How'd You Get So Rich promos starring Joan Rivers teeters on bad taste, but then redeems on their facebook page.

Watching Joan River's promos on TV Land for the second season of her show, How'd you Get So Rich, is like watching a new age version of good cop, bad cop. Unfortunately, some of Joan River's promo's are in bad taste as Joan Rivers is seen searching out rich people while avoiding "boring" regular income people.

I'm surprised that Joan Rivers did not ask for help from Donald Trump's Celebrity Apprentice teams to design some television promo's for Joan to use. It seems like a cross promotion opportunity between the two shows has been missed. It might have just been a timing issue as Celebrity Apprentice is probably done filming by now while Joan's second season has possibly just recently started filming.

After viewing the facebook page for How'd you get so Rich, I have to commend TV Land and Joan Rivers for actually asking fans to submit sample questions that Joan might end up selecting to ask her "rich" guests.

The ridiculing of boring middle income people in Joan's earlier promos seems to have recently been supplemented with a brief explanation that the rich people featured on her show used to be "just like the rest of us". This is a huge step forward and I'm glad that somebody realized how crass and not completely thought out the earlier promos were.

I tried finding the earlier "How'd you get so Rich" promo's on Youtube that I thought were offensive but had no luck. I guess we can call that the bad cop, invisible cop move. Show the offensive "How'd you get so Rich promos" on TV Land, just don't put them on youtube or on the net where anyone can study them.

This is where copyright issues get murky in my opinion. Should I not be allowed to copy the Joan River's How'd you get so rich promos and upload them to YouTube for the express purpose of using the promo to make a social commentary? Why is it ok to inflict the origina message on the masses for profit, but someone cannot comment on the messages by using the same content for commentary purposes only?

Overall I think the newer "How'd you get so Rich" promo's and the facebook page for How'd You Get so Rich seem to be heading in the right direction. I wonder if Donald Trump has mentioned Joan's show on his own Celebrity Apprentice show since Joan has appeared on Celebrity Apprentice this season.

Ultimately, I think it is terrific that there is a How'd you Get so Rich facebook page that is welcoming suggestions for questions that Joan Rivers may ask her guests. and I hope the show properly credits whomever's questions they use.

-----------------------------

Edit update (May 03, 2010). I had a chance to see a show from last season and saw Joan fishing for stories on Rodeo Drive. It was a reminder to me about how difficult it really is, and costly as well, to line up guests for any television show.

It takes real money to hire a staff, have an office, send out PR, get leads, pre-interview the leads...or, just have Joan go out on Rodeo Drive and blitz people who are walking by and who look rich!

Good for Joan! The ability to mine the public streets for a story is compelling and spontaneous.

However, spontaneous story telliing is not so good for the economy and the all the people NOT BEING hired to do legitimate work for her show. Since the cost of show is kept artificially down, it will make it that much harder for other shows to get made down the road.

How'd Joan get so rich, by keeping her overhead so low, and maybe by depriving others of a job on her own show.

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The Making of Season's Greetings on Super-8 Film starring Santa Claus and the Original Miracle on 34th street Sleigh.

The four pictures above represent actual Super-8 Frames from different award winning super-8 shoots that I have done over the years. The lower right hand image from above is from my Super-8 Shoot with Santa and the Original Miracle on 34th Street Sleigh.

Both of my Season's Greetings spots won awards, here is a link to the first Season's Greetings I made. If you cannot access the video, you will need to join LinkedIn first, which is free to join. I would market "Season's Greetings" for Cable Companies around the country to "bonus" to their favorite advertisers during the Holiday Season. This is a link to the Second Season's Greetings Commercial I made.

You can see my complete LinkedIn Business Showcase Page here.

I did a sell the two commercials I made to a couple of cable systems, but frankly, I was far too young and inexperienced to understand that market penetration mattered more than maximum profitability in each market. I made these two Season's Greetings Promos back in 1988 and 1989. Back then, Video Editing cost $250.00 an hour! I spent a total of 5,000 dollars making these spots just out of film school and I had overpriced what the Cable markets would pay. I wasn't being greedy, I just had no idea that many markets would pay a few hundred dollars, but not more than that.

What is probably just as fascinating is that Louis Febre created the music for one of the two spots. I met Louis through a mutual friend when he was just starting out. I KNEW Louis was going to be famous when I walked into his home studio and he showed me a sample from a low budget movie that he was putting the finishing touches on. I seriously wanted to go out right then and there and make my own feature just so Louis would do the music.

