I was going to call this diary
What a People Powered Kossack Campaign Looks Like Part Deux, but I just had to tell you about the way I saved our entire two week TeeVee ad buy with a salad fork and golden paperclip...
But first I want to tell you about what we're doing up here in the Hudson Valley. Basically, we're busting our asses and working Brian like a dog. Of course, we're not asking anything more of him than we are ready to give as well.
Wait, you ask. Lipris, don't you live in the city? What are you doing up there? Well, I've come up from NYC and I'll be here to the finish. Three weeks, kids. A sprint to the finish and I'm "all in", so to speak. I'm trying to make damn sure that when someone asks me years from now what I did back in '06 to "take the country back", that I have a goddamn good story to tell.
But that's only a small part of this story.
Tons of photos, video, OUR NEW TV ADS (produced, shot and edited by your not-so-humble diarist) and the rest of story over the flip!
The rest of this story won't make much sense without some context. Here goes.
THIS IS A PEOPLE POWERED CAMPAIGN. It starts with the candidate, our very own NYBri. Lots of politicians post on dKos. Plenty of those seeking office drop by to talk to us. Here's the difference with Brian: Brian isn't someone running for office who stops by to talk to us. He's one of us who has taken upon himself to run for office. Oh, and remember how I told you we we're working him like a dog? We had him up at 4 o'clock in the morning yesterday working the train station in New Hamburg and had him finish the night at a very well attended meeting about school tax reform in Lagrange. Here he is at that meeting:
It's a hue issue here in the district. In fact, it is THE issue up here. I shot this video of brian talking to voters about the issue last night:
People are pissed and Brian owns this issue seeing that our opponent is the chair of the Senate Education Committee and probably more responsible for the lack of any meaningful reform of the school tax than anyone in the whole state. The folks in that video are Brian's voters and this is his issue. These are the folks that are going to put us over the top. Seriously.
But this is a people powered campaign, right? I should introduce some of the people.
We've got a really nice campaign HQ. Really. Got WiFi and everything. But, the real nerve center of this campaign is Audrey's kitchen. Audrey is Brian's campaign manager, though you may know her as fellow Kossack am. Here's Audrey hard at work in her kitchen office:
I'm sleeping upstairs in Audrey's guest room for the next three weeks while we bust ass to win this sucker. Audrey rules.
People Power, kiddos.
But, I bet you want to know how I saved our entire TeeVee ad buy with a salad fork and paperclip, dontcha?
It's a pretty great story and one I wrote up this morning to send to the woman responsible for that paper clip being on the dining room table where I found it in the first place.
Oh, and you should see that table. It doubles as my desk and editing suite. I call it "the hole". It looks like this:
That paper clip held a check to a letter we got. Here's what I wrote to her:
To be written in the annals of people powered campaigns:
The Night Lipris Saved NYBri's Camera and an Entire TV Ad Buy With a Salad Fork and a Paperclip...
So the TV spots I shot for Brian were looking great. I'd finally massaged the audio to perfection and color corrected a few things. They were finally done. This was good because it was 3 o'clock in the morning and the masters had to be at Cablevision in just a few short hours. All I had to do was run them off to Brian's old Sony handycam.
And that's where this story gets interesting. The tape I pulled from Brian's camera was mangled, never a good sign. I tried to put a fresh tape in for the masters and the camera wouldn't recognize it as not "copy protected". OH NO! The guts of the camera were a mess. Finally I realized that one of the posts was bent and that a small spring in the tape transport system was stuck.
I had to find a way to bend that post back and, well, spring that spring. A salad fork from Audrey's kitchen came in awfully handy for manhandling theat post. It took quite a bit of patience but, I finally got it back to where it was supposed to be. But the spring was another story. Itw as too delicate to beat to death with the tines of fork and it was absolutely essential to me being able to get these masters run before breakfast.
What to do? That's when I saw it, a little golden glint on the kitchen table, a paperclip. Eureka! I bent the paperclip to my specs and went to work. After half an hour so of rather delicate prodding I heard a faint "ping"and held my breath. After peering into the innards of this well-worn handycam, I could see that spring certainly looked to be sprung and only slightly out of shape.
Ten minutes later the master copies of both of these spots were made, played back and deemed by this particular weary eyed editor to be flawless. It was 5:30 in the morning.
And the rest, as they say, is history...
Yeah, but what about the ads themselves, you ask? Was it worth all the late night kraziness?
I'll let you judge for yourself. first let me say that youtube sucks. These ads are far prettier than youtube will ever let you know. I really hate their encoding. These spots were shot in glorious 30P video. I really am loathe to pull my own chain here, but on TeeVee, they're fucking beautiful.
Anyhoo, they hit the air Tuesday and will run for the last two weeks of the campaign.
Here's one hammering on the school tax issue. We shot it on a campaign volunteer's front porch. She lives literally right around the corner from Audrey. I call it "porch". Original, right?
And here's my baby. I love this one. It's most definitely going on my reel. I call it "golden".
Wanna know how much we spent to produce both of these spots?
About 8 bucks. Seriously. Well, I did make them buy me a couple of draft beers and a pulled pork sandwich, so I guess we could bump that up to about 20 bucks. Maybe.
We've done our first ad buy already. These spots will run about 800 times here in the district. There is still airtime available! I so, so, so hope you'd consider sending a few bucks to buy some more time. Each airing costs about 30 bucks. 30 Bucks runs one of these one more time.
I hope this diary shows just how lean this campaign is. We have a paid staff of...
..none. I think I can say with great confidence that you couldn't contribute a to a campaign where your dollar will go further. It's just not possible.
Oh, and wanna see the paper clip and the fork that saved our ass? Here ya go: