My New Video: The Time I Made Madonna Laugh

[paulo]

6 minutes ago, simon said:

I thought the entire look - including the glasses, jacket, shirt etc.... was perfect. 

I wasn't making a sartorial comment, just trying to offer an easy solution to what seems to be a technical issue. ?

[Zo]

I think i ve found the narrative  voice i needed for one project .....

Great format and concept Reid ...

[jude77]

I really enjoyed the video.  Here are the two things that struck me: First, you told us something only someone on the inside would know.   That's always interesting to those of us who will never be on Mount Olympus with the "Stars" and I think that will draw to viewers.   Second, you have a very "winsome" personality.   To me you seem a bit like Woody Allen mixed with Tom Hanks, just an ordinary good guy who isn't the least bit impressed with himself, but who happens to have some fascinating stories to tell.  Not to mention that you have a hilarious dry wit.  I found myself laughing out loud several times.

I hope you know that all the folks on this forum are pulling for you and we'd love to see you hit a million views. 

[Reid Rosefelt]

6 hours ago, paulo said:

I haven't watched the video, but going by the comments here the thing that struck me is that if you're not reading then don't wear the glasses.

 

Easy problem solving brought to you by Paulo ™. 

I love this idea, Paulo, but I'm not sure.  First, I'll be uncomfortable without my glasses on.  I want to see things like the microphone light blinking, so I know I'm not wasting my time.

And the real truth is that while I'm not reading, I am checking out how I'm doing in the monitor. The pauses. The smirks. All part of the YouTube theatre.  So I think I will keep trying to moderate the reflections.  

[Reid Rosefelt]

9 hours ago, simon said:

personally it didn't sound like you read it at all to me - sounded totally natural and that's one of the things that was good about it.

I only mentioned 'read' as it looked like you were staring (downwards) at a computer screen that we can see reflected in your glasses.

I am sitting at my desk in front of the computer.  The camera is above, like a webcam.  There's no other place where I can do it in my apartment. 

Maybe if I'm staring directly at the camera then this will be a little different.   I do want to have less reflections in general. 

Edited February 19, 2022 by Reid Rosefelt

[Reid Rosefelt]

Here's the update on today's tests.  I moved the camera around and problem solved.  I will be looking at the camera for the third video, MOSQUITO COAST, which should be out by Thursday or Friday.   LOUISE BROOKS will be out by Monday.  I can easily do two a week until I build up a stash.   When people find a video, I want there to be a bunch of other ones there for them to try.    Maybe after a while I will slow down to one a week, but at this point I think the more content up there the better.

I can't figure out what is wrong with the sound.  I'm recording with a mono mic into a Beachtek.  It is going into the right channel, which is the only XLR.  The left channel is for using two mics.  It's output stereo.   What I'm doing this weekend is that I split the channels into two files using Audacity and then I'm remixing them in Cubase.  I could also just bring the two files directly into Premiere, I guess.  Any suggestions about the best way to deal with this?   It doesn't take long. 

There's no question that this is my most successful video.  298 views already, which is more than the Betty Page video from a month ago.   And I now have 974 subscribers, up from 953 when I uploaded it.  If that keeps up, I'll be passing 1000 very soon.   A much bigger hurdle is the 4000 yearly hours.  I was at 2950.  In a day it's 2990.  So if this keeps up I'll get to 4000 in  three or four weeks.  But with many videos, maybe it will be even sooner than that. 

I feel like I'm on my way.    Thanks for all your encouragement and support. 

[simon]

25 minutes ago, Reid Rosefelt said:

I can't figure out what is wrong with the sound.  I'm recording with a mono mic into a Beachtek.  It is going into the right channel, which is the only XLR.  The left channel is for using two mics.  It's output stereo.   What I'm doing this weekend is that I split the channels into two files using Audacity and then I'm remixing them in Cubase.  I could also just bring the two files directly into Premiere, I guess.  Any suggestions about the best way to deal with this?   It doesn't take long. 

 

99% of mics are mono - but you need to 'pan' them to the centre to make the audio come out of both speakers on a stereo file.

Lots and lots of ways to this but it you are mixing in Cubase then just check on headphones before you export the final mix - and look at the meters too.  It's a long time since I've looked at Premiere but you can do it there if you prefer.....just double check on the meters/headphones.

If you get stuck then PM me and send me the audio and I'll fix it for you - it's a 2 minute job.

 

 

[dubdisciple]

I think this could be big as a series instead of one long video. People love love love insight into entertainment and celebrities from insider. Your relaxed style works for this type of sharing. I'm probably a bit biased because I used to do tv ads and got  to stories being 30 seconds. I think tweaking the titles of these individual segments to something honest but more clickbait like might give you traffic. 

