2012 Cranks up for Full Throttle Media

The New Year is teed up to be a big year for Full Throttle Media. Right off the bat, we are set to shoot a three part instructional for the "In the Spread" project in S. Florida. There should be some clips ready to release by mid-January. We are still in post production on the phase one instructional segment we shot this past fall for the same project. We are just waiting to receive approved photography from the partner. Then, in March, the Full Throttle Media team leaves for Africa to shoot a film for "Sport Fishing Safari" in Kenya.

The first quarter is packed with a lot of work, travel and a few amazing adventures. But, this is what our team loves. 2012 is shaping up very nicely. Updates to follow as we get into the year.

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Our Oceans

Through my work as a film maker and interviewer, I am exposed to some damn intelligent folks who have spent much of their lives on the water and have a far better understanding of what is going on with the oceans than I. It is my believe that we should all advocate for better fisheries management and oceans protection. For full disclosure, I am an avid sport fisherman and do not believe in the indiscriminate closure of fisheries. I just think we as users of this planets resources could come up with a better, less agenda driven, management plan for our oceans that is based on sound analysis.

I am by no means a wild eyed environmental nut case who promulgates radical anti-business or development agendas. I am a capitalist, but I am, however, struck by what is going on in our oceans.

Anyway, I have watched two short, very entertaining, animated films about the ocean and whales lately that really touched me. So, I thought it necessary to share them with you for your viewing pleasure. The first is from One World One Ocean and the second is from Drew Christie. Please take a few minutes to watch these fantastic productions. And, if you have another minute, check out the amazing work of MacGillivray Freeman




Song Of the Spindle from Drew Christie on Vimeo.



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Share the experience, sell the dream...Full Throttle Media! FTM Seth Horne

Optimize Your Site With Killer Content

While I agree delivering on the mechanics of SEO is important for any online venture in today's hyper competitive market, success only begins there. The differentiator is still and will always be killer content. You have to have the goods the audience wants. Now that is very simple sounding, but it is true. Content is king!

To really carve out a niche and work it, you must know your audience and what really interests them. What is it that they want to know more about and how do they want to receive that information? If you can deliver on that and engage your audience, well, you will come out way ahead. And don't think for a second you can do this in passing. This requires long term dedication and focus. The playing field is ever changing. There is no short selling of creativity.

At Full Throttle Media, we believe films and videos focused on the subject matter that really turns the ignition of your end consumer is the key. People want to learn stuff and learn it from people they rever or watch truly accomplished practitioners of their interest perform. If you are intimately involved as a member of your own audience, you really understand the psyche therein. Ergo, you have your finger on the pulse of your customer base and thus, are in a good position to deliver something remarkable.

When it comes to search results, the better content trail you have left behind, the more likely you are to be found and shared. If you want to rank high in search, go with video. Killer content in the form of visual media will do more for you site than anything else money can buy.

And, if you really want to do something bold and creative, jump on the Full Throttle Media train.


Share the experience, sell the dream...Full Throttle Media! FTM Seth Horne

Digital Filmmaking with DSLR's

DSLR's have made a big splash in the production world in the past year. By including high definition video capabilities in SLR cameras, the photography industry has made a quantum leap forward and expanded the playing field for the motion picture production minded. A new book, "Photocine: Digital Filmmaking with DSLRs", highlights this incredible, yet simple, break through. This is the perfect guide to help photographers retool and confidently move forward into the new arena of DSLR filmmaking. Check it out on Amazon LINK

Share the experience, sell the dream...Full Throttle Media! FTM Seth Horne

The Scene as Seen by the Eye

David Hockney is really on to something revolutionary for the film industry with the use of nine cameras to film a scene. This is a super interesting approach to film making.

"A lot of people have told me," Hockney remarks, "that before they see these films they can't imagine what nine cameras could do that one can't. When they see them, they understand. It's showing a lot more; there's simply a lot more to see. It seems you can see almost more on these screens than if you were really there. Everything is in focus, so you're looking at something very complicated but with incredible clarity." 

Hockney's approach is that cameras give us the scene through one lens, whereas we see things through two eyes. And as opposed to looking in on a scene, we are in the scene when looking through our eyes. This is genius, as far as I am concerned.

There are some projects I would love to use the setup on. The time to arrange all the camers angles and exposures msut be time consuming. We will just have to see how long it takes the market to adapt this technique.

Take a moment to read the Technology Review article about David Hockney's brilliant take on capturing a scene. LINK

Share the experience, sell the dream...Full Throttle Media! FTM Seth Horne

Launching North Star Ideas

Salient wisdom from Steve Case about transformative ideas in his Forbes interview. We at Full Throttle Media are hatching several grander projects and know full well how hard they are to get off the ground. In the mean time, you need lots of support and contributions from smaller gigs to get you through launch. Here is an excerpt from the article.

