Monthly Archives: November 2013

Kobold HMI Lights Used for 5D Shoot

Kobold Lighting gave us a chance to try out their all-weather 200 Watt and 800 Watt HMI lights. 

According to our director, Snehal Patel, the HMIs ran cool.In the picture below, Jefferson is holding the 200W light in place for a jewelry store scene.  This light was key for a number of shots where we needed balanced daylight in a small package.

The 800W was really useful as a mock helicopter light for a motorcycle chase scene.  The HMI was mounted on the front of the process trailer provided by Camera Car Industries and was swung back and forth to mimic a helicopter searchlight.  As you can see from the pic of Kavi and Ravi on the motorcycle, the 800W was powerful but had a clean look. The ballasts also performed really well.  Snehal reports, "They powered the lights with a low current draw and absolutely no noise.  The color temperature of the lights was spot-on and the construction is hardy and made for heavy production usage."

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9 Game-Losing traits that keep companies from winning

Watching football is great. And I actually had an epiphany just the other day.

EPIPHANY

If athletes took as long as businesses to detect the “REAL WHY”, to devise a handling and to implement it, they would lose every game. Let me say that again.

Let me say it another way.

If athletes took as long as businesses

to detect the reason they’re losing,

and to come up with a successful game plan

and to put that plan into action,

they’d lose every game.

After helping businesses solve their problems for 26 years, I know that most of the time people are working very, very hard for a solution.  In fact, they’re exhausted from trying to find a solution.  Some even sink into the thinking that, “Nothing really works.”
But solutions can be found and implemented.   Using football as an analogy may help us spot things lacking from a struggling business. In fact, if we removed the traits of a successful football team you might begin to spot some basic outpoints we run into when helping a business.  See if this experiment rings true for you.

Caution: you may recognise things preventing your company from winning.

football field
1. There’s no goal line. (Most employees don’t know what they do that is vital and valuable to the company.)
2. There are no yard markers. (Quantifiable metrics to monitor the success or lack of success are either non-existent or are mis-identified. Imagine a football field with no yard markers.)
3. The players aren’t on the field. (Employees trying to identify the problem often aren’t in touch with the “trenches” where the root cause lies.  They aren’t on the field. All they get are self-serving reports of others in the company. This gives them a false picture. Thus since they don’t know the real situation, what we call the REAL WHY, the solution eludes them.)
4. The players are blindfolded. (The people of the company can see the problem but they can’t see the cause. In effect, they are blindfolded).
5. The players don’t know what to do to be successful. Their plays aren’t based on a careful study of the opponent. (Often the problems have been in the company for a long time. The employees don’t know what a “win” is or how to make a win happen. They’re like a football team has no idea what to do.)
6. The players’ efforts are not coordinated.  Everyone’s blocking but their energy is dispersed and not focused, for on opening a hole for the back to run through. (Budgets are dispersed on many different solutions instead of focusing on one thing that will win.)
7. Players aren’t team oriented. (Employees don’t trust companies to take care of them. So they’re in CYA (cover your ass) mode.)
8. The front office wants to call the plays. (Upper Management has no idea what happening in the trenches. Nevertheless, they devise broad initiatives based on “good ideas” that “should” work because they worked somewhere else they used to work.)
9. There’s no coach.  The players just run around the field, showing off their talents, getting in fights with their teammates. (Can you imagine a team of the highly qualified personnel without a coach?  With everybody in a company working on their own game plan, you just need somebody to come in from the outside to organise these efforts into a winning strategy.)
CONCLUSION: If 1 through 9 is going on at your company, you might need a coach to come in and find the real why and then devise a solution based on the real why.
That’s what we do. That’s what we’ve done for hundreds of customers.  If you’d like to hear more, send me your email.
If you’d like to read some examples of solutions we’ve provided, email me, or better call me at 818 841-9660. If you don’t get through my cell is 818 606-3538.

- See more at: http://blog.theassociation.tv/#sthash.pO8ZJd6I.dpuf