The Santa Sleigh I rented was from the prop department of Disney Studios. I was told the Sleigh I was renting was the actual Sleigh used in the original "Miracle on 34th Street Movie!" Unfortunately, the flatbed truck I was renting might have been just as old and had THE WORST SHOCKS IMAGINEABLE.

We drove 75 miles down to Laguna Beach to be near our Santa...(Santa had driven up to my location for other Season's Greetings shoots, so I obliged him by driving down to where he was going to be for this one). My friends Tony and Julie came along and were my valued helpers.

The 75 mile drive to meet Santa was HORRIBLE...the darn truck was bobbing up and down like an out of control jackhammer the whole way down. Either the shocks were just plain terrible, or because it was a flatbed truck, the shocks were designed to work better when the flatbed was weighted down.

Santa had a starring cameo role in my Season's Greetings Promo that I was making and was gracious enough to glide in onto the flat bed. Of course, even though Santa landed perfectly on the back of my flat-bed truck rental, nothing else really went as planned for the rest of the night.

I set-up my Super-8 Camera on the front part of the flat-bed truck, facing towards the back. We began to shoot some night time-exposure footage designed to look like Santa was flying through the sky with lights streaking above and behind him.

The shot was framed in such a way so that "TV Safe" would cut off the part of the sleigh that was actually touching the back of the flat bed truck. TV Safe means that when you are watching TV, you don't see the entire area of the picture frame, a portion of the picture on all four sides is "hidden" from normal viewing. By carefully framing my shot, I could "hide" the part of the sleigh that was touching the flat-bed truck in the part of the frame that does not get seen by a normal television set.

When I started filming, I remember thinking, "Wow, I'm actually doing this shoot! I got a Santa, an actual Santa Sleigh from Disney, my friends helping me...this is amazing!" And it was, for about five minutes.

Our Santa was a hearty soul, so fake pillows were not required. Our jackhammer truck moved down the road, Santa waving to the masses in Laguna Beach in the middle of a Warm July California Night from the cheery confines of our "Miracle Sleigh".......and because all good things must come to an end, the Sleigh started to list to one side.

It was quite loud on the truck, just horrible filming conditions, the wind was blowing even though the truck was not moving that quickly. Suddenly I realized the Sleigh was listing to one side more and more. The Sleigh was crumbling from the jackhammer action created by our rental truck. I was destroying the Original Miracle On 34th Street Sleigh, and I hadn't even gotten my shot yet!

We pulled over and assessed the situation. I couldn't believe that I had destroyed the sleigh so quickly. The idea that I might have to cancel the shoot with all that had gone into preparing for that night seemed beyond my comprehension.

Tony helped me rig a couple of apple boxes and a solid pelican case underneath the nearly broken underside of the Sleigh. I forget why I had the apple boxes, but I had been "raised" to always have apple boxes on film productions. The pelican case was for my still camera.

The silver stuff pictured underneath the sleigh actually covers the apple boxes from view.

Well, after tying off the crumbling sleigh with rope and shoring it up as best we could, resting the sleigh on the apple boxes and pelican case, AND telling Santa to ride the Sleigh like a jockey coming down a homestretch run who gets up off the saddle, we were able to continue, barely, and everything held together, barely...

It's hard knowing when to quit when you KNOW you won't be doing this type of shoot again anytime soon. "Just one more shot, no really, just one more shot".

We filmed for a couple of hours. We kept filming even after the battery in my sungun light had gone dead. I had ruined the lead battery because it continued to draw a current even after the light had completely disappeared. When a lead battery goes below 10.2 volts, it starts to internally destroy itself.

Even though the Sleigh continued to, uhm, disintegrate, it seemed to settle into a slow-motion type of disintegration. We were able to finish the shoot, and I was satisfied that I had gotten something I could use, on Super-8 film. However, that 75 mile jackhammer drive back home was pretty depressing. A 150 mile roundtrip just so that I could be fair to my Santa and save him a trip up to my part of town...what a moron I was!

I had better streets to film what I needed just miles from where I lived, and that should have been the overriding factor in my decision as to where to shoot. Live and Learn. The next day, when I finally looked at the Sleigh in the light of day, I was pretty sure I was going to never work in this town again.

I consulted with Dad over the sleigh situation and he seemed to think it was not hopeless. Since the Sleigh was primarily made out of wood, he suggested we try elmer's glue to save the day. Amazingly enough, most of the damage was to the underside of the sleigh rather than the cosmetic exterior. We used Elmers Glue and crushed, pulpy sawdust as filler and began mending all the weaken areas.

