Photo-A-Day #1285

This morning I was up at 4:30am and on my way to the airport for my flight to California. I had a 7:35 departure time and wanted to make sure I got to Logan in plenty of time in case I had to have any special screening. That occasionally happens when my flights are booked by overseas companies. However that did not happen in this case. I went right on through security and then right on to the plane. I stopped at my seat put my bag int he overhead and then put my headphones and ipod in the seat back pocket. I went to the rest room and when I got back a woman was sitting in my seat and she insisted that it was hers. I have very little patience for people who cannot grasp the concept of an assigned seat. So I told her that no, she had the middle seat. She fussed with me but I stood my ground.

This is probably why I wasn’t too phased that she was getting upset during the flight, hemming and hawing about being int he middle seat. Then she “developed” claustrophobia halfway through the flight, she was up and down over and over. I was in no mood to deal with this. So I stoically got up and down each time she needed to get some space. Finally her husband, who had been ignoring this behavior all through the flight asked if I would take the window. I said sure, just to shut her up. In the process of moving seats he spilled a whole cup of water on the middle seat. I took the window and tried to get some sleep. It did not come.

When I landed I got a shuttle to the hotel. It wasn’t too bad a ride either. Once at the hotel I caught up with Donna from WOM World and Nick Humphries, one of the assistant directors. We hung out for a bit then I checked in and headed back to hang with them for a bit more. Later we headed to Spike Lee’s hotel The Mondrian over by the House of Blues. When we walked in Spike was in the corner on the phone, he gave us a wave and finished his call. We went upstairs to a boardroom to wait for Spike to come in so we could have a roundtable discussion with him.

To say that the discussion was awkward would be something of an understatement. We were warned that politics was to be out of discussion, which is fine with me I could care less. But we were to talk about social media. So I asked Spike if he was on Facebook (he’s not) if he uses Twitter (he doesn’t) and if he reads any blogs (he doesn’t). So um what was he doing in this social media experiment? Who knows. He was cordial enough but seemed like he was under obligation to talk to us and didn’t really care about having the conversation. If Nokia ever does something like this again where they are looking for someone who embraces Social Media then they had better look a little harder.

There were nine of us at the roundtable. Three people who were the winners of the Death Scene Challenge and the four assistant directors plus Donna and Siobahn from WOM World.

later in talking with the assistant directors I learned that they were bloggers and social media people like myself and were brought into the production later on during the process. I also learned that the “movie” was only 6 minutes long. 6 Minutes long? You can judge for yourself. I have my opinion of the movie.

After the roundtable, I taped it and will post at some point when I can get it cut down and edited, we went back to the hotel. Like the time before we spent a bunch of wasted time in the cabs, we got places late and were totally off the itinerary. We had about an hour for something to eat so we had dinner at HOE Steakhouse in the Omni Hotel. Nice place good food. I had BLT sliders that were made with fried tomatoes as with bacon, some sort of sauce and lettuce in between. They were pretty darn good too.

Then we got changed for the event and headed over. We were to be in the VIP section and also to have our own room upstairs where we could watch the event outside. There was to be internet access in that room and Siobahn apologized profusely that it wasn’t working. I had brought all my stuff with me and wasn’t about to leave it lying around so I had to lug it with me or make sure that someone was always in the room. And forget about seeing the event outside, the windows were terrible for that.

We did watch the movie premiere and there were many of the finalists, whose work was in the movie, at the event. They were pretty excited to watch it and yeah it was exciting if what you produced was actually part of a film. My stuff was not but then again I came in way late in the game too. I did however get a special mention at the end with a few of the other death scene winners. Full name and everything, so that was cool.

I never did get a picture with Spike, once the interview was over he was out of there on to the next event.

The part I liked the most was the Avril Lavigne concert. She put on a great show and I took a bunch of pretty cool photos there as well. My new friend Carlton and I talked cameras. I decided at the last minute to take only one bag so I sacrificed taking the DSLR. It was actually not a bad decision, I totally overpacked on the media I brought with me.

All in all it was a decent day and I am really grateful to WOM World for sending me out to 1st work on the production of the movie and 2nd to come out for the premiere. Everyone I’ve met from WOM World has been awesome and has worked really hard to show bloggers and social media publishers a very good time. I wish that things with the technical spots would have worked out better for them, too. It was also really nice to talk with some really creative people and share ideas.

Here is our Group on the “Red” Carpet. Sorry, Photo of a Photo.