Schreiner’s Media Landscape

April 30, 2009

Seattle, Portland Join Schreiner Productions Territory

Filed under: Uncategorized — Ken Schreiner @ 1:27 pm

issaquahjay

My UK client Delcam, the world’s largest maker of machine tool software, has me out on the road again producing videos for delcamtv.com. I started shooting for them last September and the channel’s now up and running in beta. My run-and-gun style fits well with their turnaround time. I’ve shot more than twenty videos so far in places like Chicago, Grand Rapids, Philadelphia, Toronto, and now Seattle and Portland. I also snap stills for their Delcam’s international newsletter.

I flew into Portland, Oregon Tuesday morning, drove north about a half-hour to Woodland, Washington to shoot at AIMMco. They make a lot of different stuff there using Delcam software. But today, we concentrated on their plastic injection mold that makes a revolutionary pistol grip for a gun manufacturer. After shooting that one, I drove two and a half hours north to Seattle and spent the night before driving a half hour east to Issaquah Dental Labs. There, Jay here showed me how they make crowns using Delcam’s DentMILL.

issaquahmachine

It made for great video a la Discovery Channel’s “How It’s Made.” The Pacific Northwest looks and SMELLS beautifully this time of year with all the trees and leaves coming. And it expands the reach of Schreiner Productions. After getting back to SLC last night, I met with the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce this morning to discuss joining their renewable energy committee to develop legislative policy. I’m thinking about it. I’d love to help any way I can. But my business comes first. And so far, things are clicking.

April 27, 2009

Pontiac Drives Into the Sunset; Rebuilding America’s Brands One Web Video at a Time

Filed under: America, Internet, Schreiner Productions, Solar, media, television, video — Ken Schreiner @ 8:38 am

Technology is wonderful until it makes the things we’ve come to know, love and depend upon obsolete. GM’s execution of the Pontiac line of cars is not a surprise just as the death of GM itself will not be a shock when it finally happens. In fact, killing Pontiac helps keep General Motors alive perhaps long enough to find a buyer who will pull the plug on it and sell off its body parts to Science.

Brand identification is everything in marketing these days and when brands die, the advertising industry feels the pain. It makes their jobs a lot more difficult when they have to build a product’s or a company’s identity from scratch instead of riding the coattails of a long-standing reputation and successful track record.

THIS IS WHAT I DO. I help small, new companies and older ones with no or limited identities grow their business and reputation with the web ads I produce. I shot four just last week: a 52-year-old nursery, a middle-aged construction firm, a 1950s circa bowling alley and a brand new beauty salon. All are very different but have one thing in common with thousands of other American businesses:

THEY ARE NOW DOING MASS ADVERTISING AND MARKETING ON THE INTERNET. Many of them are taking the money they used to spend on TV, radio and newspapers and spending it on-line. Why? Because they are catching customers who WANT their products, not throwing a bunch of information about themselves into the wind HOPING someone will see them and get instantly interested. That’s always been the problem with broadcasting and corporate media. You don’t really know how effective your ads are. With the Internet’s tracking capabilities, you know almost instantly who’s visited your site, what they want and even the type of people they are.

There are a lot more American brand deaths to come: Northwest Airlines, Chrysler, newspapers, magazines, any one of a number of soft drinks, fast food chains, movie theaters. But they will be replaced with new ones: the leaders of this new, golden age of commerce offering us incredible new products and services to make our lives better and the planet healthier.

Electric vehicles, solar panels, teleconferencing services, affordable web video ads. The future’s here. Old, obsolete brands are dying in its shadow. Rebuilding our economy through on-line advertising will help make sure “America” isn’t one of them.

April 26, 2009

Iceland Voters Smack Down Bush-Style Boneheads After Financial Collapse

Filed under: America, Bush, Iceland, Obama, Schreiner Productions, documentary, geothermal, politics, renewable, video — Ken Schreiner @ 7:57 am

iceland-still

Having visited Iceland in 2007 and been extremely impressed, I’ve been enthralled by the developments in that country ever since. Unfortunately, the fortunes of Iceland have been even worse that America’s due to the fact that their government, like ours, was led for the past few years by a bunch of crooked, greedy, incompetent right-wing knuckleheads who destroyed their country’s economy and rapidly escorted Iceland’s high times to a new low.

