May 2008 RAP
May 2008 Highlights
Production 212: Call Me Ishmael
by Dave Foxx
Back in the Dark Ages, I actually attended school… complete with dorm
living, frat hazing and some really stupid stunts that probably should have
landed me in jail. Like most of my peers, I was there because my parents
told me I needed to be there, but I had no clue what I wanted to be when I
grew up, or even if I wanted to grow up. I think I might have set a record
at my University for highest number of declared majors for one student. (Can
you imagine me as a Marine Biologist? Nah… me either.) To help defray the
cost of school, I got a job at the campus radio station, one of those
stations that has a paid (not very much) staff, comprised mostly of students
and a few radio ‘veterans’ who probably would have starved in the real
broadcast industry. One of my co-workers was a student named Brian Capener,
from Ithaca, New York. Brian was a pretty cool dude in my book. He was
clearly smart, well traveled (his father had served in the USAID program in
India), and an all-around nice guy. We got to be pretty good friends as he
was an excellent producer and I had a fair voice, so we often teamed to work
together. Brian produced a multi-media project for one of his literary
classes on Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, and he asked me to narrate it for
him. It was a Masterpiece bit of work, mainly due to his efforts, that
really opened my eyes to what the story was really about.
Radio Hed: Defuse the Objection Bombs
by Jeffrey Hedquist
You and I are advertisers, communicators, crafters of compelling
messages, yet we’re consumers first. As members of the audience, we know how
difficult it is to be convinced that a product, service or brand offers a
genuine benefit. We’re all skeptics. We know that special effects,
technology and money can create a façade of believability; so most
advertising doesn’t “reach” us.
Interview: Casey Van Allen, Viper Communications, Osage
Beach, Missouri
by Jerry Vigil
We’ve read many stories in the pages of RAP about Production Directors
who make the break from radio to open their own production company or make
it full-time in the voice-over business. But we’ve yet to talk to a
production guy who made the break and became a station owner! Turn back the
pages all the way to 1992, the December issue of RAP, the RAP Interview.
Casey Van Allen (real name, Dennis Klautzer) was the Production Director at
KMOX in St. Louis at the time. Even then, he had already stepped into
station ownership as an investment, but a decade later Casey would leave the
comforts of a steady paycheck in corporate radio to actually work at his
station – the best decision he ever made, as he recalls. Join us for a
remarkable visit with Casey as he treats us to his story and gives us a
glimpse of the life of a Production Director turned station owner.
ABOUT THE PICTURE ABOVE - THE "REAL" CASEY VAN ALLEN! In the print version
of this month's RAP Interview, we featured a rather youthful looking fellow.
And you probably said, "My, he looks quite young for having accomplished so
much in his career!" That was the "before radio ownership" picture. This is
the "after radio ownership" photo! (Our apologies to Casey for the mix-up!)
Test Drive: Small Toys — MicPort Pro and Countryman E6i
Condenser Mic
by Steve Cunningham
I don’t know about you, but I carry around way too much stuff. And with
airline travel having become the ordeal it is today, the situation has
become worse, not better. The last couple of trips I made, one to San
Francisco and the other Las Vegas, nearly involved a complete strip search
at LAX airport. Needless to say, the TSA drones in the airport had lots of
questions regarding my laptop, audio interface, and microphone. Methinks
someone is trying to tell me that I need to cut back on my carry-ons. This
month’s review features a couple of items that take care of exactly that
problem. They’re small, they sound good, and I’m betting that they’ll create
a lot less intrigue at the airport.
Q It Up: The RAP Network Speaks! - Online Production
Libraries and Imaging Services
Q It Up: Online production libraries and imaging
services - how are they working out for you? If you haven’t noticed, CD
libraries are becoming a thing of the past as companies now provide hard
drives with their collections or simply direct their clients to their
websites where music and imaging tools can be searched and downloaded. Some
companies give you a choice of hard drive, online access, or both. If you’ve
made the move to hard drive storage and/or online libraries, what pros and
cons have you discovered along the way? What changes would you like to see
in the way things are done? If you haven’t moved away from CD libraries,
what’s keeping you there? Please feel free to add any other comments you
might have.
Notes Off the Napkin: A Different Air Force
by Andrew Frame
We interrupt this magazine for an essay on aviation. We will return to
your normal radio and production text in a moment. I used to have a fear of
heights. Nowadays, I understand it isn’t the altitude I’m afraid of, it’s
the death part... you know when one hundred fifty kilo’s of me traveling at
one hundred twenty knots has immediate decelerative contact with the ground.
The fact my flight instructor, Rhonda, trusts my pre-flight of the aircraft
worries me. I want maintenance records, X-rays, sonograms, sworn affidavits,
and a complete metallurgical analysis of the fuselage. Then, and only
then... I might step out to the flight line and actually begin something
resembling pre-flight.
...And Make It Real Creative - "Dude, it's just a spot!"
by Trent Rentsch
Like anyone who cares about their work, I take a certain pride in my
scripts and finished production. After throwing enough of both against the
wall over the years, some basic rules and rhythm have stuck and my own
“voice” comes through in what I do, intentionally or not. Still, I
understand that my Creative flow can use adjustment depending on the client
and/or situation. Revisions are all part of the game; this is no place for
the bullheaded and thin-skinned of the world. But not long ago, revisions
got so stupid for one client that I actually blurted the phrase I never
thought would fall out of my mouth, “Dude, it’s JUST a spot!”
Feature: They Call This "Work"?
by Steve Wein
I was digging thru my boxes of reel-to-reel airchecks and “best of”
production reels last month, looking for a commercial to use as an example
in an upcoming sales meeting when I discovered what I consider the first
“good spot” in my career, way back in 1973. And one of the remarkable things
about it was the crude way we did production back in the pre-digital,
pre-multi-track age when AM radio ruled. The copy was a typical laundry list
of prices and items, but the trick was to make it sound like it was anything
BUT a laundry list of prices and items. The movie “Ben Hur” was recently on
TV (Yes, we did have TV way back then!), so I wrote a take-off on it, called
The Adventures Of “Ben-Him.”
Monday Morning Memo: The Glass Ceiling
by Roy H. Williams
Every business that tries to rise to its full height will bump its head
on a glass ceiling they didn’t realize was there. That glass ceiling is
created by the business owner’s core beliefs about the customer.
Traditionally, 5 out of 10 customers will be in transactional shopping mode.
The other 5 will be in relational shopping mode. Shoppers in transactional
mode are looking for information, facts, details, prices. Their thoughts
revolve around the product itself, not the purchase experience.
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