method emerged from thēarē group

- an art collective run by rob mckay that featured yours truly as his second-in-command. and when that collective went on hiatus, i was left to figure things out with a much smaller crew. 

steve, natasha, and a third collaborator we brought in with a background in film production. and the first thing that collaborator did was sow doubt in our abilities to make this happen. i would put his reasoning for such commentary at 80% practical and 20% (fill in the blank).

the truth was my ambitions were very high and our reel and experience rather spotty.

needless to say that iteration of method didn’t work out. and soon, i found myself going back to the fundamentals. the written word. at presentation partners, i found common cause with the company co-founder, jon newsome, who had created the neuroscience of persuasion, which, as luck would have it, aligned greatly with my obsession with maslow and simon sinek.

jon’s methodology was unique in application. focus on the audience before you talk about yourself. it seems so simple, but in practice, it’s a serious challenge. and thanks to jon’s business acumen, i got a lot of bites at the proverbial apple. writing decks and presentations for startups and global enterprises.

but the packaging was always a powerpoint. nothing more, nothing less. and i saw an opportunity to introduce video to the fold.

i wrote a deck in NoP style and presented it to jon and one of his board members. what they saw was someone hungry to do more. they had been burned by video companies and content creators in the past and were more than happy to just ride out their simple strategy, but felt compelled to give me a shot.

i flew down to atlanta, where the company is based. rented an airbnb that doubled as our set. brought a camera, three point lighting, audio gear - basically a one man production crew.

what made it particularly memorable was my turo that i rented to save money. i had to haul hundreds of pounds of equipment across hartsfield airport only to learn that turo isn’t the same as a rental car. drag all that gear to the shuttle. shuttle to the parking lot. lug that stuff around an unusually hilly parking lot. find the car locked and not ready for rental.

all good. i’m here to prove myself and re-enter the world of video.

i stayed up late every night blocking and preparing for the shoots. most of them went well. one went memorably south resulting in our talent (a former network anchor) having a meltdown and taking shots at me while we were filming.

but jon? this shot was magic. shot in a loft style second floor with skylights. something about it screamed to me. reserve this for the right moment. and jon came prepared for that moment. it made all the other detours and mistakes worth it. i don’t remember the lugging of hundreds of pounds of equipment (at least until writing this). what i remember is how good that shot looked in camera and how much better it looked in the edit.

that, and meeting one of the best production partners i’ve ever worked with, jennifer mateo of mateo creates.