Now, like America, voters in Iceland have escorted out the people responsible for the collapse- right-wing, “conservative” politicians and corporate leaders- and swept in a left-wing, socially and environmentally-friendly new order led by the world’s only admitted lesbian president. In the meantime, Iceland is continuing its parallel American experience: slowly dragging itself back from the crisis, dusting itself off and getting ready to chart themselves a new course- having found that the old one was clearly the wrong one.

While that’s happening, Iceland is still the most environmentally-responsible nation in the world, greatly due to its fantastic geothermal energy system. I produced a six-minute video on that system while I was there. Click on the pic or the link here to watch it. More than 16,000 people have so far on You Tube.

April 25, 2009

Republicans’ Shocking New Energy Policy: Conservatives Endorse Conservation

Filed under: America, Bush, Cheney, Congress, Environment, Oil, Power Grid, Solar, coal, conservation, renewable, wind — Ken Schreiner @ 8:32 am

It’s a dramatic change in the GOP’s position on renewable energy. Granted, ANY change in the GOP is dramatic. But some conservative big shots including Sen. Mitch McConnell of Koal-tucky (yup, he’s the biggest shot they’ve got left, apparently) are actually endorsing energy CONSERVATION as policy. Sure it also includes developing nuclear, oil and natural gas but the major development here is that they actually use the word CONSERVE.

“We have so much electricity at night, for example we could electrify half our cars and trucks and plug them in while we sleep without building one new power plant.”

- Sen. Lamar Alexander R-TN

In promoting conservation and efficiency first, the Republicans have FINALLY hit on the major ingredient to any effective energy policy: Strange and more than a tad ironic coming from a bunch of people who run around calling themselves conservative while advocating universal profligate and wasteful use of resources to maintain the unfathomable incomes of their obscenely wealthy campaign contributors.

And it’s a 180-degree change from the so-called “energy policy” of the Bush Regime who held a three-martini lunch between Dick Cheney and top oil and utility fat cats and called it a “plan.” Sure, nuclear power should be part of the renewable and energy independence equation. So should solar, wind, biomass and other truly safe and sustainable forms of energy production.

But conservation and efficiency in using what we already have should be our nation’s and every citizen’s first priority. It not only saves the planet. It saves every household and business money on their energy bills and gives one less of your hard-earned dollars to Saudi Arabia. Finally, some common sense talk from America’s right wing. Instead of “drill, baby, drill!” and “America’s way of life is not negotiable.”

April 24, 2009

TV a “Necessity” To Only 52%; Poll Shows Lowest Level in 36 Years

Filed under: Uncategorized — Ken Schreiner @ 8:28 am

A new Pew Research Center study shows only 52% of us think TV is “a necessity” and that those who think it is are overwhelmingly the elderly. Is it any wonder that Fox News Channel’s huge audience are all in nursing homes and the number one source of news for most Americans- TV news- is virtually unwatched by anyone under 30?

Myrtle Beach Fires: Touching Memoir in New York Times About Nature’s Self-Defense Mechanisim

Filed under: Education, Environment, Nature, Sierra Club, conservation, dualism, forest, sprawl — Ken Schreiner @ 8:16 am

“My wilderness maxim is this: I am not guaranteed safety, but I may be witness to a force far greater than myself.”

- Gustave Axelson

If you want to know why the Myrtle Beach fires are so significant in the natural education of humans, Gustave Axelson has written a beautiful essay for the New York Times Magazine about the Boundary Waters of Minnesota two years after a wildfire burned 70,000 acres.

We must learn to live sustainably- or we will die in our own effluent.

Myrtle Beach Fires: Another Sad Lesson in Unsustainable Living

Filed under: Earth, Nature, conservation, forest, sprawl, water, weather — Ken Schreiner @ 8:00 am

Sprawl is a global problem, not just in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. But the wildfires destroying homes and lives serve as a painful reminder to the entire human race. YOU CAN’T BUILD EVERYTHING YOU WANT ANYWHERE YOU WANT. I’m sure the people in South Carolina who lost their homes spent a lot of money on making their homes hurricane-proof, mold-proof, flood-proof, termite-proof and everything-else-except fireproof. Too bad you can’t make your home PEOPLE-PROOF.

