TWJ catalog Issue and DVD

The TWJ catalog issue arrived. Another ridiculously huge magazine filled with brands and ads. I have some work in this issue that I thought I would share. The cover photo you see above is actually my photo, not the product shots but the photo of the snow that is underneath. I shot that in my yard last winter. The editor called me last month asking for a shot of snow from above with nothing else in the frame. I happened to have a shot I had kept that worked. That is the thing with photography you never really now what you might need later, so try to shoot everything you can think of even stuff that may not be a great stand alone photo. That photo of snow in my yard would not win any awards, but it made it on to the cover of a magazine!

I also have an ad with Blueblood. A full page shot from Hakkoda of Shinya.

I like the way that one turned out.

Now for the DVD. Last season I was the host for nine issues of the TWJ Transmission DVD. The new season of DVD’s started with this one included with the catalog issue, without me in it.

I officially turned down the offer to repeat the host position this year. It was interesting and a good learning experience last year, but I decided not to return for a second season, for a couple of reasons.

1. The guy who was the main director editor for the project suddenly decided to quit his job in late May and left the company. So the main person with whom I had built a relationship last year was gone. There is an interesting side note as to the reason he left the company. He decided to get married and wanted to have a full-time employee position at the company. He was working around the clock, sleeping at the office for a week during deadline times to get this DVD done, and still he was only considered a part-time employee. The company refused to hire him full-time so he quit. Smart move on his part.

2. I didn’t feel like there would be any progression this season. There was no plan or concept going into the new season and I didn’t want to do the same thing over again. I get really frustrated doing the same thing over and over again. This is a problem I have always dealt with here in Japan. Maybe it is a global virus, but people seem to get comfortable doing something a certain way so they are reluctant to take a chance and change. So you end up doing the same exact thing over and over again, year after year, regardless. I dealt with that at the radio station for many years when I was a DJ on the air. The X-Trail Jam contest in Tokyo Dome has been stuck in a rut for the past 5 years doing the same thing year after year. Some people like beating a dead horse.

3. No budget. Simply put TWJ does not have the cash to produce anything more than what we did last season. They are basically producing a DVD on a shoe string budget or maybe even less. OK look at it this way. They have to press a DVD and include it with the magazine for free. The DVD itself creates ZERO income for the company. They have no sponsors for the DVD itself, just sponsors for the magazine and the DVD is just a little bonus to hopefully get more people to buy the magazine. In the last few years it has become a bit of a battle among the magazines to see who can produce the best DVD to go along with the magazine. One of the leading European magazines called “Method” was doing the same thing, but from last year they gave up the DVD and created an online web channel. You can now go online and watch all the content on the web, rather than having to wait for the DVD.

4. As a producer of DVDs myself I have now come to realize that I am actually against the concept of giving away a free DVD with the magazine. I think it has really lowered the status of DVDs. Why pay 40 dollars for something that comes free with a magazine every month? For ten bucks you can get a magazine and a DVD with some visual entertainment. Not only has the value of a DVD been lowered, but the quality level has also been diluted. Trying to pump out a high quality production nine months of the year, when there are only four months available to truly film anything on the snow, well it can be tough to produce something of quality. I probably wouldn’t mind so much if the medium was something other than a DVD, such as a memory stick, USB flash memory or something like that. Thirty years ago no one gave away full size LP records with magazines right? No one gave away VHS copies of movies with magazines ten years ago right? Maybe I am wrong, so somebody let me know if they know differently. My distributor agrees with me, we had a conversation about this topic and he basically said that he hopes all the magazines stop producing DVDs.

Well there I go rambling on again. I am going to try and make a point to be as transparent as possible in the future about the jobs I choose and don’t choose and the reasons for my actions. So every now and then you may have to deal with this kind of post.  My apologies to the Japanese readers who may have had to struggle with the length and depth of this post.  I will have to see if I can get some Japanese content up on the blog sometimes.