Perhaps it was ironic that Santa's Sleigh, constructed to take him around the world in blizzard like conditions, would need the sun's warm rays to harden the Elmers glue sawdust concoction. Waiting to see if the Glue concoction would make a difference was like watching lotto numbers being picked even though I had no ticket. The best I could hope for was returning the sleigh just as I had received it.

Cut to a music crescendo of a new day dawning, the birds tweeting, the reindeer perking up their heads in disbelief, dad and I had made the sled much much sturdier than it was when we first rented it! The elmers glue really did reinforce the various undercarriage joints that had weakened. I was so proud of the "fix" my dad had helped me accomplish on the sleigh, (probably prouder than the final product I created.) that I WANTED TO TELL THE PEOPLE AT DISNEY HOW WELL WE HAD FIXED THE SLEIGH...

Now, that would have been pretty stupid, wouldn't it?

Instead, I waited until I was convinced that the gluing had truly fixed the sleigh before returning it. I held my tongue, changed my name (kidding), and never heard anything bad from Disney.

However, the truck rental place wanted to charge me an EXTRA day because I showed up something like 30 minutes after the one day deadline. I reminded them that they had immediately stamped my invoice when I had come to pick up the truck, even though they made me wait 45 minutes to get the truck, and that they had waited to stamp my invoice for returning the truck UNTIL it was my turn in line, easily another half an hour.

I was not about to pay an extra day for the down-time they caused. I finished the Season's Greetings Promo, and managed to sell it in a couple of very small cable markets, but I never did recoup the 5,000 dollars in expenses that not only that night, but other nights added up to...(that is another story).

Here is a link to the Final Version.

If you are planning on creating or broadcasting a commercial and want an objective, outsiders point of view about your commercial, contact Alessandro Machi about his consulting services at...

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Price is Right could use some fun new options.

If the Price is Right is interested, Alex Logic has two ideas in mind that I believe would give the show an extra layer of fun. Neither of the ideas would require much of a change in the show's staging but I believe would add extra viewer interest and could make the ratings rise a slight amount as well.

Many times I will generously make suggestions and share them when I see a finished product that could have been, or still could be improved. However, there are times where all I will do is mention I have the ideas because you can't give away all of your consulting ideas for free.

If you are planning on creating or broadcasting a commercial and want an objective, outsiders point of view about your commercial, contact Alessandro Machi about his consulting services at...

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Dex Knows dot com poses interesting challenge to Google and other too big to fail search engine services, and their commercial is funny.

I just saw the Dex Knows commercial during a Major League baseball game between the Cleveland Indians and the Chicago White Sox. I found the Dex Knows commercial to be very, very effective, wouldn't change a thing. Ok, maybe the shot of the computer screens were just a tad too fast, but that is a very minor point.

CLICK HERE TO SEE DEX KNOWS COMMERCIAL.

Although local cable advertising can provide the ability to target a very small territory with commercials, this is the first time I have seen an internet search engine commercial that uses the local cable advertising strategy as it illustrates the usefulness of a localized search engine search, and does it in a comical but illuminate manner.

If I were Google I would be somewhat concerned. Why doesn't Google have a companion search engine site, such as Gaggle, or, Giggle? "Sometimes a Giggle is all you need".

Dex Knows dot com has really hit google hard with their commercial, and all of the points raised in the commercial are completely valid.

If I were google, I would either buy out Dex Knows (and continue the product of course), or come up with a Gaggle or Giggle localized search engine for more localized internet searches.

If you are planning on creating or broadcasting a commercial and want an objective, outsiders point of view about your commercial, contact Alessandro Machi about his consulting services at...

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Folgers Father, Daughter and boyfriend proposing coffee commercial misses the mark.

The 2010 Folgers father daughter boyfriend coffee commercial is a taffy twist of old values and doing the right thing; that kind of ends up being a bit offensive.

Edit Update: Dec. 1, 2010 (If you are looking for my review of the Folgers commercial about the son coming back from war with a gift for sis, click here)

When I researched this commercial I discovered I could not find it on YouTube. This didn't surprise me as the Folgers Father Daughter commercial fumbles away what could have been a special father daughter moment within a commercial.

As I searched the internet looking for the commercial so I could post it within this article, I found feminists up in arms and conservative women teary eyed here and here. On a forum called "I hate commercials", everybody seems to be bringing up most of the controversial issues, but not tying them together the way I have below.

I found the feminist viewpoint typically angry and outraged, but for the wrong reasons. Being offended because a daughter still lives at home in her late twenties is missing the point. A woman can have more freedom living at home IF SHE IS SAVING MONEY because of it.