The problem is Nature doesn’t choose how you will lose your home. YOU CHOOSE HOW TO LOSE YOUR HOME. In this case, the people who built in that area CHOSE TO LOSE THEIR HOMES because they were in an area that was overbuilt, the natural wetlands were drained, the growing human population took more and more water so when the “drought” arrived- actually it’s a normal dry period made worse by too many humans- the ground and trees were dry and ripe to burn. If the suspicions of police are confirmed, it was also a human who STARTED THE FIRE.

So Nature’s role in this “natural disaster”, as the mayor of North Myrtle Beach mistakenly calls it, is not only minimal but the true culprits- the people who built all the stuff there and the government officials who let them- are not blaming themselves. Without accepting total responsibility for this nightmare and planning to prevent it in the future, they are doomed to repeat it, as are the people of Reno, Nevada, San Diego and every other city that sprawls relentlessly and foolishly into places they should not go- and pays a heavy price for their ignorance.

April 23, 2009

Myrtle Beach Fires: Nature Again Incorrectly Blamed for Human Disaster

Filed under: America, Earth, Nature, forest, sprawl, water — Ken Schreiner @ 4:10 pm

“This is a natural disaster.”

- North Myrtle Beach Mayor Marilyn Hatley

No, Marilyn. You’re wrong. The wildfires consuming the super-sized vacation homes of the privileged and/or under-worked are burning because Nature burns to heal itself. A home that’s built in the middle of an area that requires healing is called a “mistake.” This situation is aggravated by the mistakenly labeled “drought” in the South that is actually a water shortage caused by overconsumption by humans.

Until our so-called leaders understand that environmental “disasters” are almost always self-inflicted HUMAN calamities, how can we expect the rest of unenlightened Americans to get it either and stop the sprawling, stupid land development that is the REAL source of the problem?

Obama on Earth Day; Salt Lake City To Lead in Electric Vehicle Charging Stations

Filed under: America, Environment, Obama, Oil, Power Grid, Salt Lake, Solar, Utah, coal, conservation, nuclear, renewable — Ken Schreiner @ 9:13 am

egoabbie21

After having been named one of American’s greenest mayors, Ralph Becker of Salt Lake City has helped forge an effort to create charging stations in the city for electric vehicles like our eGo. At the same time, the state is working to incorporate more electric and natural gas vehicles into its fleet. More proof that, despite Utah’s legislature and advocates of coal, nuclear and other corporate fuels, some politicians, including our new and apparently MUCH more popular president not only believe in renewable energy but, as Obama said at an old Maytag plant now a wind turbine factory in Newton, Iowa yesterday, think America can and should lead the world in its development.

April 21, 2009

David Barstow’s Pulitzer Sheds Little Light on TV Networks’ Coverup of Iraq, Pentagon Propaganda Scandal

Filed under: America, Bush, Cheney, Iraq, journalism, media, television — Ken Schreiner @ 10:54 am

“It is not legal for the U.S. government to direct psychological operations or propaganda against the American people. But the lines between ordinary public affairs and propaganda are sometimes blurry…”

- David Barstow, New York Times reporter who won the Pulitzer Prize for his stories about the connection among retired generals, TV network news and the Bush Regime’s propaganda campaign to win public support for invading Iraq

Glenn Greenwald of Salon has put together an excellent and embarassing analysis of how the TV networks have concealed their complicity in leading America into the Iraq War through dis-, mis-, and non-information from the Pentagon and Bush Regime. By hiring retired generals as “analysts,” all the networks’ news operations became loudspeakers for the military-industrial complex’ campaign to destroy the wrong but easier target of revenge for the 9/11 attacks. What’s worse is that there are ties between the networks and the companies who would reap windfall profits from the war.

Not only do the networks continue to conceal their involvement in the scandal (despite congressional and other ongoing investigations), they’ve even failed to report the Pulitzer Prize awarded to the New York Times reporter who broke the story. David Barstow’s articles would’ve easily made the lead slot on the scandal-hungry nightly network newscasts- if the networks themselves had not been the subject of the story. But they all have refused to run the story or merely acknowledge that there IS a scandal involving Iraq, propaganda, the Pentagon, the Bush Regime, as well as a coverup by the most popular sources for news in America.

That’s a disgrace. But then again, so is network news.

Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress