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Toying with the Future
Maria's friend Sheila is blossoming in a second career as an artist. She volunteered to decorate a polar bear for one of those scattered animal events in Rochester. Kids connected with a local mental health organization were recruited to pitch in with the decorations. Their task was to draw pictures of "what family means to me" and these would be incorporated into the polar bear design. Maria got the idea I should do a tiny documentary on the process. So we showed up at the kids' paint session with our video camera and clipboards, dressed alike in black slacks and red sweaters. Red lipstick of course. We wanted our badges to say "Red Lipstick Productions" but the mental health people raised an eyebrow at it. We did a quick conversion to Cosmopolitan Productions. We're referring to the girlie martini featured in "Sex & the City" and our tagline in tiny type says "short films with a dash of cranberry" but we disguised the connection with big passport stamps on our badges. Somewhere the wires got crossed. The sponsor corporation and the mental health people got excited and took proprietary interest in the video product. In appreciation, they offered us a booth at a miniature golf tournament to advertise our company. Our company? That was a week and a half ago. The golf event was yesterday. We decided, what the hell. We printed up cards and decided on our marketing statement for a bookmark-sized brochure. I finished a 2-minute movie that was more about the polar bear and the kids than Sheila and her art. Maria dragged her video player to the downtown mall and we set up. The golfers were really not that interested in low-cost video productions. However, our new sponsors were thrilled with the video -- impressed with our turnaround time and touched by the emotional impact. Go, Team Cosmo! |
Maria
and I have worked together for 12 years. On the Myers-Briggs or Kiersey