HomeResources Book Review: "The New Now" by Philip Hodgetts
Book Review: "The New Now" by Philip Hodgetts
Written by Loren Miller
Tuesday, 01 December 2009
The New Now: Grow Your Production or Post-production Business in a Changed and Changing World Philip Hodgetts (Intelligent Assistance, 2009) 160 pages, $9.95 (PDF) / $18.95 (paperback) http://proappstips.com/TheNewNow/
A couple words of introduction. No, make that a few paragraphs, because it’s useful to assess an author’s bonafides. Philip Hodgetts, honorary member of BOSFCPUG, is fast becoming one of America’s premiere media gurus, with focus on production and digital delivery, and that’s not bad for an Aussie transplant.
In between writing prescient books on the business of video and movies in today’s turbulent markets, writing downloadable handbooks on compression recipes, guides to HD technology, joining panel discussions covering media and tech at the Director’s Guild, and showing up at LA and Boston FCP User Groups, he and partner Dr. Gregory Clarke has saved the television industry with products like Sync-N-Link for FCP, which at $495.00 is one of those deceptively simple utilities for leveraging XML metadata to automatically line up video timecode and dual system audio for deadline-pressed reality-type shows.
This cool tool has post house owners nationwide kissing their feet in gratitude for saving days of tedious pre-edit prep, and has an upcoming Technical Emmy nomination written all over it. One hopes somebody in the field will soon take that important step of recognition.
To continue cherrypicking among their many projects, they also devised a $295.00 automated rough cut editing system, First Cuts Studio for FCP which rewards thoughtful documentary footage logging with sequence auto-assembly, even including lower third titles. Their companion piece called Finisher delivers a near-final cut. I screened their demo video to one of my college classes a while back and jaws dropped. Hodgetts and Clarke have become the American magicians of metadata.
Did I mention they’re originally from Australia?
Their most recent enterprise is Open Television Network, a media portal which provides affordable, value-added video feeds for content providers. Here they leverage their patented, online ecommerce micropayment technology, KlickTab, which enables easy, quick, secure media purchases.
Philip has been a serial entrepreneur in the communication business for a good chunk of his life. He ran a corporate/educational post house in Newcastle- the first with a nonlinear editing system (Media 100) and one day showed up in LA to forge an expanded and branded career, and seek out tech needs he and Clarke, an accomplished programmer, could fill in the media industry with unique tools and resources.
The most well known public resource is probably Digital Production BuZZ, the internet radio show they produced, now acquired and operated by Larry Jordan and Associates and hosted by Larry with Los Angeles Final Cut Pro User Group chieftain Michael Horton, every Thursday evening at 6:00 PM PST, with guest appearances by- surprise!- Philip. The BuZZ has roots in an earlier show called DV Guys, first created and hosted by Phil with fellow FCP guru Steve Martin, and later with Ron Margolis.
Through his business evolution Philip has been forced to tackle commerce models and trends, to research and identify which are concrete, and useful to follow. He now shares collected wisdom in The New Now, and it’s an eye-opening toybox of ideas and advice from he and his network of entrepreneurial colleagues, for production facilities of one person or many.
The book gives a thorough tour of resources to expand your business as brand expression and to serve it. Free YouTube channels are now used by everybody from teenage skateboarding videomakers to pro ad agencies. Blogs are tools for free interactivity and great customer support venues. Phil collects and weaves web places like LinkedIn and FaceBook into a branding and networking strategy you can apply for free.
Phil is the fellow from whom I first heard the mantra, "you cannot compete with free," and which early on inspired me to give away useful samples (on the website and at raffles) of my own products to assist in branding. (Raffles are incredibly effective venues—winners show off their treasures to seat-mates and spread the brand consciousness.) Here he inveigles you to build things like a smart website with search engine optimization (SEO, very hot) and links to and from your home page, among many other gems of branding strategy you haven’t yet considered.
This is a sharply written, huge little book, an Elements of Style for affordably building your brand and staying competitive in a new economy. This slim volume belongs on any production entrepreneur’s bookshelf, and in keeping with a multi-casting theme, you can either buy a handsome hard copy to leaf through and highlight, or download a PDF for half the price. Get it any which way you can.
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A couple words of introduction. No, make that a few paragraphs, because it’s useful to assess an author’s bonafides. Philip Hodgetts, honorary member of BOSFCPUG, is fast becoming one of America’s premiere media gurus, with focus on production and digital delivery, and that’s not bad for an Aussie transplant. 
Philip has been a serial entrepreneur in the communication business for a good chunk of his life. He ran a corporate/educational post house in Newcastle- the first with a nonlinear editing system (Media 100) and one day showed up in LA to forge an expanded and branded career, and seek out tech needs he and Clarke, an accomplished programmer, could fill in the media industry with unique tools and resources.
Loren Miller, a professional longform editor, operates the boutique post house NeoTron Design out of Boston. He is a participating member of Los Angeles and Boston Final Cut Pro User Groups and occasionally reports for both, along with Imagine News in print, where this review in another form first appeared. Reach him anytime at
. ©2009 Loren S. Miller All rights reserved.
