MAYBE DON'T GET YOUR HUSTLE ON RIGHT NOW

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Maybe don’t.

Maybe calm down and don’t carry on.

It just never stops does it. The productivity. The keeping busy. The never-ending dialogue of half-baked ideas and solutions for how we “keep our business running in these challenging times”. The relentless self-promotion. “When this is all over and things go back to normal”, we say, as we scurry like ants constantly, desperately trying to find some gap, some angle some new way of feeding a system so flawed it is killing thousands a day and still on and on it goes. And we never learn. We can’t wait to get back on that conveyor belt, back at that coalface.

So: you want to keep working ever harder for less, and in the process propping up a system that is still - despite the price of a barrel of oil plummeting to BELOW ZERO - is still trying to squeeze more juice from the dried husk of a poisoned planet? That is the normal we want to get back to? Good luck, as they say, with that one. Clearly “when this is all over” we will have learned nothing. Then again it is not that likely it will ever be over not really. Three month lockdown and then the virus will fade away and that is it? I dont think so.

And the elephant in the room?

Is how we got here. Through constantly draining the planet’s resources, and our own, for stuff we dont even need. We can all see it, our late stage capitalism, our cartoon leaders, our fake-baked democracy, all of it as tired and without credibility as an ageing movie star who has gone from craggy-but-handsome middle age to a worn-out cruel self parody - De Niro, Hoffman, Streep. Can any of us take them seriously? Any of it? Seriously?

Slow the fuck down. Why not? It’s uncomfortable? Good. So it should be. Change is uncomfortable.

Maybe for once, it is better to slow down, sit quietly with your discomfort and your dwindling savings and ask yourself, however hard you graft now, what golden future do you imagine the great fixed roulette table of modern corporate economics has in store for you? A gilded ocean cruise retirement plan? I don’t think so. More of the same until you drop from exhaustion? If you are lucky, maybe. If you call that lucky. But in truth, no, but probably not. In truth, you, I, most people, will be surplus to the requirements of big corporate concerns, and of the planet itself.

Boredom is good. Feeling like you are not doing "something valuable" within this narrative is good. Change is good, and the pain of change is good. This extra hustle we are seeing from anxious people, that is all it is. Just another variation on business as usual. Oh please, master, please let me do some work, please let me keep on hustling. That is a game in which very few people win, and many lose.

Not that it will matter in the long run. Choose to slow down and breathe the air and feel the sun on your face. Or dont. It doesnt really matter what any of us does for now, but those who have the centredness to stop and really think about where we are heading are as likely, if not more likely, to thrive than those who try and keep their hustle going.

adam rowleyApril 21, 2020Comment

Mar 21, 2023

HOW MUCH DOES A CORPORATE VIDEO COST?

YOU KNOW WHAT YOU WANT TO SAY AND HOW YOU WANT TO SAY IT, BUT WHAT IS YOUR BUDGET?

How much will my film cost? Is inevitably our first question. The unhelpful answer is of course, how long is a piece of string? You may want a simple one-day, one-man shoot with a quick one-day edit, and you can probably get that for under a grand if you’re not too fussy and it really is just a one-day edit. Or you might want an ambitious creative concept, with lots of pre-production followed by a complex week-long shoot, filming on a RED camera, and lots of complicated compositing and animated graphics. And that could be £20 - £30 000. Or more.

Mar 20, 2023

WHY YOU HIRE A PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER

So here’s the cruel irony. Even though I know I possess the kind of staggering youthful good looks that make people catch their breath and drop their falafel when they meet me in real life, on camera I look like a laboratory experiment where the mad scientist has injected the DNA of Brendan Gleason and Charles Manson into a old potato

And being self-conscious - oh my crooked smile, oh my seventy-eight chins - means I forget that my delicious eyes are like limpid emerald pools you could drown in, and I project discomfort - In short, I don’t pose well. Maybe you do. Millions of others dont. And some of them work for you.

Mar 16, 2023

TESTIMONIAL VIDEOS, WHAT ARE THEY GOOD FOR?

WHY THE BEST WAY TO SELL YOUR PEOPLE IS TO USE YOUR PEOPLE

Back in the mists of time, every corporate video had an ambitious narrative, like a storyboarded long-form commercial, a piece of expensive, styled, authored creative in its own right. These films do still get made and they are great. I make them myself, though more usually I work in short form. Is this always how you want to disseminate your information, your brand, your company? Sometimes yes. Just as sometimes you want to Ronseal it, to say it like it is. But do you want to be that blunt? Again probably not.

WHY SPEND MONEY ON A PROFESSIONAL VIDEOGRAPHER?

WHAT VALUE DOES A PROFESSIONAL VIDEOGRAPHER ACTUALLY BRING TO THE PARTY?

Sure so this is where you get sold all the corporate and advertising cliches about brand identity and adding value to your message and blah blah blah. And you may not be thinking in those terms, but rather about just demonstrating something seemingly quite simple.

CAN ONE PERSON SHOOT PHOTOGRAPHY AND VIDEOGRAPHY AT AN EVENT?

YOU NEED A PHOTOGRAPHER , AND YOU ALSO WANT A CORPORATE VIDEOGRAPHER, BUT YOUR BUDGET PAYS FOR ONLY ONE OF THEM - WHAT DO YOU DO?

The short answer is of course some people can do both. The challenge is finding someone who is genuinely good at both, which is not as easy as it sounds. There are plenty of great photographers out there who can’t really shoot video. There are some good videographers out there, though they are no nearly so easy to find, and some of them are competent photographers too.

Mar 5, 2023

WHY EITHER EVERYONE OR NO ONE NEEDS TO WORRY ABOUT AI

With the announcement that China-based NetDragon Websoft says it is the first company in the world to appoint an AI as its CEO only to see stocks soar, naturally it isn’t just struggling bloggers and graphic designers who are worried about the implication of AI

This is where I’d like to reassure you that climate change ravaging the planet and making the lives of those few who survive the catastrophic flooding, wild fires and raging hurricanes that are predicted absolute hell.

MAYBE DON'T GET YOUR HUSTLE ON RIGHT NOW

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