ended up cutting out an entire phrase in order to get it to 30 seconds. I was hoping to put a greater emphasis on the idea that two paid, part times jobs were awarded to the only two people that applied for them.



So here's the spot that is running in heavy rotation on KICK:





Next week I will post the video that I produced for the campaign (but I have to finish editing it first).

Geeves, take me to the theatre

Friday night, I attended In the Chamber, a theatre production at the Rachel Browne Theatre. The event was put on by Theatre Projects Manitoba.

The show essentially consisted of two monologues that were roughly an hour each. The two monologues complimented each other well; it's annoying when the opening act is better than the headliner, or vice versa. The underlying theme for the evening (if there was one), was that both characters had “gone off the deep end” because of their careers.

Both plays had a very political undertone. The first play dealt with issues related to the hog industry in Manitoba, and the second one was related to the inquiry into twelve deaths at the Winnipeg Health Sciences Centre in 1994, (and the report written by Associate Chief Judge Murray Sinclair regarding the deaths of 12 babies). Although the arguments presented in both plays were not tied together, in both cases, the arguments were presented from the perspectives of individuals that were extremely involved in their respective industries, and both characters were involved in some very traumatic events.

In the first play, an account manager for a firm that provides consulting services to the hog industry completely snaps. He becomes horrified by the cruel farming practices being used in the Manitoba (Canadian) hog farming industry, and bears witness to the aftermath of a hog farm fire in Alberta that killed thousands of hogs.

There were some pretty funny parts throughout the play, which essentially consisted of a video taped rant intended for Warren Buffett. My favorite part was when he snacked on some “small town Chinese food” during his rant; which typically has a lot of “shifty pork” in it. Some subtle irony never hurts.

The main argument was made pretty bluntly; hog farming practices in Manitoba are unethical and hogs suffer their entire lives. A few moths ago I watched a documentary “expose” (I don't know how to do the accent on the “e”), where a journalist went undercover to expose the farming practices at a specific hog farm in South Carolina. I couldn't actually get through the entire documentary, it was a little too disturbing.

After seeing the documentary, I took a break from eating pork for a while, but eventually my love of bacon got the better of me. I do, however, try to eat cruelty free ham whenever possible. Cruelty free basically means that hog farms must provide above-par living conditions for the hogs, specifically, “they must have farrowing systems, which are areas which have bedding and are big enough to allow sows to turn around, with large space allowances.” The meat is more expensive, but it's not watered down like ham at most popular supermarkets (but that likely has more to do with the vendor than the product). It tastes the same as non-cruelty free ham though. (Is it just me, or is the term cruelty free, when related to farming, a bit of an oxymoron? I mean, the pigs die right...)

This is a really sensitive subject, and I don't want to sound like I'm preaching. I'm the last person that should be judging people about their eating habits. I eat cruelty free meat wherever possible because it tastes good, and I guess, in a way, it's helping me dilute the guilt. A lot of people seem to be “going organic”, and choosing alternative eating practices. I've heard good arguments that support eating organic, and good arguments that oppose eating organic. I think I'll likely address those arguments in a blog, at some point....

Anyway, back to the first play... I'm going to say the play is good, because it's provocative. The politics of farming affects everyone, because everyone has to eat.

The character in the second play worked for the Health Sciences Centre, in the pediatric surgery unit, during the events of 1994 (I'm not 100% sure on the details about what his specific job was). He goes off the deep end because of the events that took place, and he can not come to terms with the recommendations put forth by Judge Sinclair, or the suffering that one mother (whose baby died) had to endure.

A few times throughout the play, the character would recount very specific and complicated details (hospital policies, surgical procedures etc...), making it difficult to follow. I can understand why someone, who didn't go into the play ready to use all of their brain's echtoplasm, might get bored with it. Fortunately, I was a little familiar with the main issue, and because I know a number of people who work in the health care industry, I was able to enjoy the subject matter. I'll admit that I didn't follow every point the character tried to make, but maybe that wasn't the point. Maybe the point of including all of those esoteric details was simply to show, metaphorically, that the procedures that took place were too complicated for an proper inquest to have taken place.

As I mentioned, the character in the play opposes the conclusions that were made by Justice Sinclair, and is deeply troubled by the experiences the mother had to endure. He completely loses faith in the health care system, so much so, that he quits his job and vows never to set foot in a hospital again. He is so bound by his hatred for the system, that he opts not to have a suspicious growth on his neck checked out.

His break down leads to the downfall of his relationship with his wife, and he comes to terms with the fact that he'll never go back to a hospital again, and will probably die from the cancer he is convinced he has.

I'm glad I saw this play. It presented an argument about a subject that I knew a little about, but was able to explore much deeper, and hear an argument from a unique perspective. And the character in the play had gone just crazy enough to make it comical.

Similar to the first play, the subject matter was heavy. Like farming, health care is something that affects everyone. And everyone knows somebody who has been affected by it.

If you happen to know some people that work in the system, you've probably heard your fair share of horror stories. It's really too bad that we don't hear enough about the success stories though. The public is exposed far more to the shitty things that happen in hospitals, which causes them to focus on those events, taking their focus away from the amazing work that health care practitioners do.

I'm not sure that I'd recommend the show, because it's art, and is sooooo subjective. But I'm very glad I went.

My experience with climbing

When I was around 8 years old, I had a climbing accident. I was playing around with my brother and some kids from the block and decided to climb a tree that was near the back lane of our place. I don't remember specific details about why I was climbing the tree (maybe I've blocked it out because of the trauma), but I do remember some very specific events that took place that day.

Most vividly, I remember falling out of the tree and landing on a board with a nail in it, butt first. I remember crying like a little pansy, and admit that, to this day, I would probably react in the same way. I remember that when I stood up and began whaling, the board was essentially an extension of my butt.

My brother freaked out and took me inside to see my mom. She did what anybody would do, she ripped the board out of my butt. After I cried some more (and likely tried explaining to mom how the board got in my butt), she took me to get a tetanus shot.

My butt eventually healed, but I'm not sure my ego has.

The reason I decided to rehash this memory on my blog is because I'm a sucker for long winded, silly introductions, and random segues.

Speaking of climbing, I was reading a little today about the publicity stunt that Greenpeace pulled off last month in Ottawa. Twenty protesters scaled the Parliament building in Ottawa in order to persuade the federal government to take greater action in combating climate change.

The whole thing was essentially a publicity stunt, and succeeded in getting a ton of press attention. It's tough to say whether or not the stunt was effective, in so far as getting the government of Canada to take greater action against climate change. My opinion is that it likely raised some awareness about Greepeace's agenda, and even more awareness about how easy it is to mess around with the most important building in Canadian politics.

At the end of the day, Canada still ranks as one of the worst developed countries when it comes to environmental policy. This protest is one of many that will likely occur in Canada, that is, until the government starts taking some real initiative into reforming environmental policy in Canada.