[Old Joad]

On 2/18/2022 at 4:36 PM, Fleer said:

Fell in love with Rosanna Arquette in Scorsese’s After Hours, making this film poster quite iconic for me. Knowing that the idea came from TTF now made it simply divine. Thanks, Reid, for creating an important image of my college years. 

What he said. cool vid" The Coffee House would be the place to post your video's, I hope you do more I really enjoyed that?

Edited February 20, 2022 by Old Joad

[ZincT]

Fascinating video @Reid Rosefelt 

You are definitely onto a winning format with this. I can see it expanding in future to include some of the other folk involved in your stories (maybe publicists, writers, celebrities, producers, directors etc).  

[Reid Rosefelt]

7 hours ago, ZincT said:

I can see it expanding in future to include some of the other folk involved in your stories (maybe publicists, writers, celebrities, producers, directors etc).  

That is my plan.   I believe that stories about celebrities will bring people to my channel.  But then, once some people are interested in my style of storytelling, then they may be interested in me telling showbiz stories about people they haven't heard of   As long as the stories are fun.  We'll find out. ?

I currently have 998 subscribers, so I think I'm going to pass 1000 subscribers today.  But I still expect it will be a few months for me to get to 4000 hours.  Seeing as how my big dream was to get to 4000 by December, that's pretty good!

[Reid Rosefelt]

Here's the update:

I passed 1000 subscribers pretty easily, but I haven't cracked YouTube at all yet.  Everything is coming from the three places I put this: Facebook, here, and VI:Control.  Because of this, the growth came to a halt last night.  On the other hand, there are share links on YouTube video, so probably some of the FB links are coming from YT.  But what you want is for people to discover it on YT and that is not happening yet.

  @dubdisciple 's suggestion to  tweak the titles to "something honest but more clickbait" is right on the money, although I was defensive about it.  So I tweaked the title just now.   The Inside Story.

I shot MOSQUITO COAST yesterday and I'll try editing today.  If I like it, it should be up by Wednesday.  If not, then I'll shoot again and it will be this week for sure.  I am addressing a lot of the tech problems brought up here.  One of the things I did was to cover my monitors with black foil, so hopefully you won't see the monitor reflections.  Maybe you'll see black foil reflections!  ?

Once MOSQUITO COAST is up, I will hit social media a lot harder with links to the DSS one.  I want there to be more than one video, so waiting a few days is no big deal.

I've already scanned the photos for THE NAKED GUN, which is currently planned for video #3.  They all will appeal to different kinds of people.  That's the idea. 

Coppola is getting a lot of press now for spending a hundred million of his own money on his next film, so I am going to do GODFATHER III next.  My conversations with him back them really feed into that.  But that one will be a big, more serious job, so it comes after NAKED GUN, which is fun. 

[telecode 101]

Very. Cool. Watching and listening to it. Man I feel old. I know who Ann Magnuson was/is and had that soundtrack on LP.

So here are my thoughts. BTW. I was a film studies student.. so have a keen interest in American and European cinema and film industry.

I really liked the video. But then again, I am the generation that knows who these characters and people are and that era of 80s culture. I lived it. That poster is definitely  part of film history and is an iconic shot. On par with Eddie Murphy's Beverly Hills Cops and Tom Cruise Risky Business IMO.  I thought it was a really great video. Good stuff. It never occurred to me someone would have thought the marketing might have made people think the film was about lesbians -- but it totally makes sense.

https://www.rollingstone.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/rs-99363-30357583-30357584-large.jpg

As a film studies guy, I would be also curious about things like how was Orion involved in this during this part of the project? How did they operate and how was their day to day involvement. How involved were they in the handling of the marketing or did they mostly outsource it? Did the head of Orion provide input and feedback or did Ritts mostly do his own thing. How many other projects were you working on at the same time while working on this. I guess another thing is, what is the focus of the channel. Is it going to be 80s culture or 80s/90s music focus films (Flashdance, Susan, e.t.c) or is it going to be film marketing and business? I think it would also be interesting to hear someone thoughts on current marketing campaigns of films and how they differ from what was done before the industry consolidated into what it is today. Thoughts on tentpolel vs Sundance film markeitng and where it wins and where it loses it's mark.

Edited February 21, 2022 by telecode 101

[Reid Rosefelt]

First, I think the Rolling Stone cover was their own shoot, so... my bad.  I better post that on my video. ?

You ask a lot of questions.  The involvement of Orion during the shoot was nil.  I am still good friends with Nina Baron, who was at Orion at that time, but I don't remember her or her boss Fred Skidmore ever visiting the set once.  I don't think they saw this as a big film.  I don't think many people working on the film did either. There will be more videos and you'll understand.  But this was a movie where somebody got conked on the head and got amnesia.  One major member of the production team once said to me that the film had a plot "too ridiculous to be filmed."

