We’ve just finished work on our latest Silent Short. We call it The Five Dollar Coffee Maker.

Here are a couple of links to the video:

For High-quality Quicktime Video (36meg) click here.
For a slightly lesser quality, FLASH video (18meg) click here.

To the inevitable questions:

What’s it all about?
Often in this business of creative work, people will overlook quality for expense. And by that I don’t mean they’ll take lower quality for less money. Quite the contrary; people will often settle for lower quality as long as it costs more. I used to say, “yeah, they don’t really do good work, but they have a really expensive coffee maker in the lobby.”

Well, the coffee maker doesn’t shoot in HD, it doesn’t score your film, it doesn’t design your brochure, and while a San Marco in the hands of a competent barista may spit out wonderful crema, it sure isn’t going to spit out great ideas.

We’ve always had this little coffee maker around the studio. You see them a lot in vietnamese restaurants. They make really good coffee and they only cost about five bucks. But they only work if you are patient and if you expect something different than you get with the million-dollar coffee maker.

Who did that amazing drawing?
The drawing was done by the lead actress, juj. Our chief designer and associate configuration coordinator.

Do you really use coffee for paint?
All the time. And barbecue sauce, and berries, and mushrooms, and actual paints too.

Who did the music?
I (John) wrote and performed the score. It was recorded here in the studio.

Why is it in 6/8? (IS it in 6/8?)
The music is composed and played for 6/8 because the coffee drops fall into the glass in 6/8. Some have said the song is in 3/4 or a classic waltz. It’s actually a slow 6/8. It’s not just about the beat and tempo as some might think. The time signature is also about the bar phrasing of the melody. And isn’t the point that there are no rules?

This site is blowing my mind right now:

It’s a skeetch blog by Jason Das. The drawing above is of Danny Gregory doing a reading from his book Every Day Matters

Danny is a very inspiring guy and an amazing talent. You might have seen some of his work (he was the CD on the Chase Credit Card ad).

Jason Das’s sketches are simple but inspiring glimpses into the real world. I like them a lot.

Check them out, then go out and draw something.

Read it. If you do what we do, steal it – we did. But ONLY if you will live by it and plan to place it on your site, speak these words to clients, and don’t take spec work.

for prospective clients

What it says:

Dear Prospective Client

We understand your apprehension. We really do. Hiring a creative services company can at first seem to be a scary enterprise. There are many of us out there, and no one wants to make a bad decision. Both time and money are at stake. It’s totally understandable that you want to guard against every contingency of being burned.

At August Hour, we want a productive and profitable relationship as well. That means we both have to accept a certain level of risk and not expect the other to shoulder the whole thing.

You’ve never done this before. Not a problem. You’re shopping around for producers and designers in much the same way you’d buy a car: you’re hunting for the lowest price, the highest quality, the quickest delivery time, the most benefits, the strongest guarantees.

For buying a commodity, that’s a fine strategy. For contracting a professional service, you’re going about this all wrong, and you’re setting yourself up for some bad experiences. We’re telling you this in the hopes that you’ll be the one in a hundred who actually takes this to heart, avoiding the messy consequences of (what you see as) common sense.

First, expecting us to shoulder all the risk in this relationship is unrealistic. We can’t and won’t do it – like you, we have a business to run. Don’t ask us to work for free, to be paid only once you’re satisfied (a business practice known as speculative work, also known as “on spec”). Don’t ask us to work for you without an agreement, or without an advance deposit. Don’t ask us to drive halfway across the state to meet with you unless you’re prepared to pay our travel time and expenses.

Don’t ask us for a money-back guarantee based on your satisfaction, or on the ultimate financial results of our project. We have no control over what you do with the materials we provide, who you send them to or how solid your follow up skills are. We guarantee that we will do what we promise, when we promise, and how we promise. We vow to keep our word and honor our agreement. Don’t ask us to take the blame for factors outside of our control.

Someone willing to shoulder all the risks is someone desperate for work, and someone you shouldn’t hire. A person in that position will do and say anything to get your check.

But, then, how do you mitigate your own risk as a service buyer?

Well, you can’t get rid of the risk altogether. Life is risk. We assume risk every time we sign on a new client; short of requiring full payment up front, we have no ironclad guarantee that we’ll get paid in a timely manner – or at all. The world’s also chock full of crazies, most of whom think they’re sane. Right now, we have no idea who you are, what conditions you’ve been diagnosed with, or whether your meds are up to date.

Of course, you don’t know that about us, either. So where do we go from here?

Tell you what. Let’s talk. Send us whatever background material you have, a website address, your brochures, whatever, and we’ll read them. You look over our website, request our portfolio, check out our “work” section, read our manifesto (below), and ask for our rate schedule. Let’s take the time to actually know what each other is all about.