As a venture capitalist, what do you tell entrepreneurs? That big, transformative ideas typically take a decade to become successful. Understanding that is important. Obviously you have to execute. You have to get on base, get early traction. Then you ask, what will it take to accelerate progress? What are the barriers that need to be removed? You need the big idea--a North Star--but then you need pragmatism, perseverance, patience. You can't skip any of those. Disappointment is sure to come.

Forbes

Share the experience, sell the dream...Full Throttle Media! FTM Seth Horne

Are you alive? Full Throttle Media is...

Are you living? Is there a dance in your life? Are you moving, growing, risking, taking the challenges of dangerous paths? In the acceptance of the danger, in the acceptance that anything can happen any moment, life comes to its best, to its fullest. So, Go Full Throttle!

Share the experience, sell the dream...Full Throttle Media! FTM Seth Horne

High Speed Media

Panasonic is bringing the juice with their new line of high speed pro SDHC memory cards. These full class 10 cards have notable features that professional producers will really like and that is speed and more file control. With 90 MBs transfer rates, these memory cards are considerably faster than the previous generation. We are talking in the neighborhood of 6 minute offload speeds for a 32 gig card. That is nice!

Beyond the speed and control, the issue of USB 3.0 vs. Apples Thunderbolt technology arises. You've got to have a computer with a USB 3.0 controller and use either Panasonic's UHS-1 USB adapter (model number BN-SDCMAB) or an SD card slot on the computer that supports UHS-1 SDHC media. But this is minor in the grand scheme of things and will quickly fade into the archives. For Mac users, not to worry, both CalDigit and LaCie last year released USB 3.0 PCI Express host adapters featuring Mac OS X drivers, thus unlocking MacBook Pros with ExpressCard slots to newer, and future, USB 3.0-based media.

Special thanks to Beth Marchant from Studio Monthly for this great info.


Share the experience, sell the dream...Full Throttle Media! FTM Seth Horne

Analyzing Media Consumption

In a world where we have a multitude of outlets for receiving and consumingm media that suits our interests, it is interesting to analyze engagement patterns. Given last weeks news firestorm surrounding the assault on Osama bin Ladens Pakistani compound, comScore, a favorite of mine, did some rather thorough research into how the news audience experienced this story. Looking at what sources the audience used to consume the emerging story proved quite useful for me. Others in the content desimination business may find this article rather interesting, also.

The growth in technology as a means of media consumption versus print and TV shows how viable and incresingly important it is to develop and distribute your media so that it meets the demands of more mobile deveices. The internet is everywhere now. You cannot carry a TV with you and magazines can get heavy, especially if you read several different publications. While my laptop is still the gold standard for how I consume media, my handset goes everywhere with me and is an ever increasing source of content consumption. Take a minute and read the article by comScore. Most of you are probably already are familiar with this trend, but the research should still be useful.

comScore article


Share the experience, sell the dream...Full Throttle Media! FTM Seth Horne

Apple to build YouTube Killer

News just released suggests Apple is at work on a YouTube killer, a platform to go head to head with Google and knock off the video sharing service they own. The article quotes Steve Rosenbaum, the CEO of Magnify.net and the author of Curation Nation, as saying Apple is hard at work on an intriquing new service. He goes on to say that the new Final Cut Pro X at $299, Apple's creation and distribution infrastructure, their online market place and their new data center all make for big steps in the direction of a web based video network.

What? When I read this my first thought was, puleeze (please)! YouTube, being the prime mover in the video sharing space and having huge momentum puts even the best would be competitor well behind the eight ball. No chance of this happening. This just does not fit with Apple's general business model. But, hey, stranger things have happened and you can never under estimate Steve Jobs.

http://www.reelseo.com/apple-building-youtube-competitor/


Share the experience, sell the dream...Full Throttle Media! FTM Seth Horne

Branded Content in the Age of the DVR

The DVR hit the market and was intended to enable viewers to skip commercials. This is really a function of fast forwarding through content that is of no interest, including commercials. From a TV networks perspective, this potentially undermines television’s longtime ad supported business model. This debate has been raging since the DVR first came on the market. Early on, it was seen as the death nail of broadcast advertising. But, with the recent release of Nielsen's report on DVR usage, things seem to have swung in the direction of the advertiser. This is what the report indicates:

Nielsen Report: link

Once a novelty, the digital video recorder is now in 38 percent of U.S. homes, and its increasing popularity represents both a blessing and a challenge for the TV and advertising industries. On the one hand, DVRs enable TV networks to hold on to viewers who use timeshifting to watch their favorite shows when it is convenient for them and who might otherwise seek alternate ways to watch programming – or not watch at all. On the other hand, DVRs allow viewers to skip content that doesn’t interest them, including commercials, potentially undermining TV’s longtime ad-supported business model. In its latest report on DVR usage, The Nielsen Company highlighted a number of key findings, including:

