Musings of a Creative Services Specialist: Long Time No Blog

So it's been about a week and a half since my last post. I know, what a slacker! It has been a busy week and a half so I can forgive myself and you should too.

Campaigns - The Devil's Class

Well, maybe calling it the devil's class is a little bit extreme. But I would like to think that it is still quite difficult. And to imagine that what we accomplish in 4 1/2 months, many agencies get only 5 weeks to do.

Campaigns is still going strong even with the road bumps that I will not go into. You know the other team may be spying on us. Our client, the Nebraska Office of Highway Safety, is attempting to increase seat belt usage from the current rate of about 70% to around 84%. In the world of advertising if a client already has 70% of the market share that is a freak of nature. Very rarely does that happen.

Die Berliner Schule

The Berliner Schule (or Berlin School) is a film retrospective at The Ross that featured 12 German films from the past 5 years. A rare sight in the United States, let alone the Midwest, the retrospective offered Lincolnites a look into contemporary German film. Even though my schedule has been predominately filled with Campaigns-related meetings, I did find time to partake in some of the films. Of the films in the retrospective, I have so far viewed "Schläfer" (Sleeper) directed by Benjamin Heisenberg and Hotel directed by Jessica Hausner.

I found the topic of Schläfer interesting as it was not from an American perspective. Two university students are working in a chemistry lab, one is Algerian and the other is German. The German is sought by the German Intelligence Service to observe the Algerian, whom they consider to be a sleeper for a terrorist organization. Again the whole movie was interesting because of the German perspective on terrorism.

The second film I viewed was Hotel. Overall it was quite dull. It attempted to be a suspense/horror film but I didn't see it. Granted it was not a cookie cutter Hollywood production (which I like about foreign film) but it still missed the mark.I hope to take in at least three more films before the retrospective ends on Thursday.

Although not part of the retrospective, I also watched, Das Leben Der Anderen (The Lives of Others) at the Ross which won the Academy Award for best foreign picture last February. This film was an amazing and somber look at the dark side of the GDR (East Germany), most prominently the Stasi or East German Secret Police. A top pick that I recommend to put in your NetFlix queue.

My Uncle's Wedding

On 24 March, my Uncle Dennis got married. Dennis, my mom's youngest brother, married Tina in a small ceremony in Glenvil, Nebraska. Below are some pictures from the event. I hope to upload the rest of them to Flickr soon but at the moment am hard pressed for time.