We won’t compare you to other clients if you don’t insist on seeing a portfolio piece that is exactly the kind of thing you want for yourself. You’re a unique business, and we do custom work. We won’t insult you, so don’t insult us.

We’ll take the time to really understand your business and what it’s all about. We want to know, we really do – beyond just being good business, we’re also curious about what exactly you do. We’d love to hear your story.

Our rates are our rates, our terms are our terms – they reflect the respect we have for the work we do and the clients we’ve come to improve with that work. Don’t expect us to do work for free or at a cut rate while you get over your jitters. You should be able to evaluate our skills from our body of work; if you can’t, then it’s unlikely that we’ll see eye-to-eye on project development anyway. There’s no reason to ask us to do your work on speculation.

Likewise, we promise we won’t hit you up for full payment up front. We bill in progress, payment on term 10 basis. Likewise, you can contact us at any time and find out exactly where you’re at for work we’ve done; you can also contact us at any time for an estimate before giving us the go ahead to work. We don’t mind – in fact, we want you to.

The reason? Because we’re sharing a risk here. We can mitigate it together, or deepen it apart. We can work in respect, or spend all our time trying to get the other to take on the full load. We can work with each other, or against each other.

Personally, we prefer working with you. We hope you feel the same.

Sincerely,

John Evans, Owner, and the rest of the folks at August Hour

People ask me all the time, for some reason, what I think makes a song good.

I never had an answer.

But I’ll say this, I attach the most power to songs that make you fall in love with someone over and over every time you hear them – the songs that make you love the people in your life – the songs that are little buddas in the zen that is listening.

I’m thankful that my dear friends brought this music into my life, that my friend is able to keep making it; and for everyone who lets it into their life.

Oh, the songs? go here

Lately I’ve been reading Steven Heller’s book “Paul Rand.” I did this sketch and included a quote from the book to try and explore what he was saying. The chair is one in our living room. It’ was my grandmother, and somewhere there is a picture of my great uncle Maurice holding me as a baby while he’s seated in this chair. I’ve lived with this chair for a long time.

The quote says: “I have no particular credo, except that I must insist on the social responsibility of the advertising artist. He can take the easiest way, the primrose path of popular bad taste; he can truckle (great word) to the lower instincts of the herd and for a while, at least he will secure material rewards. But, I do believe, that living and working with the canons of good taste (trust and honesty) he will receive spiritual rewards.” — Paul Rand.

I think I’m drawn to Rand because, in part, in the early days of his career he designed on a shoestring. So he improvised and made a lot of his design by hand, or by collage. I used to do this a lot when I recorded music. I didn’t (and still don’t) have a lot of high-end gear and very few instruments, so I had to make the noises in other ways. I had to make an acoustic guitar sound like a drum, or a steel guitar, or a chair sound like a train.
It occurs to me that the best design, even video design, starts in the analog form. Rand said you have to be very good at rendering in order to be a good graphic designer. The same thing applies to music. You have to be proficient at your instrument, or AN instrument, in order to make a good record.

This is starting to sound like an old rant.

The point is, in this process I’ve been doing a LOT of drawing lately. Basically every day, whether it’s journal drawing or recreating designs myself by hand. It’s helping me understand, from a visual perspective, how these great designs were conceived. My hope is that from this point I can better understand how to integrate hand-done artwork into moving picture designs. In addition to Rand’s work, I’ve also been studying the British Modern designers (designers between the wars).

I’m trying to understand better ways to compose a shot, develop an animation, or develop graphic designs.

Additionally, it’s my hope that by including hand-created elements in EVERY design we develop we’ll create a more unique signature for August Hour and our client. But more importantly, I think by integrating hand-created, analog art into our video, audio and graphic designs we are working with the canons of good taste.

D. Price, Moonlight Chronicles

One of the more inspiring writers and artists I’ve seen lately (next to JW). Dan Price is the genius behind the design of Simple Shoes.

But what really inspires me is his journey, outlook, quest I should say.

“Price continues his search for truth and beauty. He’s studying the life of clouds that cross overhead unnoticed and is documenting how one learns to listen to silence. Entire sunny days are embraced like a lover. He’s busy making new pacts with the universe in exchange for purer ways of being. He’s hunting for a prize called innocence. And he has goals, the biggest being to somehow return to the age of ten, when the world was all wonderful and he’d disappear for whole afternoons, making tunnels in alfalfa fields, reading books up in trees, or playing hermit by a stick fire down on the river. He’s also trying to draw the whole world and write little stories that move your soul.”

Look around his site, buy the books and download the License to be a Kid poster and print it off.