Some people with a conscience may feel guilty dating others if they have debt, so if living at home enables either a male or female TO SAVE MONEY or avoid going into debt, then there is no need to ridicule their living situation as the feminist viewpoint did.

Additionally, feminists being outraged because the dad was watching her every move also misses the point that the dad KNEW SOMETHING was going to happen and he just couldn't wait to find out.

The more conservative viewpoint instantly connects with a similar father daughter moment in their own lives and are won over early on.

But these contrasting interpretations appear to only use the first 20 seconds of the commercial to form their opinion and in that regard seem to be ignoring the most controversial part of the commercial. It is the very last line of dialogue in the Folgers engagement commercial that appears to have been tossed out with the coffee grounds by both sides, yet that last line of dialogue is what makes the commercial somewhat offensive in my opinion.

As you can see, the folgers father, daughter, boyfriend engagement commercial doesn't seem to last on the net, and maybe that is for good reason.

What I see in the final moments of this commercial is a dad modestly bragging (yikes!) to his daughter that without his help, his daughter's laggard boyfriend would have never proposed! Having watched the tv sit come Everybody Loves Raymond, all I can see is Raymond and Robert cringing every time their parents meddle in their lives the way dad appears to have done in this Folgers commercial.

The entire Folgers commercial seems impinged on the final line of dialogue, and yet, what does it say about the daughter if dad has to step in and FORCE the marriage issue with her boyfriend? The commercial script, obviously influenced by a male fatherly figure, is trying to say "Hey, ain't I great the way I rescued my little girl one more time, and got her married!"

This particular Folgers commercial could have taken the high road, and the funny road,if it had just used a slightly different ending. If dad had instead said, "I offered Biff two new cars and his own condo to get lost, but he said he would just sell the cars to buy you a bigger engagement ring", the commercial's message becomes that both men in her life want her to stay solidly in their lives. Now that would have been a sweet message.

This would have been a far more powerful father daughter moment than dad saying "I had a secret meeting with Biff last weekend to make sure he proposed to you".

Gasp.

Edit Update Dec.8, 2010: Folgers held a contest to come up with a new musical intro for their commercials. The irony is, that's not the problem with their commercials.

If you are planning on creating or broadcasting a commercial and want an objective, outsiders point of view about your commercial, contact Alessandro Machi about his consulting services at...

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Turn the Tub Around "I can't believe it's not butter", commercial Starring Megan Mullally, analyzed.

When I first saw the Megan Mullally commercial, "I can't believe it's not Butter - Turn the tub Around", I didn't know what to think.

In my opinion a commercial's shock value usually is a good thing (but not always), but something about this commercial's shock value bugged me.

This is the kind of commercial where if somebody connected to the commercial had hired me for feedback, I would have struggled to come up with my best response. Suffice it to say that it was probably a week or two after seeing the commercial a few times that a bell went off in my head and I realized what was "wrong" with the "Turn the Tub Around" commercial.

My delayed reaction was in part because I only saw the commercial every couple of days during a television show commercial break. I suppose if I had viewed the commercial over and over several times in a short time span I might have come up with something faster.

By the way, I LOVE Megan Mullally in Will and Grace and I believe she is one of those actor / directors who gets it. Fortunately, I don't have to criticize her performance in this commercial to get my point across. Because I respect Megan Mullally so much I decided to research the making of this commercial to see what went wrong. I soon discovered that there is a companion music video to "Turn the Tub Around" that I had never viewed. Sure enough, within a mere few seconds of watching the music video, I realized that the music video executed in a way that the commercial did not.

All one has to do is watch the companion music video to see that everything the music video is, the commercial is not.

The music video takes the time to show Mullally as an innocent shopper getting caught up in the moment, whereas the 30 second commercial version portrays Mullally as an over the top DIVA caught in her own 1979 Turn the Tub Around Time Machine. I believe what the commercial fails to do is compress the best elements of the music video into a 30 second commercial. No easy task for sure, but it looks to me like no attempt was even made.

The power of editing shows how easy it is to change an actors performance. In my opinion the music video and commercial have very little in common, and that probably is not a good thing.

Everything the music video is, the commercial is not, and that is the problem that I see with thia commercial. That doesn't mean the commercial is a failure. In my opinion it just means the commercial is not delivering full impact. For everybody who likes the "I can't believe it's not butter, turn the tub around" commercial, there are probably 2 or 3 other people who roll their eyes.

Could the "I can't believe its not butter" commercial starring Megan Mullally be fixed? Probably quite easily. There probably is enough footage already shot that if constructed in a proper order would create a more effective 30 second commercial.