• Viewers do watch commercials on their DVRs. Among DVR homes, playback lifts commercial ratings by 44% among 18-49s after three days. Among all 18-49 year-old viewers DVR playback adds 16% to commercial ratings after three days
• More than 38% of DVR users are over age 45.
• When DVR playback is included, DVR households watch more primetime programming than non-DVR households.
• Overall, 49% of time-shifted primetime broadcast programming is played back the same day it was recorded, and 88% is played back within 3 days.
• DVR playback peaks at 9pm and 10pm.

Now does Nielsen have a bios, because in seeking to demonstrate that DVRs weren’t assaulting the ad supported television business model they posed a rather ridiculous question. That question seemingly was “Does anyone watch any TV commercials during DVR playback?” Are you kidding me? How asinine! Of course people do. It's just a matter of how much they watch or pay attention to the message. This brings up a perfect case. I was just over at a friends house and did not know he had a DVR until suddenly the commercials were flying by. Interesting I thought, since I was thinking about writing this article. Now, he is very tech savvy and upon questioning him I discovered some interesting data. He did on occasion let the commercials play, but while multitasking. When he got up to get something from the kitchen or jump on Facebook or do some other online activity the commercials rolled. But, when you finished, he immediately starting buzzing right past the commercials.

The longer people have DVRs, the more adept they become at using features such as fast-forwarding through commercials. And as they become adept, they use those feature more often. And as more and more users acquire DVRs, ad skipping will become a far larger issue for networks. This will be an ever increasing problem for broadcasters and not the diminishing one represented in the Nielsen Report.

The more I read about the DVR and the problems it presents for advertisers, the more I smile. Why, you might ask? This goes along with what I have been saying for years. In order to avoid being dropped into a commercial slot during a program and maybe skipped over, why not integrate your message directly into the program. Make it contextual and present it in a more receptive fashion. I know, you are probably saying it is very expensive and difficult coordinating with TV production companies. Alas, there exist the niche and very targeted sports film industry. You can brand this type of content any way you choose and still keep the audience engaged.

Full Throttle Media has long been advocating for and developing more creative concepts to reach audiences in the convergent world we are living in. TV, print and online are colliding and forever changing the way companies can and should deliver their messages. You have to engage and entertain, rather than approach with a hard sell. The sophistication of advertising methods and techniques has advanced, enticing and shaping and even creating consumerism and needs where there has been none before. Film is one of the most elaborate examples yet of the intersection of the entertainment and advertising industries, with the Internet and other new media shaping up as the main distribution crossroad. I see a more elaborate technique, such as a short films where the aim is to sell a product but to cleverly do the advertising in a subtle way. These films can be very entertaining and exciting, but also promote a product behind the main theme.

One of the biggest benefits of embracing film is the longevity the format offers. They do not show once or twice and then disappear. Films are watched over and over and the is no chance your brand message will be DVR'd out. Think about it.

Share the experience, sell the dream...Full Throttle Media! FTM Seth Horne

Shear Madness

This is shear madness, but 'oh so sweet. The very beginning is a little weak, but the majority is very cool. The shoot is pretty well put together. Enjoy...





Share the experience, sell the dream...Full Throttle Media! FTM Seth Horne

New Project

The new year has brought with it new opportunities. We are just starting pre-production on what could prove to be a very interesting and rewarding project related to the fitness world. There will be no official release of names or exactly what is entailed until we have concluded the first round of filming. We have to do this in order to prevent some fitness competitors from jumping in. We hope to have an press release ready by the end of February. Full ahead as we go.

Share the experience, sell the dream...Full Throttle Media! FTM Seth Horne

Year End

Well, another year is coming to a close and while this one started off slowly, it is ending on a high note and building well into next year. As hard as I have worked to advance FTM's projects, nothing would have happened without the support of my production team. I especially want to say thanks to George for all his dedication. He has been with me since the beginning and never lets me down. As this year nears it's end, we are busy penciling in dates for multiple location shoots next year. Thanks to everyone! See you after the holidays.


Share the experience, sell the dream...Full Throttle Media! FTM Seth Horne

Full Throttle Media's Film Project Big Game Legends

Here is a short clip of an interview with captain James Roberts, in Madeira, discussing the best fishing destinations in the world. This piece was shot as a part of the film project "Big Game Legends" which features a series of interviews with several of the world's best big game anglers. 

