BREAKING IN INTERVIEW: BOB KUSHELL

Career interview with Bob Kushell, co-executive producer Samantha Who, The Simpsons

Here’s an Interview with Bob Kushell, one of the early writer’s and executive producers  on The Simpsons, back in the early 90s. I didn’t know who this guy was until I read the interview, but that’s okay. His story, from first discovering his passion to breaking in, is very similar to other stories.  However, the twist is that he applied many things I’ve considered tactics and strategies that helped him BREAK IN, w00t!

I’m a big war buff, and I have a voracious appetite to read anything related to war. Basically, having a war mentality can be applied to anything in life: business, love, and art. I read Sun Tzu in middle school, and never really thought about it or applied it until now.

In Sun Tzu’s The Art of War  there are 13 chapters as follows:

Bob Kushell was able to apply a couple of these tactics in order to break in.

Laying Plans
Kushell went to college and studied theater, but then on the side, he also wrote many spec scripts. He kept focused on his mission and was never detracted.  Every job he took, it was a strategic step closer towards his goal. For example, he got a job at AMBLIN ENT. and then wrote two spec script. With his connections at Amblin, he was able to get an A-class agent. And that agent got him a job on a prominent show. Yet, at this point he still hasn’t “Broken In” because he has not reached his goal of writing, BUT he was getting close.

The Use of Spies
Actually, Kushell was his own spy because stole scripts of the Simpsons pilot before it came out so that he could write spec scripts on it, which landed him a job on the Simpsons.

Energy
Kushell focused all of his energy on one weapon that he knew he could hone and build: comedy. He studied it from an early childhood, and kept doing it until he finally reached his dream job of working on the Simpsons, and he did it.
This is just a taste of things to come, but there will be more interviews and more Film Zu breakdowns like these for you soon, so stay tuned.

 

Human Behavior Study #1: Saluting Other Humans

human box saluteRecently, I’ve noticed a peculiar facet of human behavior: The amount of regard/respect one human has to another is directly proportional to their acknowledgment of one another. It’s something I’ve been noticing for a while now. Although it’s not scientifically proven, it seems like common sense that how much someone likes you is expressed in their Hello or Goodbye or how much they dislike you but I still think it’s of some meaningful use to many out there that aren’t as socially savvy.

There are several different degrees of “Hellos” that I have noticed in my time on Earth. For those of you who don’t know, these acknowledgments are for people you’ve already know or have met. There are separated by vocal and or physical signals, plus distance (note: I will refer to any human as a She, because it could easily be written as S/he because it applies to both sexes) :

DISTANCE: LONG ( 50ft +)

She likes you. Bonus if she waves you to come over to talk, or if she comes over to you.

She thinks your cool, but that’s it.

You’re not highly regarded nor disregarded. You’re just there to say hi to.

DISTANCE: MEDIUM (20 ft + or-)

You’re not highly regarded nor disregarded. You’re just there to say hi to.

She quickly raises her open hand to show it to you and says “Hey,” and quickly withdraws her hand. She’s just being nice.

She’s trying really hard to be nice to you and acknowledge your presence as quickly as humanly possible.

DISTANCE: SHORT (5-10ft)

She sneaks up on you to say hi. She likes you.

There are many different types of hugs, as defined by the FREE HUGS GUY, but mainly, the tighter and longer and closer they hug you, the more they like you.

She hi-fives you. You’re too cool.

You’re fine to interact with. You’re non threatening. Not too exciting either.

She’s too cool to say Hi to you. She thinks you’re… okay.

She barely moves her eyes and eyebrows up to acknowledge you. She doesn’t like you very much.

She barely glances at you and then immediately looks away. She thinks you’re ugly/ annoying/ anti-social/ smelly/or ugly. PLUS she doesn’t like you.

Video Contest Tips Part 1

Recently, I’ve been entering several online video contests to try and actually put my filmmaking skills to some use. Yes, making videos for friends and families to watch is nice, but making films for money is nicer! Plus, I actually like to compete, it makes things more fun and interesting. And I liking winning, but I would like to think that I won because of the merits of my skills, and not because my competitor’s entries were lame.

So I’ve thought of the following video contest tips in the hopes that a fellow competitor will read them and apply them so as to beef up my competition. Why oh why would you do that? Because online video contests is a new form of marketing and wealth destribution, but the “THE MAN” wants their monies worth, and if us “Little People” want the monies, we gatta deliver the goods. Not just deliver them, but deliver them in a nice package for everyone’s viewing pleasure. If the quality of video entries don’t increase, then “THE MAN” will just stop this new system of wealth distribution. Let me break it down for you:

Online Video Contests + Lame Entries = :( Sad Corporate Honchos (”We paid $25,000 for that!? Screw this, no more contests.”)

Online Video Contests + Great Entries = :) Happy Corporate Honchos (”Yay! Let’s Increase the prize for next year’s competition!”)

We’re doing good for now because the Honchos are actually increasing the amount of reward prizes , so that last year’s prizes totaled close to a million dollars.

Following tips are also for me to remember them, less I break these “Tips/Rules” for making videos for future video contests. I’ve actually broken a couple, which is the reason why they’ve come about. Enjoy.