If you are planning on creating or broadcasting a commercial and want an objective, outsiders point of view about your commercial, contact Alessandro Machi about his consulting services at...

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Jack LaLanne, Elaine LaLanne, Bob Feller, Abe Vigoda, Betty White & Buzz Aldrin should have a reality tv show.

(Edit update - Jack LaLanne has passed away, January 23, 2011 at the age of 96, from pneumonia, what a loss, moreso for the rest of us, I sincerely wanted to see Mr. LaLanne on his own reality TV show, wearing out people 50 younger than himself).

Bob Feller passed away on December 15, 2010 as well.

The brief article below was written on April 05, 2010. I even pitched the idea of a reality tv show starring the LaLanne's to a Hollywood producer, who told me Hollywood only wants young people for their reality tv shows.

-------------------------------------------------

What a loss that such elder statesmen and stateswomen such as Jack LaLanne, his wife Elaine LaLanne, Bob Feller, Abe Vigoda, Betty White and Buzz Aldrin don't have their own reality tv show.

Just how artificial and fake is Hollywood to continually throw to the curb real maturity and wisdom and just good old fashioned attitude, and the history of this country, to promote one more show about youthful exuberance. Enough already, when will Hollywood do the right thing?

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Did Major League Baseball provide enough 2010 Spring Training job opportunities for Arizona residents?

Arizona has had high unemployment for a couple of years so they probably love Major League Baseball coming to their state for spring training each year. How about Major League Baseball hire 6 bat boys per game. Three bat boys for each team, each bat boy covers 3 innings of the game. Isn't hiring many bat boys better than endangering the ballplayers when they have to stop a slide at the last possible moment to avoid a bat that is sitting in the base path?

During a 2010 spring training game between the Cleveland Indians and the Los Angeles Angels, Luis Rodriguez, who was fighting for a roster position on the Indians and appeared to have suffered some type of injury, instead shook off the injury and kept on playing in the game.

The possible injury appears to have been caused by a bat left in the basepaths that prevented Rodriguez from sliding into home properly. Because Rogriguez could not slide, it gave the catcher a full on view of the batter turned baserunner who was now trying to advance to third on the throw home. If the catcher's throw to third base had been off just a bit he could easily have struck the baserunner in the jaw.

There literally could have been two injuries on the same play, both caused by one errant bat that was not immediately picked up after the hitter had tossed it to the ground to run out his double. If there had been no bat on the base path, the baserunner coming home could hae executed a proper slide into home. The dust kicked up by the slide plus the partially blocked field of vision the catcher would have experienced and the catcher might not have even bothered trying to throw to third at all.

On another note...

Besides baseball players risking injuries because of lack of bat boys, even the cameras appear to be left out in the sun without lens shades to deflect the sun rays from the lens. It sure looks like not enough of the local people have been hired to help out. Cameras without lens shades produce poor images like the image above. Cameras with the proper lens shade can produce an image like the one below.

As you can see from the two images above, the second image more closely approximates the proper contrast of the image, but it was the top image that what was repeatedly broadcast during a 2010 exhibition game between the Indians and the Dodgers. While all the other camera angles looked fine, this one particular angle looked all washed out. I have re-corrected this one particular camera angle to show how it could have looked if a lens shade had been provided.

Why doesn't Major League baseball hire young adults as bat boys and rovers for the camera crews and other baseball personnel? Multiply 10 hired positions per game by the six to eight games a day that are played and that would be 60 to 80 jobs per day in Arizona for the local community.

If you are planning on creating or broadcasting a commercial and want an objective, outsiders point of view about your commercial, contact Alessandro Machi about his consulting services at...

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Maybe everything has been done before, but that doesn't mean new interpretations don't exist.

"Is the glass half empty or half full", is a philosophical question that has long been misunderstood. The most common perception of "Is the glass half empty or half full" has been that if you think the glass is half full, you are an optimist, and if you think the glass is half empty, you are a pessimist. This is wrong!

If you think the glass is half full, you might just be an overconfident, procrastinating, lazy individual who does not plan for the future properly.

If you think the glass is half empty, you might just be a hands on, competently aware individual who believes in having the necessary resources to weather future situations.

Another common mistake made about whether the glass is half empty or half full is the belief that each viewpoint is in opposition to the other one.

I thought the real reason people notice if the glass is half empty or half full is because they want more -Alessandro Machi

If you are planning on creating or broadcasting a commercial and want an objective, outsiders point of view about your commercial, contact Alessandro Machi about his consulting services at...

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