Share the experience, sell the dream...Full Throttle Media! FTM Seth Horne

Costa Rica

Mother Nature showed up in Costa Rica this past week and she was pissed. For the land of "Pura Vida" this rainy season has been very ugly. With life being taken, families displaced from their homes, no electricity and little fresh water, my prayers go out to my friends and colleagues, as well as all effected Ticos in Escazu. This is a difficult time for them. My fortune had me in the States on work, so I am lucky. The forces of nature have been dialed up and directed with fur.Boy, when Mama Nature has an axe to grind the sparks sure do fly.

Share the experience, sell the dream...Full Throttle Media! FTM Seth Horne

Ft. Lauderdale Boat Show

I am off today  to the Ft. Lauderdale Boat Show to do some promotion and meet with sponsors of the "Sport Fishing Safari" film series. This will be a busy week for sure. Thank you to all those who are currently involved. None of this would be possible without the generous support of so many fine people and companies. There are a few pending announcements that I will hold off making until after the show.

Share the experience, sell the dream...Full Throttle Media! FTM Seth Horne

Sport Fishing Safari

We are preparing to head out this week to the Ft. Lauderdale Boat Show to promote the upcoming film series "Sport Fishing Safari". This project is a collection of films about the orchestrated dance between man and nature that makes fishing the most widely pursued outdoor activity in the world. Each film is a window on one of sport fishing’s most epic destinations, capturing the global experience through the eyes of the captains and anglers who live it. Focusing on the natural beauty and variety that make sport fishing so thrilling, we take a close up look at the subtle differences that make each adventure so unique. The destinations to be featured in this film series include Antigua Barbuda, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Florida, Louisiana, New Caledonia, Nicaragua, Panama, South Africa, Turks and Caicos, Trinidad and Tobago, Vanuatu and Western Australia

Share the experience, sell the dream...Full Throttle Media! FTM Seth Horne

Being Humanistic About Fish

This essay, by Susie Byers, won first prize in the 2010 Margaret Dooley Awards and focuses on a subject that I have great passion for, preserving our oceans great species. After reading the essay, I felt compelled to share it. While I do not agree with all the points made in the article, most of the message needs to be taken seriously. Take the time to read this well written piece and reflect on how you as an individual interact are responsible for what is taking place in our oceans. Ask yourself this question, why is it so hard to formulate a plan that both protects many of the great ocean species while allowing reasonable consumption of the resource? Stay tuned, Full Throttle Media currently has a project in production that highlights the interests of the sport fishing community in the matter of conservation and fishing and how the two have a symbiotic relationship.




Share the experience, sell the dream...Full Throttle Media! FTM Seth Horne

Resort Development Marketing

It seems that resort developers are still clinging to the mantra, “build it and they will come”. You know how it goes. Find a nice piece of property, build out the infrastructure, secure a “luxury” hotel flag, develop a swanky resort with pool, have a well known golf course designer layout a golf course, maybe through in some tennis and voila'.

What's that sound? Oh, those are crickets. The land guys are still waiting for buyers to show up. Following this historic economic downturn, resort developers are finding themselves more and more behind the curve on what is going to entice investors and tourists to let go of their money. Selling the promise of a private getaway with golf and tennis is done. Get that, it's over. Time to step up your game.

I have meet so many resort community execs over the last year and a half to discuss how they should position themselves. It is easy I tell them. You have to offer more of an experience. Home owners, guests, tourists want excitement. They want a certain level of adventure and some of it serendipitous. Hum! They ask, how do we do that??? So, I lay out a rather creative approach to the types of activities they should offer and how to convey such an offering across multiple media platforms. Their eyes glaze over and they say, “we will get back to you”. Ultimately, they want to continue down the path they know so well. Oh, the status quo. This path that will eventually find them less and less competitive.

Today, buyers and guests are looking for something more to help with their decision making. Real estate developments and resort communities have to deliver on experience. To make it simple, people want to do stuff. They want to be entertained, engaged, challenged and maybe learn something new in the process. It is all about the adventure from the time your leave your house until you return. Those developers that can figure out what the right combination of activities to offer is and how to communicate to their target audience are going to mover well ahead of their contemporaries.

Be proactive! Get out ahead of the herd and start positioning yourself as the destination that has the ability to deliver rather than make empty less than fulfilling promises. More and more, families are vacationing and buying second homes where the whole family finds enjoyment. Think about sports, educational programs, events or experiences that appeal to the whole family. Build up the aspirations of your audience before they visit and over deliver once they are on the ground. If you can manage to create a sense of adventure, you will be helping to build memories that will be talked about for years to come. And that is what will bring more and more people back to your place.

The good news is that there are a few developers and related consultants that have figured out that marketing adventure and experience works. Let the stream of imaginative consciousness flow.

For more information, look me up....

Share the experience, sell the dream...Full Throttle Media! FTM Seth Horne