TIP #1 Don’t Shoot/Edit/Turn In Your Entry the Same Day It’s DUE

I’ve actually broken this Rule with a recent Youtube contest for Swiffer. Because I’m also going to school, I don’t have a lot of time alloted for contests, but I really wanted to enter this contest, so 5 or 6 hours before it was due, my friend and I shot it, and I edited it - 5 hours later it was done, but it was too late, I had passed the deadline mark. I’m pretty fast at shooting and editing, and I would have made the deadline if it wasn’t for Youtube’s slow uploading process. Which leads into my next tip:

TIP #2 Know Thy Upload Size/Time

If you are going to upload it on the same day it’s due, Don’t estimate your final export size, KNOW it, live it, smell it before hand. Also, look up your uploading size, kilobytes per second and what not, so that you can also estimate how long it will take to upload. With my Swiffer entry, I overestimated my export size, and I underestimated how long it was going to take for it to upload to Youtube.

TIP #3 READ THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS THOUROUGHLY, AND THEN AGAIN, AND AGAIN

A lot of the lame entries just don’t read them - at all - thus, their lameness. Read the terms and conditions because it basically tells you how to win. Right there! In big bold letters, Terms and Conditions = HOW TO WIN, STUPID! Trust me, if you don’t, then you’ll probably end up doing something that the TnC tells you in plain English not to do.

For example, for a recent contest on Youtube, the TnC said “Do not infringe on other people’s copy righted material!” Duhhh! So what this lay-mo did was put a Justin Timberlake song on his entry. You can’t use other’s stuff to make money for you, that’s illegal. Music? Use royalty-free music. Soda Cans? House hold products? Foods? Make up your own brands or something, but for God’s sake, don’t have them directly in the shot. I had a problem where for one of my contest entries I had a Disney character in one shot, so what I did was I blurred/pixelated it out COPS-style. And it looked funnier because of it!

TIP # 4 DO NOT USE GREEN/BLUE SCREEN

Don’t….It’s painful to watch. Only do it if you are a trained , or if you’ve read lots of books on how to do it right PLUS lots of practice after you’ve read the books PLUS a good program to key out the colors.

There’s this one Lay-mo that enters a lot of contests and repeatedly uses God Aweful green screen, where the green bleeds onto his outline, and so, it looks like his edges are disappearing. It looks utterly, abysmally dreadful.

That’s all for now. I’ll have more soon.

My Bookmarking Hero!

I have found the best bookmark soul mate ever. His Del.icio.us user name is rickangelo. He has 600 bookmark items, and he’s a pretty frequent bookmarker.

His tags are pretty simple. He uses very general tags next to specific tags, i.e. filmmaking distribution or filmmaking music free or software freeware free. However, there are some tags that are undecipherable, such as the tag ts. It is probably an acronym for something, but for what, I do not know.

Just from reading his tags, I am able to deduct a lot about this person. I would say he’s male and he’s young, mid 20s to early 30s. He is a forum junkie, with the top tag belonging to forum with 125 entries. I can safely say he’s a computer and web specialist, working in I.T. His second largest tag is for programming. He’s also probably an actor on the side, with the third largest tag belonging to acting. He plays the guitar (36 tags) and he’s looking forward to becoming an entrepreneur. He also has a lot of tags for Los Angeles, and I’m going to take a wild guess and deduct he lives in LA.

Here are some resources I found through rickangelo, which I consider very useful for me and my blog.

Mindomo – a web based brainstorming, mindmapping software that’s free. Awesome.

Neulio – A website in beta that shows how-to videos on a variety of topics such as how to take a good photo, and video capture techniques.

Ehow – another how-to website.

Grouptivity – a “free social marketing tool” with several ways of boosting traffic to your site.

Screencastcentral – a tutorial library of many how-to’s on improving your computer abilities. Unfortunately, you have to pay for membership.

Filmmakers.com and filmstew.com, two websites devoted everything film related.

QuickOnlineTips - Tips….online….that are quick!

Successforyourblog - How to make a succesful blog!

mybloglog - A Yahoo service that makes you look up other blogs and bookmarks. I was actually able to find RickAngelo’s profile, and he’s actually older than I thought. Man, stalking is sooo easy with the web these days.

But the online gem that I found was an article on the the San Fernando Valley, considered the center of the adult entertainment industry, here. It’s a great article and a great read broken down into parts and interviews. An interesting fact I found out was that one of the most expensive (but one of the highest grossing) adult films ever made, Pirates, was directed by a USC alum. To be honest, I’m not surprised ;)

BOOKMARKS!

Hey Everyone,

Today, I will evaluate the top bookmarking sites on the “Internets” [sic]. The constant variable I applied to this highly scientific evaluation was to type in “breaking into Hollywood” with quotation marks to specify these exact words.

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(3) Art of Blogger Persona

Aintitcool.com is one of the early film news and review blogs of its kind, started in 1996 by a man named Harry Knowles as a hobby in Austin, Texas. After an accident, he was bed-ridden so he began searching the internet message boards for upcoming movie news, and then decided to post his research on his new website, which is named after a phrase John Travolta spoke in the movie Broken Arrow.

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