My PR firm handled the release and they trusted me and gave me free rein. I can't think of anything they told me to do or told me not to do.   Fred and Nina were super supportive.  And afterwards, when I closed my company, they gave me the unit publicist job on F/X, which was my second job as an on-set publicist.  They were great.  Fred just didn't think it would do well because A) he didn't think Madonna's fame would last and B)  HONEYSUCKLE ROSE with Willie Nelson was not successful.  It's too easy in retrospect to look at what he thought because nobody thought it would do as well as it did.  But I believed because I was around her so much and knew all the things she had planned. 

STRANGER THAN PARADISE came out around the same time as this was shooting. It's been a long time, so I don't remember what other projects I was on, but I know I did ERENDIRA around that time., which was the first foreign film Miramax ever released.  That was a big job.   My company was just me and one other person working out of my apartment, so I didn't need a lot of clients. 

The focus of the channel is my entire career, so we're talking the 70s all the way until I turned in my last pressbook, Woody Allen's RIFKIN'S FESTIVAL, in May of 2020. It really depends on how interested people are.  I definitely want to talk about the movie I wrote and directed with the late Adrienne Shelly in 2003, because that starred a rubber frog named Tiger.  And yeah, New York City in the late 70s and early 80s was a very interesting time, and I became friends with a lot of people like Kathy Bigelow who became famous later. 

I worked with Redford on his film THE MILAGRO BEANFIELD WAR so he brought me in now and then on Sundance Institute matters.  Eventually he asked me to be the Publicity Consultant for the Institute.  I lasted a year before I was deservedly fired, because I was so bad at that job.  A learning experience. My publicity firm, Magic Lantern, took a lot of films to Sundance so I will talk about this, but also other  festivals like Cannes, Toronto, Venice, and others. 

And yeah, if I don't get sick and tired of doing this and quit (very likely) then it will show the many ways that marketing specialty films changed from my start in NYC in 1976 and when I closed Magic Lantern in 2003.  I do have opinions about what came after that, so who knows.  I mainly did publicity writing from 2004 to 2020, so that's the only way I kept my hand in.  Now I'm just happy to be out of it.   I am pursuing music which was the thing I always loved and kept for myself.  I never wanted to make money out of it, because making money out of my love for movies was really painful.

 

Edited February 21, 2022 by Reid Rosefelt

[dubdisciple]

I know the suggestion to change titles sounds kinda cheap on the surface, but you seem like a guy who understands that algorithms just work that way. I think as long as you have integrity in your content you will only exceed expectations with title tweaks.

[Michael A.D.]

On 2/19/2022 at 12:08 PM, jude77 said:

you seem a bit like Woody Allen mixed with Tom Hanks

I see Jack Benny in Reid's profile picture.

[Magic Russ]

On 2/19/2022 at 8:59 PM, Old Joad said:

What he said. cool vid" The Coffee House would be the place to post your video's, I hope you do more I really enjoyed that?

I'd agree, and not just because of arguments over what is appropriate.  Considering that I occasionally see deal posts upstairs,  that implies that there might be a more than a few people who never make it downstairs with us in Larry's Bargain Basement.  You'll probably reach more people upstairs.

[Reid Rosefelt]

3 minutes ago, Magic Russ said:

I'd agree, and not just because of arguments over what is appropriate.  Considering that I occasionally see deal posts upstairs,  that implies that there might be a more than a few people who never make it downstairs with us in Larry's Bargain Basement.  You'll probably reach more people upstairs.

Do you think that's okay?   I've never once gone on any of the other Cakewalk forums. (Maybe I should.)    Wouldn't it just seem like I was some random guy from nowhere posting his YouTube video?   Is it "music-related"?

But I guess you guys think it's okay or you wouldn't be recommending it.  I guess I can just do it and see if people get mad.   I will wait until I have two though.,

Maybe I should start paying more attention to The Coffee House.

"

[Reid Rosefelt]

23 minutes ago, Michael A.D. said:

I see Jack Benny in Reid's profile picture.

What you see is me trying to hide all the wrinkly stuff in my neck.

[Jesse Screed]

2 hours ago, Reid Rosefelt said:

Do you think that's okay?   I've never once gone on any of the other Cakewalk forums. (Maybe I should.)    Wouldn't it just seem like I was some random guy from nowhere posting his YouTube video?   Is it "music-related"?

But I guess you guys think it's okay or you wouldn't be recommending it.  I guess I can just do it and see if people get mad.   I will wait until I have two though.,

Maybe I should start paying more attention to The Coffee House.

"

the deals forum is not the best place for this type of content, though that is where you have the most recognition because of your reviews and deal posts.  The coffee house would be good, but you would also get some subscribers by posting your music in the song forum too.  In your signature you could include links to this content.  You have made some great music and you should be posting in the song forum, this will get your other videos more views, but I'm not a publicist.