As I read Talia’s post from earlier this week about developing new story angles and new audiences for a client, it set me thinking. Am I in a pitching ditch? How do I go about “escaping the pitching ditch”? After some ponderous cocktails, I realized that I don’t usually even attempt an escape, instead I dig even deeper. As I pondered my digging, the flat screen at the pub was showing a trailer for the new Daniel Day Lewis movie Lincoln…and I had my own little aha moment.
There is a reason that movie fans fairly universally view actors like Daniel Day Lewis as one of the industry’s best…simply put, he dives deeper into a role that anyone else can or at least unlike others are willing to attempt. While some method actors can take things a bit too far (see Lewis’ preparation for My Left Foot when he confined himself to a wheelchair and had the film crew feed him his meals!), their method approach to film making holds interesting lessons for the PR world. After all, what better way to find new story angles for a client’s product or service, than embracing it yourself!?
So, fresh full of excitement…oysters and beers too of course…I jaunted home to do some digging. Recently I had started working with a new client, Triggertrap, that makes creative triggering solutions for photographers. It’s Triggertrap Mobile app, lets you connect your IOS or Android device to your camera and do some pretty amazing things. I had been using the app since before Triggertrap was even a client (why do you think I signed them up!), but I had yet to try out some of the more complex functionality. So, after jury rigging my tripod head to the passenger seat of my truck, I set off to try out the Triggertrap’s DistanceLapse mode. This uses the phone’s GPS unit to fire the shutter over pre-determined distances (timelapse without the time).
In the end the slide show I pulled together from my experiment was an epic failure…hey it was my first try!…but I learned some valuable lessons about the technique, and come later this week I can guarantee I’ll be talking to an editor about just how cool it is. So thanks Talia for the inspiration!