Making a Viral Video: Learning Pains

Yesterday, was the first time I actually got to BE a producer. Funny. I considered myself one for a couple of months, never stopping to marvel at a stroke of luck.

And I think I had done surprisingly well, considering my abysmal lack of experience. No, not abysmal. Not sure the linguists among us would agree, but to me, abysmal implies there is something in my past that’s bad — yet existent. Not so. As relevant experiences went, I was a writer. But I swam right along. Sometimes, you just get in the groove — and do good. Call it…erm, a calling?

But talking up celebs and prospective business partners was easy. Nothing but money and contacts in the game, and unless you are the late acting head of Freddie Mac (he’d recently committed suicide, if anyone had missed that cheerful tidbit), you don’t take these kinds of things but with a grain (or even a bucket) of salt.

But, boy…creation?

What can I say, in the past couple of days, it truly came home to roost how everyone does not — and should not — go automatically along with your vision, and pushing what YOU think is the Jesus fish of it all means stepping on the toes you not only respect, but are, quite frankly, intimidated by to a certain extent.

Let me just say, it wasn’t easy. And getting a final product I believe IS heck of a lot better than the sum of everyone’s contributed parts, a project anyone can live with and hopefully send along to their online buddies… Somehow, it didn’t make me happy. Rather, it did. It, also, made me sad. And relieved. And humbled. And mildly scalded, as though through a baptismal by fire. And a gamut of things in between. Well, why not?

I am not sure if I am an assertive person. Whenever I say something, I constantly look back and ask myself, did I hurt this person? Could I have conveyed my point across in other ways?

But what can you do if the point IS going to justifiably piss off your collaborators? Bringing to fruition an artistic vision, which I can attest to myself, is an intensely personal and very heartfelt process. And here, I come in, demanding my version of perfection. There are many truths. What gives me the right to think mine is the one with an inherent right to see the light of day?

And then, it all comes back to the title. To the one man trusting me enough to get me to a point where my words have now the weight to be the rock to another’s scissors (or however that analogy goes, I was never entirely clear on the game). And with that comes the responsibility to be judicious with my feelings. These are mine, and boy, do I have to be careful inflicting them on anyone. No more an impartial observer or a cog in someone’s wheel, I am one of those winding the clockwork, and I very, very much value every part making our great, exciting, revolutionary nose-thumb at Big Ben.

I think a great take-home lesson to me was: careful, CAREFUL preparation. A lot of talking, ironing out every little tidbit beforehand — and then, through the editing process. Put that way, every project is not unlike getting married, though with - HOPEFULLY - less lawyers and governmental intrusion involved.

We each have our unique thoughts, and temperaments, and experiences, and visions, and I would be a fool to trust that people would easily, smoothly see eye to eye when something so important, yet ephemeral is being carved out of ether and an HD tape. Perhaps, it might have been easier had we all been telepathic and foregone the imperfect medium that is speech to convey where each one of us is coming from.

But we are not, and to tell you the truth, it is probably good for our peace of mind — and, certainly, for that incomparable sensation of getting on our own high horse.

Which brings me back to talking things out. And knowing that once I’m granted power to veto or add to or subtract something, the very first thing I should do is step away from myself and view it with an impartial eye. The final product is a child raised by a village, but those that are ultimately going to judge it don’t even know that little hamlet’s zip code. At least, not yet — but, perhaps, soon enough, once Libretto Dreams succeeds at its intended purpose.

I will now approach everything armed with this understanding and hope that the next project sure to follow the success of this first (even at my most introspective, turns out I am an optimist) will be a sail if not smooth, then marred far less with the learning pains of this first.

And I want to thank everyone who has come together and who had donated so generously of their time, and energy, and talent to create Lombardi Street’s very first video piece. It is now being polished and will soon be made public.

I anticipate there will be those that might not find it to their liking, but on the whole, I want to think we have done the best we can. And, frankly, that it is damn GOLDEN stuff!